South Asia-Culture
Mahesh Dattani
Madhusree
Chatterjee
Thimpu /New
Delhi
The rain had
thawed after a night and a half of the morning of torrential downpour- washing picture
postcard Thimpu, the capital of the Himalayan nation of Bhutan, in shades of
sparkling aquamarine. The sun shone on lush Thimpu that spread out like a stage
on the slopes waiting for a new drama to play itself out.
At the Nehru
Wangchuk Centre in Bhutan – the official cultural exchange centre between India
and Bhutan – more than 50 children took to the stage - overlooking the Thimpu Chhu
river and pine-clad hills in the distance - to express their flair for “high drama”
with noted Indian playwright and director Mahesh Dattani on August 11, the
final day of the four-day Mountain Echoes Festival Aug 8-11- an India-Bhutan arts
and cultural fiesta.
“Theatre is
the best way to bridge the cultural divides around the world and foster
understanding. Contemporary theatre is a mirror of reality, cultural identities
and lifestyles,” Dattani told this writer/reporter on the sidelines of the
workshop. He was helping the participants articulate their stories with body
language in a curious cross-cultural fusion of “Indian acting methods in an indigenous
Bhutanese milieu that included ethnic content and liberal doses of English as
the language of communication”.
“I see three
major trends in modern Indian theatre that were not perceptible even a decade
ago,” Dattani observed. Theatre in India is “more multilingual than before”. There
is “greater reflection of who we are, greater sense of linguistic identity and
more acceptance on the mainstream cultural stage” after a long lull in the aftermath
of cinema.
At the same time, in countries like India
where more than 300 million people use English as a link language, while moving
across 450 official vernacular languages among diverse caste and language
communities, “the conflict between regional and urban identity still persists
in theatre”, Dattani said.
English
theatre, Dattani’s oeuvre, is yet to reconcile with regional language theatre
that stands out with distinct provincial ethos, mythological and cultural
archetypes, the playwright says.
In contrast
to the millennia-old Indian regional stage, the English stage is new-born, barely
150 years old, owing its umbilical pangs to the erstwhile British colonialists who
gave English classics to the Indian stage, paving the way for the contemporary English
stage.
Over the
years, English theatre has struggled to remain afloat in infrequent attempts at
grand productions, especially in the first few decades post-Independence till
the 1970s when it found a surprise taker- the corporate mega-entities who found
English theatre a good way to extend their commitment to the culture welfare of
their rainbow workforce and also contribute to the arts in an effort to shed
the tags of ruthless “profit merchants” pinned on them by progressive radicals and
the Socialists of the 1970s.
English
theatre in the meantime grew to become the genre that connected the Indian
stage to the world as well – largely so.
“I have a
feeling that Alyque Padamsee set the contemporary English stage rolling with
corporate support for his grand revival productions like ‘Evita’ and ‘Jesus
Christ Superstar’ starring Indian line-ups. Such scales on which Padamsee
operated required corporate thinking and support,” Dattani pointed out.
Even now, it
thrives on corporate support. Companies sponsor English theatre on their social
events calendar – an evening of theatre, followed by cocktails and dinners,
Dattani said. As a result, the theatre has changed its format. “The running
time of a play has been reduced to 90 minutes usually without break— away from the traditional two-hour full length
drama with one or multiple intermissions in between the acts. This 90-minute structure
suits the corporate sponsors,” the playwright said.
The corporate
English plays are modern in outlook, exhumed from reality – with elements of
niche for the “guests are by invitation”.
Dattani’s new
play “Big Fat City” that played on the national capital stage Aug 8-9, is set
in a familiar urban realm. It brings to light the “blues of the economic slump at
Mumbai’s Lokhandwalla locality, an upwardly mobile suburbia, where the
playwright lived early in his career in Mumbai”.
“I wrote the
play between 2005-2007 when I from Bangalore to Mumbai. Lokhandwalla was inhabited
by ‘aspiring young people. Many of them were keen to join the arts and climb
the corporate ladder. They all wanted to put their best foot forward. They all
wanted to exude success- that was the starting point for my story… About people
who wanted to maintain the lifestyles but could not afford it,” Dattani said.
The “Big Fat
City” is a tapestry of three different narratives—- about a corporate couple who has lost their jobs
but has to pay the monthly EMI on the loan for the home the duo has purchased, a
fading television star who was a huge success in 1990s, but no longer gets work
but with a penthouse and lavish lifestyle she can no longer afford and a young aspiring
actor who has come to Mumbai with her boyfriend. She has a dark story.
All the
three stories – drawing from common set of circumstances – are strung together into
a greater structure of yet another narrative like a mosaic- the new urban
reality in Mumbai, Dattani explained. It has been inspired by real characters
that the playwright met at Lokhandwalla. “It is a look at values in moments of adversity,”
the playwright muses.
Dattani has
rarely moved out of the urban Indian landscape in his plays. Born to Gujarati
parents in 1958 in rapidly-urbanising Bangalore, Dattani went to an English
medium school, college and management school. After a brief tenure as a
copy-writer, he decided to devote time to English theatre - opting for city
stories that crowded the urban space. He made spotlight with plays like “Final
Solutions”, “Dance Like a Man”, “Bravely, I Fought the Queen”, “On a Muggy Night
in Mumbai”, “Tara” and “30 Days in September”.
Dattani is
the only English playwright to have been honoured with a Sahitya Akademi award.
A sense of
linguistic detachment haunts Dattani, who regrets the loss of his language –
Gujarati – blaming the English medium school that his parents sent him to. It
grounded him in the language of the queen.
“I was
encouraged to speak English, not Gujarati. It was a great undoing… I lost a
part of my identity. It was as if I didn’t have a language,” Dattani says. Writing
successful and powerful plays has nothing to do with the language, but with his
edge as a playwright and story-teller, the playwright introspects.
Dark
characters and crisis bring out the best in Dattani – it leads to sharply contoured
and nuanced characters and situations in plays. Dattani’s role models help him stay
close to reality.
“My early
influences have been American playwrights like Tennessee Williams. His plays, “The
Glass Menagerie”, “Summer & Smoke”, “Street Car Named Desire” and “Not About
Nightingales” taught me how to use poetry in drama and plot big dramatic
moments between the past and the present- across time,” Dattani said. The Indian
inspirations come from likes of Marathi legend Vijay Tendulkar, Mahesh Elkunchwar
and Gujarati playwright Madhu Rai.
Mahesh Dattani
believes in the power of original scripts. “That is what theatre is – original plays.
Adaptation is a skill. Most playwrights here transpose western plays into
Indian languages by changing names as pass them off as adaptations. It seems
easy…” Dattani hits out. He has been conducting workshops for the last 20 years
to nurture young script-writing talent.
“I don’t teach
them to write scripts. I mentor them. My job is to understand the kind of
stories they want to tell and identify their strengths as writers”. Some of his
students have done Dattani proud abroad.
English
theatre has great potential to evolve as any other regional language stage in
India, the playwright ends on optimism.
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