“The point of theatre is to create a microcosm and connect it with a macrocosm so that a story means something to everyone.”
Director, actor and theatre doyen Sunil Shanbag is holding forth in the Ranga Shankara cafe between rehearsals of Stories In a Song, the play that played to a full house on November 7.
Over the years, he has also sent international critics in raptures with More Piya Gaye Rangoon, his Gujarati interpretation of Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. He has adapted Brecht’ s Two Penny Opera to an Indian milieu and inspired classical music legend Shubha Mudgal and Aneesh Pradhan to create the backdrop of Stories In a Song. In this play, he says, “theatre is imagined as music and music is imagined as theatre.”
Over the years, he has also sent international critics in raptures with More Piya Gaye Rangoon, his Gujarati interpretation of Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. He has adapted Brecht’ s Two Penny Opera to an Indian milieu and inspired classical music legend Shubha Mudgal and Aneesh Pradhan to create the backdrop of Stories In a Song. In this play, he says, “theatre is imagined as music and music is imagined as theatre.”
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But then you would expect nothing less from the worthy protege of Pandit Satyadev Dubey and the heir to his legacy of rooted, Indian theatre. He is now a commanding raconteur of urban, contemporary Indian stories like Cotton 56, Polyester 84 and S*x M*rality & Cens*rship that include everything India is. Politics, ruptured social fabrics, loss of local particularities. Debates about morality, art, economics, humanity. And also universal truths that emerge from this flux.
He recently saw a confessional play and recalls, “It was powerful but I wondered. Beyond the immediate need to tell his story, did the playwright think just what else this narrative could mean? To someone else?”
But then you would expect nothing less from the worthy protege of Pandit Satyadev Dubey and the heir to his legacy of rooted, Indian theatre. He is now a commanding raconteur of urban, contemporary Indian stories like Cotton 56, Polyester 84 and S*x M*rality & Cens*rship that include everything India is. Politics, ruptured social fabrics, loss of local particularities. Debates about morality, art, economics, humanity. And also universal truths that emerge from this flux.
He recently saw a confessional play and recalls, “It was powerful but I wondered. Beyond the immediate need to tell his story, did the playwright think just what else this narrative could mean? To someone else?”
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Shanbag’s search for a bigger meaning in his work comes from the Marxist idealism of his parents, from Anuradha Ghandy, his sister who was also a Maoist leader. And then ofcourse, he met Dubey. He says, “Someone pointed out Dubey to me one minute and the next, I was working with him. These kind of influences give you a core that does not waver and also the optimism and energy to go on. They teach you the value of engaging with life in a certain way and then you go seeking more people who are intense, passionate and incredibly idealistic. I have been lucky to find many such collaborators including Shubha Mudgal and Aneesh without whom Stories In a Song would be impossible. They do not have a mystical but a soci0logical approach to music and they have tried to find the social context of every song. The play is over 120 performances old now.”
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Artistes like him address composite realities in India but he does concede that today, we are breathing the air of “intense polarisation and ghettoisation.” He adds, “But all movements of idealism and joy come from a composite reality. The irony is that today the idea of composite culture is being equated with danger and people seek safety in polarisation. This term ‘pseudo secularism,’ comes from this (paranoia). Imagine turning a fine idea like secularism into a dubious, murky thing. And it is getting worse. So yes, there is a strong awareness in me of the political meaning of the content I create and instead of being openly strident, one finds survival strategies. One communicates in a subversive way rather than not saying what needs to be said. Not speaking out would be a huge surrender ”
He wants to work with the Ramayana for instance, but knows the idea is fraught with danger because “unless your reverence for something is unquestioning and uncritical, you are treated like a dangerous element.”
He wants to work with the Ramayana for instance, but knows the idea is fraught with danger because “unless your reverence for something is unquestioning and uncritical, you are treated like a dangerous element.”
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Despite challenges, his love for theatre has remained undiluted though a journey spanning over 30 odd years. And it all began when he first saw Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana and was swept away by the medium, the messenger and the message. He smiles, “I haven’t met Karnad often enough and the only time I developed a strong connection with Bengaluru was when Ranga Shankara came into existence. This is now a second home for me and I have brought almost all my plays here.”
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And when he looks back, what does he see? He says, ” Well, today we have more theatre happening in the country and many performance opportunities but at the same time, theatre has become a product to be consumed. I have no quarrel with that. Irreverence (towards theatre) is fine. And one can take the commercial considerations and work around them, subvert them and still tell meaningful stories. That’s what we do at Arpana (his repertory company). Evolve with the time to deal with social and political, commercial environments and still communicate, still say what we want to. How have I been able to do it for so long? I never looked to my passion to make money. When you do that, you are in all sorts of trouble.”
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And where will the next generation take theatre? “We cannot impose what did in our time on the younger generation as their reference points are different. Dubey never tried to impose his world-view on me and I can’t do it either with the young people I mentor. I can only teach them to look at their work objectively. The problem in Indian theatre is that every generation has to reinvent the wheel and that is why our quality remains average with a few surges of brilliance. Let us pass on our skills, our experience to make things easy for those coming after us. And create formal systems of learning young people can benefit from,” says he.
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The man who penned Shyam Benegal’s classic narratives like Bharat Ek Khoj and Yatra for Doordarshan, says that the “mass dumbing down” of cinema and television bothers him. But he adds, “I have no problem, with an unpretentious film like Happy New year. Let them make their 300 crore. I have issues with a film like Haider that raises great expectations and fails them. It was stylistically confused and gratuitous. You did not get the content of the mother and son nuzzling each other or the gravediggers bursting in the song in one scene and killing people in the next. Even a brilliant twist like Roohdar came to naught when he turned out to be just a manipulator. Also the reality of Kashmir could not be framed into a story seeped in surrealism.”
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Theatre however he says, should not be affected by gatekeepers of public taste, marketeers of soap operas and politics. “We are not playing an IPL match for lakhs of people. We are in any case catering to the 200 odd people who come to watch us and we should be able to not just cater to basic instincts. But tell the stories that should be told,” he smiles.
with Reema Moudgil works for The New Indian Express, Bangalore, is the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, an artist, a former RJ and a mother. She dreams of a cottage of her own that opens to a garden and where she can write more books, paint, listen to music and just be.