Plays of Gaiety

“Normally,theatres are seen as places where a play is performed. This also means that there is almost no exhaustive archive of scripts in India. Directors mostly procure scripts from libraries or publishers,” says Rakesh Kanwar,director of the Himachal Pradesh Art,Culture and Language Department,which operates the theatre. The organisation decided to document as many plays as possible that had been staged at Gaiety over the years — an ambitious project since the theatre came into being in 1887,the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The first play staged here was called Time will Tell,which was followed by hundreds of musicals,comedies and other forms of theatre.

The search for scripts took officials to publishers across India,the National School of Drama in Delhi and the Indian Army,which manages Gaiety’s Amateur Dramatics Club (ADC). ADC is among the earliest dramatic clubs of India in the European tradition and supplied the archive with “100 books and 103 scripts from 1888 to the 1920s”.

“A few books in the archive deal with how Gaiety should be managed. Altogether,there are 480 documents in English and Hindi,” says Kanwar,adding that “when we couldn’t keep books,we photocopied the scripts”. The archive,he adds,can be used by theatre groups,actors and directors across the country.

The archive raises hope that plays such as The White Elephant and An Ideal Husband,both of which were staged in 1898,will be interpreted anew by theatre groups,though Kanwar adds that his favourites are works by librettist WS Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan whose plays HMS Pinafore or the Lass that Loved a Sailor,Bulldog,and The Gondoliers or the King of Baratariaare a part of the archive. Actors in these plays ranged from British officers to ladies in frilly gowns,laces and ruffles to a young Rudyard Kipling,who acted in Scrap of Paper. According to the book Simla; The Summer Capital of British India,Kipling “came on stage — to use his own line on amateur actors: ‘hot for fresh praise and panting for hot cheers’. It is said that he did not make any great impression as an actor”.

Works by Habib Tanvir and Vijay Tendulkar and modern playwrights such as Nadira Babbar,Bhanu Bharti and Mohan Maharishi as well as Hindi translations of William Shakespear’s plays throw light on post-colonial India. Browse through the archive and the passing era comes alive,the plays reflect India’s transition from a colonial regime to an independent entity. The ruffled dresses may be history today but the stories have just got a new lease of life.