Lights dim on Delhi’s Hindi theatre     

It was in the 80’s that we witnessed some of the remarkable Hindi plays in Delhi. Shyamanand Jalan’s Padatik troupe from Kolkata performed the famous Mohan Rakesh trilogy of Laheron Ke Rajhans, Aadhe Adhure and Ashadh Ka Ek Din for the audience in the Indian capital. And just a few years back, we had witnessed the grandeur of Tughlaq of Girish Karnad and Andha Yug directed by the legendary Ebrahim Alkazi, staged in the monumental courtyard of the Old Fort. And what a remarkable cast it had -— Om Shivpuri, Amrish Puri, Om Puri, Rajesh Vivek and Sri Vallabh Vyas — a period drama indeed!

Then, we were also enthralled by watching the best of the legendary Habib Tanvir — Agra Bazaar, Hirma Ki Amar Kahaani and Charandas Chor in Chhattisgarhi dialect and also Asghar Wajahat’s Jis Lahore Nai Vekhya…in the beginning of the 90’s.

Theatre was still an engaging and productive avenue that forced even Naseeruddin Shah to come back to it and experiment with some stories of Manto, Premchand and Ismat Chughtai. He presented Bade Bhai Saheb and other remarkable plays along with his actor-wife Ratna and daughter Hiba here in Delhi. If Manoj Bajpayee’s Netuwa set the capital’s stage on fire, Piyush Mishra’s solo Duvidha, based on the story of Vijaydan Detha, proved to be a highly acclaimed play of the decade.

Seema Biswas’s Gandhi Viruddh Gandhi and Satish Kaushik’s Salesman Ramlal, adapted from The Death Of A Salesman, Nadira Zaheer Babbar’s Beghum Jaan and Farooque Shaikh and Shabana Azmi’s Tumhari Amrita were some highly praiseworthy dramas of the beginning of the 90’s performed on Delhi’s stages.

GP Deshpande’s Raaste, directed by Satyadev Dube, and Utpal Dutt’s Dilli Chalo, directed by Bapi Bose, were also some very popular Hindi plays that won the hearts of the audience here. This period was so conducive that even Jana Natya Manch (Janam), that usually performs street plays, ventured into the proscenium theatre arena with Varun Ke Bete that was based on the story of Baba Nagarjun.

This was also the period when two young, ebullient and visionary directors NK Sharma and Arvind Gaur launched their theatre groups — Act-One and Asmita — respectively. Netuwa and Gagan Damama Bajyo by Act-One and Swadesh Deepak’s Court Martial by Asmita are magnum opus productions of the decade. This period is also remarkable for the capital’s stage when the then NSD- chief, Ramgopal Bajaj, started a truly international theatre festival here —Bharat Rang Mahotsav.

But suddenly with the advent of globalisation, there was a spurt of western cable channels like Channel V, MTV, FTV, global and desi soap operas. And with the advent of the internet, video games and mobiles, etc., the youth got distracted, their lifestyles changed. Theatre started losing its audience and its patrons shifted their allegiance to more lucrative avenues. With the dawn of the new millenium, the state of Hindi theatre worsened than ever before.

One by one, the theatre groups started downing their shutters and theatre halls as well. Shri Ram Centre basement auditorium was the first to shut down. The iconic Act-One, Bhumika and The Brechtian Mirror and many more theatre groups became defunct.

A handful of sponsored and sporadic festivals cannot help a genuine theatre movement in Delhi

Faced against the assault of the mounting consumerism, the cheap entertainment of TV, the proliferation of internet and mobiles, sky rocketing auditoriums rents, lack of rehearsal spaces, redundant scripts, unprofessional and callous attitude of the local authorities, Hindi theatre in the capital lost its lustre and charm and its future became bleak. In the words of Ebrahim Alkazi, “The Hindi theatre of Delhi is mediocre, amateur, characterless and sporadic.

In Hindi theatre, nothing good happened here corresponding to the cultural renaissance of the Marathi and the Bengali theatres. Right from the 1950s with Bharatiya Natya Sangh and later the National School Of Drama, Hindi theatre began to grow strictly in institutionalised and patronised domain only. There was nothing like the people’s participation or Hindi theatre movement here.”

Today we have theatre festivals such as the Theatre Olympics, SKP’s Bharatendu Natya Utsav, Somany Tiles and Mahindra Theatre festivals and other corporate company’s theatre festivals, but in the true sense, these festivals are nothing but the reimbursement of their annual cultural funds in the end of the financial year. A handful of sponsored and sporadic festivals cannot help a genuine theatre movement in Delhi. “To help a theatre movement possible, the culture department of the government should make a feasible culture policy. It should tighten its grip over such organisations that are receiving regular state funds and other benefits. The government must check their unethical movements as most of these bodies have unscrupulously turned into huge corporate conglomerates,” says Arvind Gaur of Asmita Theatre Group.

Veteran theatre director Prasanna blamed the modern youth who are using theatre as launching pads for TV and cinema. Naseeruddin Shah retorts, “Yes, Hindi theatre is quite amateur and it doesn’t pay. Unless the commercial cinema suffers a severe setback in terms of audience attendance, I don’t see any great hope for Hindi theatre here.” “While every other region has drawn from its traditional forms and evolved a coherent identity, which in turn explains the number of good Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati and Kannada plays, Hindi theatre has nothing to draw from,” says veteran theatre and film personality Piyush Mishra.

“But of course there are some technical aspects, like stagecraft, design, dramaturgy and novel scripts, that need fine tuning, which is usually due to scarcity of funds, lack of institutional support, paucity of manpower, dearth of theatre technicians and above all the crooked Amusement Act and lack of original scripts, etc. Otherwise, the Hindi theatre of Delhi is as good as any other language theatre in the country,” renowned theatre and film personality MK Raina somehow begs to differ.