IBSEN IN INDIA
IBSEN IN INDIA
The Guru of Exposition / Complication / Resolution
Henrik Ibsen says, “All that I have written these last ten years, I have lived through spiritually.” These are powerful words and they resonate in India.
2006 WAS the 100th death anniversary of Henrik Ibsen, the playwright who has an unerring influence on Indian Films (Especially, the 3-part structure of exposition, complication, and resolution).
This is an opportunity to witness the impact of Ibsen in India.
India’s premier drama institute the National School of Drama in Delhi – have staged Ibsen plays. In the recent past, the Ibsen plays which have been performed in Delhi have been A DOLL’S HOUSE and WILD DUCK. Besides there have been important productions of Ibsen plays in Kolkotta, Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune.
Instead of rattling out statistics, let me present an interesting trend in Maharashtra, a progressive, modern state in India, and the Bastion of Indian Theatre. In Marathi Theatre, Ibsen has a curious influence.
Expectedly, Marathi theatre has staged its A DOLL’S HOUSE (much later, as compared to the rest of India) and it did innumerable performances. Much more importantly, many plays and playwrights have been influenced by Ibsen. Not just that, as Chetan Datar one of the important Playwright-Directors in India states, “we follow many conventions set by Ibsen even today ….. in a sense we are indebted to him.”
One of the first “Experimental Play” (the Indian term for off off Broadway) is ANDHYALYANCHI SHAALA (The School of the Blind). This play has an interesting history. In 1927-28, stalwarts like P V Wartak, Keshavrao Bhole, Parshwanath Altekar, K Narayan Kale united and formed a group called Natya Manwantar. Here it is interesting to note the name NatyaManwantar. In this Natya means, theatre; and Manwantar means Change of Age. This title for the group reflects the notion of a revolution, which the group was inspired to borrow from Ibsen. In real terms this meant, the social, realistic, box-set, play by Ibsen. They wanted to change the face of Marathi Theatre. Since most of them were intellectuals, they believed in theatre training.
They consulted Keshavrao Date, who was an excellent actor-director of that era. Date welcomed new people and new concepts in theatre. And so, the NatyaManwantar Ltd, established in 1933 in Mumbai had two scripts in their script bank. One was Ibsen’s A DOLL’S HOUSE and another was a French Farce. Date felt A DOLL’S HOUSE would be “alien” to the Marathi theatre-goer and felt though the play is “not bad”, it is too “bold and forward”, And instead, the Manwantar theatre group decided to stage ANDHYALYANCHI SHAALA.
Even today, theatrewallahs joke, what if that group had staged A DOLL’S HOUSE. Marathi theatre would have had an auspicious beginning, and a great opening. And as all you theatre persons, know, in the theatre, the first impression is almost, everything.
Anyway, what is done cant be undone … The first staging of Ibsen in India transpired in Kolkata through the staging of a translation of A DOLL’S HOUSE, produced by an Indian theatre company named New Theatre Commune, in 1945-46.
The point is, some of the best playwrights in Marathi theatre, Acharya Atre, Mama Warerkar, Mo Ga Rangnekar have been hugely influenced by Ibsen. The well-known play KULAVADHU by Rangnekar is heavily inspired by Nora. In KULAVADHU the name of the heroine is Bimba, and she was played by Jyotsna Bhole.
Subsequently, Ibsen has been translated into Marathi. THE DOLL’S HOUSE and GHOSTS in 1941. THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE in 1960. BRAND and WILD DUCK in 1963. And the VIKING OF HEGELAND around the same time.
What is fascinating is, the manner in which Ibsen percolated into other forms of literature.
For instance, one of the first references to Ibsen in Bengali literature is a short-story by Rabindranath Tagore. In Payla Number (1918), Anila leaves her husband Advaita Babu because he is passionate about European literature (and Henrik Ibsen in particular) and not her.
Later, innumerable films have been produced, which have based on Ibsen. The maestro, Satyajit Ray’s claustrophobic version in 1989 was called “Ghanashatru” (THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE) had Soumitra Chatterjee and Dhrithiman Chatterjee in major roles. Right now, K P Kumaran, is filming MASTERBUILDER into a Malayalam Film with matinee idol, Mohanlal.
THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY was made in Telugu by well-known filmmaker K V Reddi as “Pedda Manushulu” (Big Shots). A DOLL’S HOUSE was written, directed and produced as TV play in Tamil as “Bommai Veedu”.
But have these productions sensitised Indian theatre to Nora’s concerns and women issues? Probably not. Indian theatrewallahs continue to find Ibsen “bold and forward”.
There is a solid reason for it, which Ibsen anticipated. In his notes for A DOLL’s HOUSE, Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) wrote “there are two kinds of conscience, one in man and another altogether different, in woman. They do not understand each other; but in practical life the woman is judged by man’s law, as though she were not a woman but a man.”
And so, in spite of these de-sensitisations, why are Ibsen or Ibsenite methods so effective in India?
It has partially to do with the Role of Theatre Space.
With the evolution of modern drama in India, theatre space witnessed modifications. Ibsen’s plays enacted a key role in this development.
Let me explain.
In 1846, the Grant Road theatre, known as Shankersheths Natyashakha was a castle-like structure, equipped with stage machinery but lit with coconut and oil lamps. These theatres witnessed a variety of plays, from Shakespearean to Indian myths like Harishchandra to Nala Damayanti. Plays like INDRASABHA had a bit of everything: songs, fairies and demons appearing from the sky, and real horses for battle scenes.
Meanwhile in Europe, a major architectural advance of the 19th century was achieved in 1876 by Richard Wagner at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. In order to provide all members of the audience with equal visibility, private boxes were eliminated and a wedge-shaped amphi-theatre was created. Furthermore, Wagner concealed the orchestra and darkened the auditorium during performances to minimise distractions and enhance illusion.
The point to note is, the stress was on the individual, as opposed to extravaganzas and ceremonial rituals on stage. This meant less reliance on chorus and monumental scenic designs which included chariots, airborne clouds and battle-fields. Of course, the increasing prominence of the individual actor has taken place over a period of several hundred years. Then a real transition began, which can be attributed to the arrival of master playwrights like Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekov on the theatre scene in the nineteenth century. These playwrights ensured that the privileged setting of the modern drama was the FAMILY HOME. And so, the dramatic interior, as it were, contained the history of a process, which began in the nineteenth century and is still unconcluded in the twenty-first century.
Naturally, the stage in India responded to this new view of space based on the principle of spatial intelligence. The stage attempted to fill the signifying space with environment, with atmosphere. Such a thing, of course, entered drama through realism and naturalism (which are intimately related to the figure of home). The stage had to propagate a special account of space and place; so that where an action unfolds goes a long way in explaining it.
The fully iconic, single-set, middle-class living room of realism produced so close and so complete a stage world that it supported the new and powerful fantasy of the stage not as a place to pretend in or to perform on but a place to be, a fully existential arena. Such a fantasy and trend can be ascribed to Stanislavsky and his acting theory. Stanislavsky, who for many represents the quintessence of the fourth wall, illusionist style of staging. Directors wanted the audience of GHOSTS to feel they were guests at the Alving household.
And in this way, the naturalist-realist stage adumbrated a specific relationship between the performance and the spectator, connecting them to each other with an ambitious new contract of visibility and accessibility to the occurrences on stage. Theatre in India was heavily influenced by such a geopolitical notion of stage space.
From the late nineteenth century on, the image or idea of home has reigned supreme. This is a thing from which our drama and our theatre is still seeking to free itself from. That there is a politics of home is no longer an unfamiliar idea. To start with there is Ibsen’s interactive architectural symbols – his climbable towers, slammable doors and burnable buildings – help to construct a symbol of home in which one has to work out problems and relationships that elsewhere, are only theorised over. It became a laboratory for the nuclear family, for modern humanism. You could show Nora not wanting to remain in a home that was stifling and suffocating as a doll’s house. Even later plays like HEDDA GABLER to GHOSTS are grappling with the painful politics of location, of home, of exile.
There’s much more.
The Bengali adaptation of DOLL’S HOUSE was called PUTULKHELA. Shombhu Mitra, one of the giants of Indian theatre directed this production which was transposed into the Bengali idiom. The play made a huge impact in India where the fundamental nuclear relationship is marriage and the social roles each partner must play and the lies that are generated in the relationship. These things were not previously discussed in an middle class, bhadrolok society, which was heavily influenced by Victorian norms. Later, Shombhuda staged AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE as DASACHAKRA in 1952. It is rumoured that the final confrontation scene witnessed the largest number of actors on the Indian stage.
Then there were productions of BIDEHEE, a translation of GHOSTS – and directed by Partha Chowdhury in Siliguri; and BHITTIPRASTAR, which is an adaptation of PILLARS OF SOCIETY – and directed by Debabrata Dasgupta of Anya Chetana; and important productions of Ebrahim Alkazi. Plus the student productions of the National School of Drama in Delhi. The list is endless. From commercial hits to adaptations to translations to movies to amateur productions. Why, in the latest potboiler by Robert Ludlum; the main villain is a woman whose mastery of her devious villainy is attributed to her performance in the Off Broadway production of HEDDA GABLER.
And in this way, the search for Ibsen, continues …
To conclude: what makes Ibsen so special in India?
Satyadev Dubey, an architect of modern Indian theatre and who had directed a minimalist production of GHOSTS (PRETH in Hindi) says, “It’s imperative to encounter new things. With Ibsen, one learns to listen to scripts, attentively and react. Also, one re-learns the basics of theatre. Things like plot development, character development, dialectical progression. All the divisions and sub-divisions of a play.”
In addition, Indian theatre going audiences love relationships (especially, if they are flawed); we cherish grand emotions; we relish a climatic catharisis. And above all, we adore words. Somewhere The Word is the most important and evocative thing because it tells what visuals cannot.
Ultimately these words are the literature that will survive.
And for me, Ibsen is literature.
He reminds us of the nobility of The Word.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
RR
‘there are two kinds of conscience, one in man, another, altogether different in a woman…….. ……a woman is judged by man’s law as though she were not a woman but a man’
What an apt observation!
Thank you for the detailed post,extremely informative.
K3
Sirji…u r on a roll!! ek ke baad ek bomb phod rahe hain!!By the time i finish reading ur post i wonder where u started. theatre talks disarm me completly, m so much in awe of it. more so bcz my knowldge is restricted to watching few plys in calcutta n mumbai.thats it.but i luv it. if u have time, will u plz write a separate post on doll’s house….without statistics, just intrepretation. will be easy on our part to digest it all at one go.
btw,can we rename u as mr WET – walking encyclopedia of theatre!!
WET??? Arre Baba, no no.
Phoenix, You’re most kind. But there are hundred others out there … G P Deshpande. Saumik Bandhopadhyay. Sadanand Deshpande. Pushpa Bhave. Shanta Gokhale. Kamlakar Nadkarni. Vasanthi Sankranarayan. Arun Naik. Damu Kenkre. Etc. Etc. All big daddies.
Will try to work on DOLL’s HOUSE, asap. Although I’ve seen ONLY 3-4 productions.
Recently I saw Saoli (daughter of the lengendary Shombhu and Trupti Mitra) render it in New Delhi. Very melodramatic and quaint.
In contrast there was a superb production in which NORA was a 6 feet well-built woman; and ALL the other characters were pygmies. So, in a sense they were dwarfed (literally and metaphorically). The end when NORA walks out was brilliant. Coz all kinds of windows open up in the Doll’s House, and the dwarves, shriek and squeal. Superbly choreographed.
Dear Ramanathan Ji,
Could you please throw light upon who was the first woman to act in Marathi Sangeet Natak, in which play and in which Natak Mandali?