Women directors of the Indian stage

Women on Top

Nirupama Dutt

The real life stories of Partition, chronicled in Urvashi Butalia's book, `The Other Side of Silence', came alive in the dark backdrop of a black stage in the Sri Ram Centre auditorium on the foggy evening of January 7. These scenes were poignantly enacted in 'Aur Kitne Tukade', a play directed by Kirti Jain. The tickets were sold out well in advance and yet people queued up, hoping to get a seat if someone did not turn up. Similar enthusiasm greeted the staging of Anuradha Kapoor's 'Antigone' and the unfolding of 'Kitchen Katha' by director Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry as late as half-past eight of a cold winter's night.Such was the overwhelming response to nearly all the plays staged in the week-long Purva Asian Women Directors Festival held in Delhi from January 3 to 10, which is to be followed up with a conference on theatre and women. The event - organized by the National School of Drama and Natrang Pratishthan, with support from the Women and Child Department of the Government of India, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and others - marked the coming of age of the woman director in the country.Asked to assess the festival, Amal Allana, an accomplished director with over 40 productions to her credit, says: "The festival, with its vast variety of plays, shows that women have arrived and they have the versatility to see themselves, the world and various issues from different perspectives." Her own play in the festival was 'Sonata', written by Mahesh Elkunchwar. It told the story of brave single women who were a fall-out of the women's movement of the 1970s, with their moments of despair and elation 30 years later.But for a few classics and satirical interventions, the 20 plays that went into the making of this festival centered around the issues facing the contemporary woman as she steps more confidently to tell her stories. A unique thrust of the festival was that it focused on Asian perspectives rather than the global perspective that tends to overlook the realities of developing countries.A remarkable play looking at Asian reality in the global context was 'Panaw' (Journey) from the Philippines. Directed by Cecilia G Ariola, the play uses the talents of several traditional artistes and arts, in telling the story of a Filipino maid who works overseas and is battered by a husband who does not allow her to return home to meet her family for nine years. When she finally returns, she finds out that her kin have either died or have gone away - nobody knows where - and then she starts on her own spiritual journey in her own homeland.When the perspective is Asian, tradition plays a significant role in the creative arts; for these are countries in which tradition is still grappling with modernity. Thus, the theme of tradition in transit became the thrust in many of the plays, giving a complex delineation of the theme and a richness of texture. Devendra Raj Ankur, Director of the National School of Drama, says: "Tradition in transit is a recurring theme in the arts and we have seen the woman writer and artist working on it. But this festival brought into focus the woman director taking up this theme and creating anew."Two directors took up the two Hindu epic dramas of 'Ramayana' and 'Mahabharata' for re-interpretation. The special focus was on the women in these myths. Tripurari Sharma in 'Mahabharat Se' worked out an experiment of both form and content. She took Shanti, a traditional Pandavani (narration of the Mahabharata through music, acting and story-telling) artiste and Sapna, a contemporary artiste, to weave together the traditional and modern. Says Sharma: "The story of Draupadi is retold by the two artistes and as the drama unfolds leading to war and destruction, the cause and consequence, the right and wrong, grow hazy for Draupadi and Kunti."B Jayashree from Bangalore chose to redeem two much-maligned women characters from the 'Ramayana' - Manthara and Kaikeyi - in her play, 'Manthara', which juxtaposes the folk against the classical. Jayshree says, "Kaikeyi's love and Manthara's uncontrolled desire reveal the extraordinary feminine powers rampant in the world. The denouement of the play questions the nihilistic and narcissitic tendencies in the male of the species."The Malaysian play, 'Maksu', directed by Faridah Marican, took up the story of an ancient traditional dance theatre in the face of the western commercialization. A play from Japan told a woman's story and touched upon the reproductive rights of a woman. The Cambodian play, 'Night Please Go Faster', directed by Nou Sandab, re-visits the history of turbulent politics and the story of women there who, the director says, "are protected and honored by ancient traditions and at the same time victimized by these very traditions".A woman's viewpoint was visible also in Anamika Haksar's 'Baawla', a play based on Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot': a challenge is thrown to the world of power and the play spells hope even in despair. The play takes up the issue of the State versus the individual. Anuradha Kapoor's delineation of the Greek classic, 'Antigone', once again questions tyranny by telling the story of the unyielding Antigone. The contemporary situation can also be addressed with all too well known examples from the past and this is what Haksar and Kapoor have sought to do.Two remarkable plays were Usha Ganguly's 'Rudali' and Nadira Babbar's 'Begum Jaan', which were elevated by fine performances from Ganguly and Babbar. Maya Rao gave a brilliant performance in her 'A Deeper Fried Jam'. Mita Vashisht from Mumbai chose to laugh away all blues in 'Neeti Manakikjaran' and young Shailja from Trivandrum chose theme of the realization of the self in 'Thathri', a play about woman and society."Seven of the women directors are alumni of the NSD and they have done the school proud. But others too have shown their mettle in this festival," says Kirti Jain of Natrang Pratishthan and adds that the tremendous response to the festival may lead to this being an annual or bi-annual event.The festival opened with the honoring of pioneering women directors like Shanta Gandhi, Sheila Bhatia, Vijaya Mehta, Rekha Jain, Joy Michael and Prema Karanth. These veterans, who had the courage to give the shots in times that were completely male-dominated as far as direction went, would indeed be happy to see that isolated efforts have now grown into a full tide.
– Nirupama Dutt

January 19, 2003

Playing the OTHER

Bad girls Good guys

Men make for better woman or so they would have us believe, says Nirupama Dutt in an overview of the female impersonators

When I stepped onto the stage as Rahila in Yahudi ki Ladhki, the audience just wondered how come a girl in this company? This was my first taste of success. I still remember the day. I used to wear a brocade salwar and a jumper. And my hair were done in two long plaits.'' Recalling his girlie days thus is Master Fida Husain Nursee, a century-old veteran of Parsi theatre, now living in Moradabad. He had begun his acting career as a female impersonator with Alfred New Theatre Company.

Although theatre tradition dates back to Sanskrit drama, yet various invasions and colonization destroyed it. Performing arts came to be associated only with `women of ill fame'. Indian cities saw the rebirth of theatre inspired by the West in the 1830s and it became fashionable with the educated strata. Two prominent names of this theatre were legendary stars, Balgandharva of Marathi stage and Jai Shankar Sundri of Gujrati stage. The Sangeet Natak Akademi awards to them in the sixties were for their days as women.

The success of Kamalahasan as Chachi 420 is peanuts before the glory Balgandharva enjoyed in his hey days. He set the fashions in clothes or hairstyles for women at the turn of the century. He appeared in advertisements for women's cosmetics and his singing talents earned him the title of Nightingale of Maharashtra. ``Balgandharva and Sundri set the behaviour mode for the literate urban Indian woman before she came into the open in the freedom struggle as the Bharatiye Nari,'' says Katherine Hensen, a Canadian scholar who is researching the role of the female impersonator in Indian theatre.

``The image he gave to women was a sweet Victorian one: the pativrata who would do anything for her husband. Mothers would say they wanted a daughter-in-law just like the women Balgandharva played. His talent was such that he acted out the image with conviction. A man playing a woman is very challenging for it is a part of the process of translating reality into art,'' says theatre director Amal Allana.

Allana studied the life and times of the legendary actor at length for her plays Himmat Mai and Begum Barve. Manohar Singh played the woman in the former and a man wanting to be a woman in the latter. Begum Barve is a play inspired by the life of Balgandharva. It was a rare performance by Manohar as the Begum. While Balgandharva gave an image to women, Manohar succeeded in shattering this conditioned image of womanhood in a play.

The 20th Century had gone a couple of decades and more before the entry of women started in Parsi theatre. There was a lot of resistance from the directors of theatre companies and the actors. Reasons? Stage was not the place for `respectable' women. In fact an early adventurous girl called Sabz Pari who stepped onto the stage as early as 1870 met with a sad fate. She was abducted the very first night of the show and never heard of again. Hear what old Nursee has to say, ``The entry of girls to our company was very late hence it was considered respectable. Moti lal and Madan Mohan Malviya used to come to watch our performances.''

Though a direct fallout of the colonial era, the proscenium theatre did not follow all the rules of the Victorian theatre. There the `bad' girls were put onto the stage but here they were kept away for long by the goodie-good guys. It also became a means to control women's lives by laying the rules: thus far and no more. Something which commercial cinema carried on even with women as women. It was also a way of denying women their creative space. In arts and crafts, the skills were appropriated by men and women reduced to domestic drudgery.

The daring act by Sabz Pri did not go in vain and slowly women came onto the stage. The first to come were the singing girls. In fact Balgandharva fell in love with one of them. Goharbai became his lady love in real life. Open Sesame and women from `respectable' homes were there in the forbidden arena. Nursee, however said: ``What Balgandharva and Jai Shankar Sundri achieved, no woman has been able to.'' A conviction that comes perhaps from male-to-male dynamics.

AN EXCEPTION

In Maharashtra breathed in the glory of female impersonators, Bengal had already seen the blossoming of an actress in the 19th Century. She was Nati Binodini (1863-1941). The English Press described her as the `prima donna of Bengali theatre' and `the flower of the native stage.' Like most actresses of her time she came from the red light areas of North Calcutta. She was trained by the legendary dramatist Girish Chandra Ghosh from the age of 11.
Binodini rose like a meteor in her career spanning 12 years. Novelist Bankim Chandra Chatterjee acknowledged her genius and it is said theosophist Ramakrishna Paramhamsa went into a trance seeing her performance in Chaitanya Leela. However, exploited and tormented in a male-dominated society, she quit theatre at the age of 24 when she was at the height of fame.

After that she would come to the theatre as a viewer: watching from the wings. Her literary works Amar Katha and Amar Abhinetri Jivan are valuable documents on theatre in Bengal in those days. Theatre director Bapi Bose who directed a play, written by Chitranjan Ghosh, on Binodini's struggle as an actress describes her as `the first martyr of Indian theatre.'

The story of Heer on stage

Empowering Love Legends

Nirupama Dutt

The popular legend of star-crossed lovers Heer-Ranjha is said to have played out in Jhang - in Pakistan - on the banks of the River Chenab in Punjab. It has been enacted numerous times on stage and screen. Heer and Ranjha rebelled against their parents and society to be together, eventually choosing to die rather than live without one another. A cliché? That depends on the context. When adolescent girls in Pakistan pick up the tale, the connotations are different.Pakistan has an oppressive society, especially for women and girls. And in this legend, the girls find a lesson on love, freedom and the right to choose. Lahore-based artist, activist and theatre director Huma Safdar, 44, saw the potential of love legends a decade ago when she worked with adolescent girls on a theatre production of the legend.Much of Sufi poetry, love legends included, is an allegorical statement against the established order and the bigotry of institutionalized religion. Safdar says, "Sufi poetry has been used in Pakistan to defy tyranny and fundamentalism. The love legends, especially, give us powerful stories of brave women who choose to mould their own destiny. These work as powerful material to build the personalities of adolescent girls." To this end, she involves the entire cast in everything from the readings to the building-up of the play. She allots roles only towards the end, so that "every girl knows the play, and knows it well".Safdar, a painter by training, graduated with distinction in Fine Arts from the National College of Art, Lahore. As a student in the dictatorial Zia ul-Haq regime (early to mid-1980s), Safdar became active with the theatre and women's groups that sprang up all over the country in protest against the repression. She even courted arrest a number of times with other women activists. Safdar comes from a politically active family - her father Safdar Rasheed and uncle Anwar Rasheed were members of the Kisan Mazdoor Party - and the decision to join protest politics came easy to her.Looking back, Safdar says: "Although I had set out to be a painter, activism intervened. Those were times when it was very important to take the message to the people and theatre was a more potent medium than fine arts." She joined Madeeha Gauhar's Ajoka theatre group as an actor. Later, she formed her own group, Lok Rehas, committed to raising consciousness on social issues and rediscovering roots, traditions and folklore.Besides this, Safdar also works as an arts teacher in the elite Lahore Grammar School for girls. About 10 years ago, she was asked to direct a play for the school dramatic society. Safdar, who is a language activist and has been working to get Punjabi its due status in Pakistan, decided that the play must be in Punjabi. The Pakistani elite does not speak Punjabi, preferring to converse in Urdu or English. So she picked the story of Heer-Ranjha as penned by Sufi poet Damodar. "The girls were not happy to begin with but gradually they started loving it. I am happy that I was able to inculcate pride for their language among these elite English-speaking girls."This play brought Safdar much acclaim. Her training in visual arts enables her to create her scenes as though each image is to be framed. Speaking of her approach to Heer-Ranjha, Safdar says, "The public has a constant presence in the play and, as it progresss, they identify with the couple. The end of the play poses a pertinent question, for Heer and Ranjha leave together, never to return. And we find ourselves asking: Why could they not live among us?"Urban Punjabi theatre is a new concept in Pakistan. Lahore, in fact, identifies Punjabi theatre with a tradition of bawdy comedy strung together with performances by the dancing girls of Heera Mandi, the sex trade area of Lahore. Directors like Gauhar and Safdar are changing this image and bringing to Punjabi theatre a respectability that allows girl students to step onto the stage.Heer-Ranjha was a huge success with the audience and the students. So, Safdar took up the legend again - in another version, this one penned by the famous Sufi poet Waris Shah - and staged it two years ago. "That was a wonderful experience. The epic by Waris is interspersed with proverbs, sayings, folktales, history and poetry par excellence. In short, it is a compendium of Punjabi language, culture and consciousness."This year, she staged 'Sassi Punnu', yet another love legend of the Indian plains, penned by Sufi poet Hashim Shah. Safdar recalls with amusement, "I met with resistance from the students this year as well. They thought Sassi was an obsolete legend told in a language no longer in vogue. But I read them the poetry and we started interpreting it. By the end of it, they loved the play." She has also produced 'Ik Raat Ravi Di (One Night for Ravi)', a play by noted poet Najm Syed, and which is set in the colonial period. Syed has been something of a mentor for Safdar and other liberals in a country plagued by the fundamentalism and dictatorship.Safdar's efforts, therefore, work in two ways: inculcating a love for Punjabi and sowing the seeds of love, freedom and rebellion among the students. She has now been able to introduce the Punjabi language from Class V onwards as part of the curriculum in Lahore Grammar School. This is remarkable, for there is not a single Punjabi medium school in Punjab, even though 60.43 per cent Pakistanis speak the language. Historically, Urdu has been thrust upon Punjab as the language of Muslim identity.Safdar and her painter-poet husband Akram Varraich share common concerns about their society and about establishing a strong democratic tradition. The two are active members of Syed's Sangat group that reads, sings and interprets Sufi poetry as well as poetry written by the Sikh Gurus. And they are proud that their 16-year-old son, Rawal, chooses to speak mostly in Punjabi. Evidently, Safdar and Varraich bring their activism home.

July 4, 2004, Womens Feature Service

Manohar Singh: Theatre Legend

Manohar Singh in Tughlaq: Photo by E. Alkazi

Stage artiste with a perfect entry who made a premature exit

An exhibition of photographs of Manohar Singh in myriad roles on stage is a fine tribute to the memory of a great theatre artiste of our times, writes Nirupama Dutt.

"ACTING is all about entry and exit. The timing has to be right. This would also be true of life. The entry and exit should be at the right time," Manohar Singh joked once when he thought he was almost late for an appointment. This and many other little anecdotes come to my mind as I walk in the quiet lunch hour through Ebraham Alkazi’s Art Heritage gallery, watching frame after frame. Here sits Manohar Singh in the tragic glory of Tughlaq and there he is the handsome young man in Danton’s Death; there the mad King Lear and here the alluring Begum Barve.
Many were the roles he played on stage and in life and played them with a rare flourish, with the timing of the entry and exit perfect each time. "But once, the timing was not correct. It was no time for him to go," his friend Nisar Allana said with tears in his eyes, "Manohar was at the pinnacle of his creative abilities." A great actor, a kind person and a good friend is how I recall Manohar Singh.
The year was 1975, many recall this as the year of the Emergency. So it was. But for a few of us it was also the year of the journalism school in Panjab University, Chandigarh. Also the year when our teacher Tara Chand Gupta initiated us into theatre as ushers. So we saw that year Habib Tanvir’s Agra Bazar. M.K. Raina’s Ghosts, Kumar Varma’s Baqi Itihas and Balwant Gargi’s Antigone. The last play had the legendary actor (yes, he was a legend even then) Manohar Singh playing the enraged king in the famed Greek tragedy.
Raw still and not quite discerning then, we were yet drawn into the power of the acting because Manohar’s was a stage presence that compelled not just attention but admiration too. And a classmate of mine, Darshan Jack, wangled a joint assignment for the two of us from Amarjit Chandan, who then edited a cultural magazine in Punjabi. So there the two of us were sitting on the lawns behind the English Department and interviewing him over a glass of tea from Gulati’s canteen.
This was my first glimpse of the actor who passed away in November last year. A recipient of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for acting in 1983, Manohar was a Shimla boy who started acting in amateur theatre in his early youth and then joined the Himachal Pradesh Song and Drama Division and performed all over the state for six years. In 1968, he joined the National School of Drama, New Delhi, and in a couple of years he had arrived as an actor, forming a famous trio along with actresses Surekha Sikri and Uttara Baokar. He headed the National School of Drama Repertory Company for many years. Although based in Delhi and later both in Mumbai and Delhi, Manohar visited Shimla frequently to meet his family and often he would be staying for days in the home of his friends Kamal and Paramjit Tewari. Many a mehfil of music would be held there with Kamal singing in his magical voice and even Manohar getting inspired to hum a Himachali folk tune or two.
What was it that made Manohar excel in a wide variety of roles and remain unparalleled? In Alkazi’s words, "Manohar had the aristocracy of spirit, nobility of soul and complete humility in understanding and enacting a role." He had a powerful stage presence, a marvellous voice and the genius to live out a role. In fact as Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger, he would work himself to such a rage that offstage it would take him time to come back to his normal self. I remember Manohar Singh telling me once in the course of an interview, "Theatre is a profession that burns one up somehow. In a course of two or three hours one lives through the highs and lows which one may experience in a lifetime." But theatre was his first and true love. He moved to television and films in the late eighties for financial reasons, to provide a home to his family and to settle his children but whenever he got a chance he was back to his friends Amal and Nisar Allana, doing King Lear, Himmat Mai or Begum Barve.
In Himmat Mai, an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Begum Barve, Manohar played a woman in the first and a man impersonating a woman in the second. Not many could digest the idea of Manohar doing a woman. What had the mighty Tughlaq come to! Theatre critic Kavita Nagpal chose to put the blame on the Allanas, saying that they were exploiting their friendship with the actor and making a fool of him. Devendra Raj Ankur, present director of the National School of Drama, too nodded in disapproval. But discard prejudice and see how well Manohar handled these two roles. In the first, he modelled the character after his own mother and dressed in pahari clothes. Set in the days of war, Himmat Mai tells the sad story of a woman who fends for her three children by making money from the war and also losing all she has in the process. I still recall the moment when Manohar as Himmat Mai suppresses a scream on seeing her son’s corpse for, if she identified it the rest of the family too would meet the same fate. It was a moment of great acting and that scream still lives somewhere in the soul of the viewer. In Begum Barve, he is an ageing actor longing to play a feminine role, the play being set in the days of Bal Gandharva and female impersonator. What Manohar created in the urge to be a complete woman was truly a spiritual experience. Amal recalls, "A single ankle bell, again a sign of feminine vanity, looked awkward and misplaced around the large, hairy male foot. The tinkling sound that emerged as he tripped around with mincing steps, echoed the falsetto note adopted by Manohar for the role, emphasising the artifice of his impersonation."
In the last decade of his life, he was together with his family again, giving the attention to his wife that he had missed out on in his younger days. Manohar was a man of love and many a time he caused heartaches, his own and those of others, for love for him was a season that passed all too quickly. But he was a friend to them all even when the season of love was over. That was the goodness of his being. And he kept the responsibility of the family in mind. In the past few years, he searched me out twice to invite me to the weddings of his daughters Meena and Rachna. And he played the host with aplomb, along with his gracious wife Nirmal. Ironically, he passed away in a matter of days after his wife’s death. Both of them died of cancer.
I move from frame to frame a second time in the deserted gallery, seeing the photographs clicked by Alkazi, Shobha Deepak Singh and Gopi Gajwani (I recall that Yog Joy too had photographed him in a number of roles in the seventies). Manohar, or Manohar Singhji, as I always called him, for that was better than the universal Manohar bhai, had talked about entry and exit. He seemed to know it all. But had he ever imagined how lost the audience can feel when their beloved actor leaves the stage and that is what Amal and Nisar feel in Delhi, Kamal in Chandigarh, Deven Joshi in Shimla and yours truly on Badshapur Road in brand new Gurgaon. But then that is life. It is here this moment and the next it is gone. What matters is that how well you have played your role in it. The play is the thing!

May 11, 2003, The Tribune