The Show Must Go On

NS: I think it is a shame that the Chairman should pan intellectualism like this. Students must study Chekov, Camus and King Lear to learn the basics of theatre and also study Indian classics. Hindi movies are a miserable fact of life and if that is where we set our sights, then all that students will end up learning is the career graph of Govinda!

I am not saying there is anything wrong with working for film or television but more often than not it also means the end of the student’s theatre career.

Anyway, a theatre institute is not here to teach students to become part of Bollywood. It is to teach them how to continue doing theatre in the real world and that is where the NSD has failed to provide students with viable options. As long as one is part of the institution that is lavishly funded by the government, one does grand productions with big budgets and lots of facilities. But what happens after that? I remember Om Puri and I having a terrible time when we tried to put up plays in Mumbai after NSD. We had no place to rehearse and we could never get the same cast to do one play twice. This is happening even today.

Nobody in NSD tells students how to put up smaller, more economically viable productions. No one ever tells them that you don’t have to sit and wait for lead roles to come your way. And no one offers them ways to carry on with theatre even if the options seem few.

What do you think about the oft-levied charge against the NSD that it is too Hindi-centric?
AK: I think the argument that the NSD is too focussed on Hindi is irrelevant. Language is only incidental whereas theatre is a form and besides, students are free to go back and make classroom productions in their own languages.

NS: NSD’s emphasis on Hindi has been there right from the beginning and this is one of its other big problems. It is absurd to hear students do plays in chaste Hindi. Where in a city like Delhi and Mumbai will you hear someone speak in one tongue? It is a khichidi of languages. The NSD needs to explore that idiom much more. What is most ironical is that despite the insistence on Hindi, it is Hindi theatre which is in a morass. People are doing great work in Assam, Manipur, Kolkata and Karnataka, but here are no original scripts or ideas coming from the language. Most of us have been given a new lease of life from great Hindi stories and novels rather than from Hindi scripts. We mustn’t fool ourselves that Hindi is our national language. NSD needs to be multilingual.

Do you think NSD, and theatre, in general is going through a slump?
AK: Yes, the energy levels are extremely low. Today, the NSD not only requires a brilliant theatre personality like E Alkazi but also an efficient administrator. The NSD corridors are devoid of vibrancy and energy, it feels like a government office. There is a feeling that I am always criticising the institution but it is constructive criticism and I have only one agenda — to do everything for the students.

NS: I don’t think the energy levels are down or anything like that. I have been taking classes with the Third Year students every year for the last 10 years. Plus my daughter just finished studying there. It is true that the spectacle and showmanship that was associated with the NSD during Alkazi’s time no longer remains. And I am glad for it. Thankfully, there is no longer an insistence for huge Broadway-like productions with helicopters appearing and buildings disappearing! It has become quieter and theatre is coming back to the actor, who is finally its essence. The alumni should engage more with the students, something they never do, instead of criticising the faculty and the syllabus.

Will converting the school to a Gurukul help the situation?
AK: I have revived this idea of the Gurukul system in the NSD because I feel there is a need for its rigid discipline. It would stress on a 24 hour work day. (In an earlier interview, Kher had said that in his time such a system was prevalent where the ‘students did work, work and more work’). Democracy doesn’t make work in an institution like NSD. Theatre is a form where the more you learn the more you benefit. Ultimately, it is the survival of the fittest.

NS: We should beware of such romanticism. Things were not so wonderful in our times. The scheme sounds more like one of those nostalgic journeys people often like to take, when they look back and say, ‘Oh, how wonderful it was back then!’ Frankly, I don’t remember us being all that obedient. We did our own thing, in fact we were a pain in the butt! I believe, instead of a guru, the NSD should give tangible options to students to do theatre in the real world.