THE PLAY NEVER ENDS

Chowdhury makes her actors speak less and emote mostly with the body. 8220;Not wordy text, but emotions, which are universal, are the muse of my plays,8221; she says. Theatre has earned Chowdhury fame, not money. Yet, the love for it keeps her going. 8220;Theatre doesn8217;t earn me a living, I am my own typist, manager, and administrator. But the desire to bring on stage a glimpse of what is below the surface never satiates,8221; she philosophises.

Theatre, however, happened to Chowdhury by accident. Raised in England till she was in Class VI, Chowdhury8217;s family then moved to Amritsar, which she calls 8220;provincial8221;. 8220;There was a lot of religion there. I literally lived in and out of gurudwaras,8221; says Chowdhury, whose doctor father was a pious man. She had no inkling of theatre, until the National School of Drama founder and later Chowdhury8217;s teacher, Ebrahim Alkazi, brought Othello and Jasma Odan to Amritsar in 1971.
As a backstage volunteer and a 8220;residue of post-colonialism8221;, Chowdhury saw in theatre a new, free world, where there was an ease between sexes and space for thoughts. In 1975, she enrolled at the NSD to study acting.
But there, she found acting too limited and realised that direction was her forte. Before she could do anything about it, she got married and moved to Mumbai. There, she, along with thespians Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri, formed the theatre company Majma. Her husband8217;s job then took her to Bhopal in 1980, where she joined Bharat Bhavan and was involved with folk theatre under B.V. Karnath8217;s guidance.

In 1984, she was back to Punjab, this time in Chandigarh though. Her friends joked that she would probably form a bhangra band there as the dance was the only art form the city was known for. Chowdhury had to start from scratch. She made things more challenging for herself by deciding to do plays in Punjabi, despite not knowing the language well enough herself. 8220;Punjabi was considered the language of truck drivers and dhabhawallas. Nobody wanted to touch you if you were working in Punjabi. But that was also the language of Sufiana and the Guru Granth Sahib,8221; she says.
The absence of theatre in Chandigarh worked in Chowdhury8217;s favour though. It helped her create her own style. Karanth had advised her that to be truly contemporary, she must know where she comes from and work with local artists. Since then, Chowdhury8217;s been on a relentless search for her roots. Through her plays, she has tried to revive the lost traditions of Punjab. Her first play in Chandigarh, based on Japanese director Kurosawa8217;s film Rashomon, used gatka, the martial arts of the Nihangs, the Sikh military order. Then, she used Dadhis or Sufi balladeers in a play on Heer Ranjha. Her plays unconsciously helped bind Hindus and Sikhs in the tumultuous year of 1984. 8220;My works became a political statement of sorts as the bickering communities sat together and realised the many things they shared,8221;she recalls.

Chowdhury is penning a record of her eventful journey in theatre . She8217;s just completed her autobiography after having spent three years on it. The title8217;s not final. It may be called Behind The Curtains or Becoming So Many People, she tells us. 8220;From my memory, I started making connections. The visual vocabulary came with my experiences and in the process, I discovered so many new facets,8221; she says. The show never stops.

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