A Prized Performer

“We work against many odds and this group is a personal investment of more than 25 years. I’m sure there is no parallel to the Company anywhere in India,” says the director. She has had a hectic work schedule for the last three months,doing Blood Wedding for the National School of Drama’s (NSD) repertory in Delhi,conducting an acting workshop for the cast of the film Midnight’s Children and travelling with her latest play Stree-r Patra. All the while,she has also been teaching at the Department of Indian Theatre at Panjab University. So what’s her survival secret? “I don’t overcrowd my mind. I commit myself to the moment; that’s my tool of self-preservation and part of my discipline,” she answers.

Theatre,believes Chowdhury,is a process,and the final product — the play on the stage — evolves with time. “As I evolve,so does my treatment of a play. I create my own metaphors and juggle a lot with circumstances,challenges and people. “For instance,Nagamandala,the play based on Kannada folk tales that she directed in 1989,was ‘reinvented’ in 2005 for Deepa Mehta’s film Heaven on Earth. “When I looked at Kitchen Katha,I see the changes that could be made in the way the actors performed,so I chisel the next production,” she says.

Raised in England till she was in Class VI,Chowdhury’s family moved to Amritsar in the late 1950s. The first time she watched theatre was in 1971 when NSD founder and theatre veteran Ebrahim Alkazi brought Othello and Jasma Odan to Amritsar. Chowdhury watched fascinated,knowing that the course of her life had changed. Four years later,she enrolled at NSD to study acting,though it was direction that she found most challenging. After marriage,Chowdhury along with Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri,formed the theatre company Majma in Mumbai. “In 1984,I was back in Chandigarh and took the challenge of doing plays only in Punjabi,” she says.

Ever since,theatre has fuelled her relentless search for her roots. Her first play in Chandigarh,based on the film Rashomon,used gatka,the martial art form of the Nihangs,the Sikh military order. Later,she used dadhis or Sufi balladeers in a play Heer Ranjha.