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Home , Angarey, Hindi theatre, Prithviraj Kapoor, Sanjana Kapoor, Shanta Gandhi

PAPER-14 MODULE-9 Women in Theatre

A) Personal Details

Role Name Affiliation Principal Investigator Prof. University, SumitaParmar Allahabad Paper Coordinator Prof. S.D. Roy Allahabad Univesity, Allahabad Content Writer/Author Dr. Jaya Allahabad University, (CW) Allahabad Content Reviewer Prof. S.D. Roy Allahabad University, (CR) Allahabad Language Editor (LE) Prof. Sumita Allahabad University, Parmar Allahabad

(B) Description of Module

Items Description of Module Subject Name Theatre Studies Paper Name Women , Theatre and the Fine Arts Module Name/ Title Women in Module ID PAPER-14 MODULE-9 Pre-requisites The Reader is expected to have a brief knowledge of the history of , the nationalist movement, the origins of IPTA, and NSD and the general growth of Indian theatre. Objectives To introduce the reader to the role of women in the Hindi theatre, placing it simultaneously in the context of the growth of the Hindi theatre Keywords Hindi theatre, Parsi theatre, IPTA, NSD

Women in Hindi Theatre

Introduction

Introducing the emergence of women in Theatre in Hindi the Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre says “among Indian languages, Hindi theatre has possibly the largest number of active women writers and directors.” (pg. 158) It also adds that this is an achievement in a language where till the middle of the twentieth century, association with theatre was not considered a very appreciable thing. When we look at the development of Hindi theatre, we are broadly looking at a very big region of central and Northern and also Bombay since a lot of growth in theatre took place in conjunction with the film industry.

Hindi theatre evolved in the late 18thCentury from two different directions. In

Lucknow, in the court of , the production of “Inder Sabha” set the trend for theatre performances for private audiences. Though the play was not very successful back home, it was performed by Parsi theatre where it was a big success and continued to run for a long time. But there was no participation of women in these performances. Another direction in which a significant tradition of amateur theatre was introduced was by Bharatendu Harishchandra who set up his theatre group and performed several plays in and surrounding districts.

He had been influenced by the tradition of company theatre in other regional

languages. His initiative led to a lot of amateur theatre groups coming up in the region of Allahabad, , Kanpur. The most successful production of his group was “Andher Nagri”. Here once again, women were not a part of either this group or the other groups that came up. In fact there was a lull in theatre activities after Bharatendu since none of the other groups could come up with anything substantial. And there was a tough competition from the professional theatre groups and Parsi theatre with its elements of the spectacular in action and production. The trend that was creating a tradition of participation of women in theatre was the Parsi theatre.

Parsi Theatre

The Parsi theatre evolved as an amalgamation of the European theatre techniques and local mythical, historical and religious stories presented with much music, dancing and humour, mostly bordering on ribaldry. Initially the companies relied on female impersonators for doing the women’s roles and some of the most famous impersonators included Bal Gandharv, Master Champalal, Master Wasi, Master

Fida Hussain ‘Narsi’. And when women first entered the theatre, they were mostly given small passing roles as dancers and singers. The main roles were performed by the impersonators who were very resistant to the idea of women entering theatre. Even prostitutes were not easy to come by for enacting roles on the stage since it was believed to be bad for their business. So strong was the initial

resistance that in the first movie “Raja Harishchandra”, the female lead was played by a boy, Salunke who was a protégé of D.G. Phalke. Women were even forbidden from watching the performances, even women who were not supposed to be respectable women. Mrinal Pande mentions an incident where a mistress of a

King was physically removed from a theatre performance she had come to watch.

The most ironical thing was that in these Parsi theatre companies, women from the families of the company owners were not permitted to act. Mary Fenton, who was a famous actress, later married the owner of the theatre company she was associated with and gave up acting altogether. The reason why this is an important point as far as the empowerment of women is concerned is that these actresses were some of the earliest women to gain economic independence through theatre but still the social pressures kept many away from it.

Mary Fenton was an Anglo-Indian and was one of the earliest entrants into the theatre along with other actresses like Miss Bijli, Miss Gauhar. The profession of an actress was not considered to be very respectable. Phalke lamented the presence of such women whom he calls prostitutes and wishes for the time when women from respectable families would enter films and theatre so that roles of Sita and Savitri could be played by really good women and people could watch the theatre and films with families. Bal Gangadhar Tilak also echoes similar views in

a column in in the paper “Kesari’ .Women from educated and respectable families did enter theatre a little later, but the theatre they did was entirely different.

IPTA

By the late 1930’s there was another wave of amateur theatre happening across

Northern India under the influence of the Communist Party. The party had started making inroads into the central regions of the country after making a mark in

Maharashtra and Bengal regions. Progressive Writer’s Association (PWA) and

Indian Progressive Theatre Association (IPTA)as cultural wings of the Communist

Party had been instrumental in creating a space for women in theatre. One of the central areas where the nationalist movement focused was improving the social position of women. But even in garnering the support of the women to their cause through attempts to reform and empowerment, they were reinforcing the traditional role of women as nurturers and life givers. What setting up of IPTA in 1942 did was to create a space where women were a part of the political movement and questioned the stereotypical image even the reformers were reinforcing. Being an extension of the Communist Party, it saw theatre as an extension of their political agenda. The participation of women in theatre activities was thus an extension of the political activities.

Rashid Jahan and

The first attempt by women in the Hindi or the Hindustani amateur theatre happened through two Muslim firebrand writers - Rashid Jahan and Ismat

Chughtai.Their writings were located in the melieu of the middle class Muslim society of northern India like so many other women writers of their time. Where they were different was the sensibility and the questions the characters in their stories raised within this limited framework. They were not telling the stereotypical stories revolving around the domestic space and romantic ideas but talking about issues that they felt were pertinent to improving the position of women in society. Both Rashid and Ismat belonged to the Central province region and were educated at Aligarh Muslim University. They were associated with the

Communist Party from their university days as the University was the hub of substantial Communist activity. Rashid Jahan was senior to Ismat and also a strong influence upon her. Ismat Chughtai said of her, “I stored up her work like pearls … the handsome heroes and pretty heroines of my stories, the candle-like fingers, the lime blossoms and crimson blossoms all vanished … the earthy Rashid

Jahan shattered all my ivory idols to pieces … Life, stark and naked, stood before me.” She was a doctor by profession, a dedicated member of the communist Party and a founding member of the PWA with contribution to the watershed collection

“Angarey” along with and and Mahmud-uz-Zafar whom she married later. She found plays to be a better medium for expression as

compared to stories because of the immediate connect they offered with the audience and the audio visual impact that they felt would make it possible to send the message go across more strongly than the written word. Her plays were usually revolving around the issues like education, health care and economic position of women in the Muslim society as these were areas that were completely overlooked. Issues like early marriage, sexually transmitted diseases, and birth control and its impact on the lives of women were discussed with unprecedented frankness. In her play “behind the Curtain” she had raised the issue of the impact constant child bearing has on a woman’s body and in the even more radical

“Aurat” she discusses how a woman contacted a sexually transmitted disease from her husband and protests on being ill-treated by him. These were challenging subjects which by the defiance and progressive expression inspired many.

IPTA in Bombay

IPTA activities were centered in Bombay and Calcutta with Bombay being the more preferred place for their experiments. So we find that a lot of theatre activity took place in Bombay in this period. Women like Dina Gandhi, Rekha Jain, Shiela

Bhatia, , Reba Roychaudhari, were some of the dedicated workers who contributed to the presence of women in Hindi theatre. Shanta Gandhi and

Dina Gandhi came from a Gujrati family and it was Shanta who introduced Dina to the IPTA circles. Since the artists were living together and there was a lot of work

being done, the women in the group shed their inhibitions regarding working with men and started venturing into public spaces with little inhibitions. Why should this be important when women had already entered movies is because women associated with IPTA came from within the patriarchal setup of regular middleclass households and had usually been educated but otherwise led a very sheltered life. Even when they were sent to other cities or countries to study, like

Ismat Chughtai, Rashed Jahan and Shanta Gandhi, they were not supposed to socialize with men. In their work within the IPTA, they shed the inhibitions of physical proximity with men. Another important way in which the lives of these women took a different graph from the actresses was the non-exploitative nature of their experiences. Women associated with the professional theatre were living a much more exploitative system where the emphasis was not so much on their growth as artists as on their ability to provide monetary benefits to the employer.

The women working in IPTA were secure and growing as artists. They were living in a very disciplined environment where rules and regulations were strictly observed. A high standard of personal discipline was to be observed and alcohol etc. was prohibited. The driving force for the people in the movement was the political commitment and their art was to be a medium for connecting to the very roots. So a lot of work was done by the groups in villages and tribal areas where they took their performances. This had another impact in that it connected the

women to the folk art forms and allowed them to learn about these art forms from the people and also helped them shed their physical inhibitions in movement.

There were intense discussions about the form and content coming together in getting the message across. This trained and rooted the women associated with the

IPTA in their respective art forms. As a result even though they were not given leadership roles as directors or writers in these productions, this exposure proved invaluable in the long run when at a later time they begun to find their own voices and build their independent theatrical spaces.

Shanta Gandhi and Dina Gandhi

Shanta Gandhi had been associated with the IPTA during the hey days of the movement in 1942-47. She was associated with several productions led by greats like , and Shanti Bardhan. Later when NSD was set up, she joined as a teacher and revived plays of classical Indian Dramatists like

Bhasa, , Visakhadutta, Bhavabhuti much before they were revived under the theatre of Roots of Panikkar and Thiyam. Her own play “JasmaOdan” based on the Bhavai dance form of Gujrat deals with the theme of sati. Her experiment with the bhavai artists is very similar to HabibTanvir’s experiment with the artists from Raipur in his Naya Theatre repertory with them. Shanta Gandhi was the

Director of NSD from 1980-82. She had been a major force behind the reinterpretation of the plays of Jai Shanker Prasad which till then had not been

considered suitable for staging. Beginning with “Skand Gupta”, and establishing

“Dhruvswamini” as a modern classic.

Dina Gandhi was the younger sister of Shanta Gandhi and also active in the

Bombay commune of the IPTA. She was more interested in Gujrati theatre and so when Shanta Gandhi moved to NSD Delhi, she moved to Ahemdabad and set up

Natyamandal. She experimented with the Beijing format and produced

“Mina Gurjari” using the Bhavai style. Later she moved back to Bombay and wrote several plays in English. Her active association with Hindi theatre continued in Bombay. She was a teacher of acting at NSD for some time and produced

“Raziya Sultan” in collaboration with Amar Singh Rathore.

Other IPTA Voices

Rekha Jain had been very active with the IPTA experiment and had made a long journey from being a simple girl and later a daughter- in- law from a traditional orthodox Marwari family with very little education to being one of the most dedicated and active members of the IPTA repertory and performing in all parts of the country. She was encouraged by her husband Nemichand Jain who was deeply involved with IPTA and later in his days he became a theatre critic and theoretician.

Another important theatre personality who evolved out of IPTA was Shiela Bhatia.

She set up the Delhi Art Theatre after her IPTA years. She also taught at NSD in the acting department. Her specialization was in the musical which were very close to total theatre with their blend of dance mine music and poetry. But

Bhatia did not follow the style of western opera and used Punjabi myths, folk tales, folk songs for narratives. She was very deeply influenced by the Sufi tradition, and the poetry of Faiz and Waris. “Heer Ranjha” was one of her best compositions based on the songs of Waris Shah and she tapped the Punjabi folk tales in “Channa

Badlan Da”. She composed several operas as well including “Yeh Quissaa

Aurat Ka’, “Hawwa se Hippie Tak” and “Yeh Ishq nahin Aasan”. She was awarded the Padam Shri in 1971 and won the Sahitya Natak Akademi Award for best direction in 1982.

Zohra Sehgal was another woman who broke many accepted rules of patriarchal society. She had been associated with Uday Shankar’s dance troupe and toured the world over with him. She was the first Director of the Uday Shankar Dance

Akademi in Almora and later started her own training Akademi with her husband who was also a choreographer in Lahore. After Partition, they shifted to Bombay where she was associated with the legendary along with her sister

Uzra. She lived in Europe for a few years and set up a choreography institute in

London and appeared in several movies and serials. She was associated with the

IPTA productions in Bombay in the 40’s and her association with theatre continued after her return to India in the mid 1990’s. Her memoirs and interviews provide important documents of that very vibrant phase of Indian theatre.

Begum Quadsia Zaidi and Hindustani Theatre

A remarkable experiment in theatre that was happening in Delhi was the

Hindustani Theatre. It was led by a woman – Begum Quadsia Zaidi. Her sister’s husband had been an important influence on her and had initiated her interest in theatre. After her marriage she lived in Rampur for a while and wrote for children.

Her “chacha chhakan ke Draame” is a polular compilation of children’s plays.

After she moved to Delhi in 1948, she became closely associated with Kamladevi

Chattopadhyaya . She was very active in the Delhi cultural circles at this point and after meeting in 1954, she set up the Hindustani Theatre with him. Kalidasa’s “” and Shudraka’s “Mrichchhikatika” as “Mitti Ki

Gadi” were some of the earliest productions of the company. She was the first person to translate Bertolt Brecht in Hindi. The Hindustani Theatre disbanded in the 1960’s but by then it had introduced some of the best talents in Hindi/Urdu theatre including HabibTanvir, M S Sathyu, Yunus Parwaiz, Irshad Panjatan,

Monica Mishra, Shyam Arora, and Shiv Sharma. The journal brought out by the organization was a platform for some of the most important debates in the world of theatre at that time.

Hindi Writers

Mannu Bhandari is a prominent Hindi writer who wrote mostly stories and novels and is best known as the writer of “Apka Banti” a sensitive story of the psyche of a child caught in the marital discord of the parents. Her play “Mahabhoj” explores the caste and class divisions spread over the society and has been successfully staged by several groups over the years. It has been produced by the Rang

Karmee repertory of very successfully over the years. The most remarkable thing about the writings of Bhandari is that they do not conform to any ideology but reflect the fast changing society and its impact on people. The readings will not conform to any particular ideological interpretation and it is this simplicity and broad humanistic attitude that makes Mannu Bhandari’s writing unique.

Mridula Garg was one of the earliest playwrights in Hindi and a major voice as an activist raising pertinent issues not only in her plays but also in her novels and stories. She won the Sahitya Akademi Award. Her plays “Teen Qaidin”,

“Jadooka Kaleen” and “Ek aur Ajnabi“ are widely acclaimed.

Another strong Feminist voice coming from Hindi is that of Kusum Kumar whose

“Suno Shefali” is a landmark play about the journey and turmoil of a woman in a society deeply divided along lines of gender and caste and where a low-caste woman is the most marginalized. Read together with Tendulakar’s “Kanyadan” it

makes a strong statement on the subject. Another play by Dr. Kusum Kumar that is still widely produced is “Ravan Leela” where a production of the traditional

Ramleela is shown as going horribly wrong. The play uses the popular Ramleela format but uses a farcical tone.

Mrinal Pande is another contemporary writer who addresses issues of contemporary society . She was the Chairperson of the Prasar Bharti and also the editor of the popular daily newspaper Dainik Hindustan. Her contribution to theatre includes several plays like “Jo Ram Rachi Rakha” and “Chor Nikalkar

Bhaga”. But it is her research work on Women in Parsi Hindi theatre and early

Hindi cinema that is path breaking and brought the focus of the work on theatre to this very interesting, important but mostly overlooked phase of theatre development and women. Her plays have been staged by several professional repertory groups over the years.

NSD

Similar to the impetus provided by IPTA in the 40’s to the participation of women in Hindi theatre was the impact of the setting up of the Sangeet Natak

Akademi(1956) and more importantly the in 1959.

In the seminars and festivals organized by the SNA, some of the best people in theatre across the country came with their productions and the debate on theatre

explored new directions in the country. There was also a chance for artists from all parts of the country to present the theatre of their regions and the result was that this period became one of the most fertile periods in terms of theatre growth. The

NSD was to be a training ground for theatre artists in every craft and so highly accomplished theatre persons were included as teachers, trainers and directors.

The reason why this becomes important for the growth of Hindi theatre is that the medium for the productions of the repertory had to be Hindi so almost all the important plays in other languages were translated and presented in that language.

It also gave Hindi theatre a wealth of talent and creative input. Initially there was a lapse in the creative output in Hindi because it was easy to translate texts available in other languages but slowly over the years many writers wrote remarkable original works in Hindi. NSD also gave the women in theatre some of its strongest younger voices in Hindi.

New voices: Unexplored terrains

Kirti Jain grew up in an atmosphere seeped in theatre being the daughter of

Nemichand Jain and Rekha Jain. She found it very difficult to find her own voice and create an identity for herself in theatre. Her interest in socio-political issues helped her carve a creative identity for herself. Her play “Aur KitneTukde” was based on the narratives of trauma and crisis in Urvashi Butalia’s “The Other Side of Silence”. It is a very important production being one of the very few that take a

look at the impact the crisis had on the women in terms of physical and emotional violence apart from the experiences of being refugees as such. Not a lot was done on the subject even though Delhi had seen some of the worst effects of Partition.

Some of her other works that provide a comment on contemporary issues include

“Burning Baghdad” on American bombing on Iraq and “Subarnalata” on the issue of women’s position in society.

Anamika Haksar was a teacher of NSD and taught acting and modern drama there.

She had been very deeply impressed by Pannikar and Karanth. She had done a course in theatre from Russia and the training she received there was used at NSD to evolve a teaching technique whereby the students were taught to make their art an organic part of their being and interpret the text from their personal lives and experiences. She is not very appreciative of the shallow manner in which some artists interpret the text.

Anuradha Kapur has been the director of NSD and used her theatre as a platform for activism.

The journey of Tripurari Sharma is an important one in women’s presence in theatre as it has helped in giving a new dimension to the role theatre could play in society. She is also teaching at NSD and involved in translation and direction. Her most remarkable work lies with her group Alarippu which uses theatre, especially

street theatre, as a means of protest. The organization is doing commendable work in spreading awareness on violence against women through workshops and plays that participants bring together in these workshops. Her art therefore becomes a tool for change at the grassroot level instead of being just an experiment in aesthetics.

Amal Allana is the chairperson of NSD and an eminent theatre person of the country with achievements as Costume designer, scenic designer along with being a Director of over 55 plays. She is the daughter of Ebrahim Alquazi who was instrumental in giving a new identity to Indian theatre. She comes from a family of theatre people Roshan Alquazi (mother), Aleq Padamsee (uncle), Feisal Alquazi

(brother) and is married to NissarAllamawith whom she runs the Dramatic Arts and Design Academy (DADA).She received a lot of training and exposure to theatre in Germany and was deeply affected by the theatre of Bertolt Brecht. Her most important contribution is the play “Nati Binodini” based on the life of the

Bengali theatre artist Binodini Dasi. The play is an important document in the historiography of the women in theatre. Apart from this her reinterpretation of

Brecht’s “Mother Courage” as “Himmat Mai” where played the protagonist is a landmark play in Indian theatre and an interesting take on the original text.

Neelam Man Singh Chaudhary was trained under Ebrahim Alquazi at NSD and was deeply influenced by the method acting theatre of Stanislavski. Later on coming in contact with B.V.Karanth she redefined her philosophy of theatre and started getting more deeply involved with the ‘Naqqal’ folk tradition of Punjab.

She has produced some remarkable productions in India and abroad under her theatre group The Company. She also produced an Opera “Naciketa” for the Opera

Circus Company. She has been instrumental in creating a new identity and idiom for the Punjabi theatre.

Usha Ganguly

Usha Ganguly is one of the most respected theatre director-activist in the country today. Her troupe Rangkarmee works from Calcutta and is one of the few Hindi

Theatre groups who have made a mark for themselves in the active theatre scene of

Calcutta. Her productions of “Mahabhoj” and “Rudali” are considered very important plays as far as theatre around feminist identity is concerned but it is her

“Antaryatra” where she combines her story of growth as a theatre person with a parallel narrative of the position of women in society which is not only her best but also brings the feminist theatre into a new zone where the artist’s story is also the story of women in society.

Sanjana Kapoor and Prithvi Theatre

Sanjana Kapoor comes from a family of big names in the Hindi film industry but her work lies mainly in theatre. Prithvi Theatre has been a landmark in the growth of theatre in India and has nurtured a long tradition. It had toured almost the entire country in the 1940’s with its productions of Shakespeare and other plays related to nationalist and social issues. With the death of , funds became hard to come by. Though he had leased a piece of land to set up the theatre, he could not build the place. It was the love for theatre of his son and his wife Jennifer Kapoor that brought new life to the Prithvi Theatre along with their other company Shakeapearana. They set it up in its present location and constructed the auditorium which soon became the hub of some of the most vibrant theatre activities in Hindi in the country. Their daughter Sanjana Kapoor has taken the legacy forward and is an eminent theatre person of the country today. She diversified the activities of Prithvi theatre and set up the forum Little Prithvi

Theatre for children’s theatre. The theatre festival of Prithvi Theatre has become an important event in the calendar of Hindi Theatre. After leaving Prithvi Theatre in 2012 she started her group Junoon which was a travelling company and took theatre to smaller centers which have a theatre tradition but lesser access to theatre as compared to the bigger centers like Delhi, Bangalore and Bombay.

Conclusion

Women in the region of the Hindi speaking belt had to wage a long struggle in order to find a place and voice in theatre, but with time it emerged as the most vibrant and versatile. It has seen women as historiographers, administrators, directors, playwrights, actors and most important of all as theatre activists. In this last capacity they have been able to establish theatre as a medium for empowerment and sustainable development connecting the traditions of high art with life at the grassroot level in the country.

References

1. Hansen Kathryn, Making Women Visible: Gender and Race Cross-Dressing

in the Parsi Theatre, Theatre Journal, Vol. 51, No. 2 (May, 1999), pp. 127-

147.

2. Hum hainNautanki Wale, www.Mumbaithetareguide.com .

3. www.mytheatrecafe.com/tripurarsharma/

4. Lal, Anand , Oxford Encyclopedia of Indian Theatre