Mahesh Dattani’s tall figure lends itself well to photoshoots. But tell him that and he immediately waves the compliment away. Please don’t make me pose! He’s horrified. But he indulges City Express and painstakingly sits through the entire session with a smile that reveals no discomfort whatsoever. “You guys have turned me into a model,” he jokes. “Some people come alive in front (of the camera), with the gaze on them and some people come alive when the gaze is not on them. And I think, I clearly belong to the latter,” he adds, turning serious.
The Sahitya Akademi awardee, who is currently in the city for a session of workshops with the participants of the MY Theatre Festival, was a copywriter in an advertising firm before he wrote his first play, ‘Where There Is A Will’, in 1995. Dattani also worked with his father in the family business before turning to theatre. “My father had an agency to sell machines to make printing and packaging containers. It was very technical and there was a lot of selling involved – it just didn’t suit me,” he elaborates.
Once he was done writing one-liners to sell batteries and negotiating with his father’s clients to close deals, he turned to theatre. “Theatre is something I’d been interested in ever since I was 14 or 15. At that time, I never thought that it would be possible for me to take it on. When I was in advertising, a lot of theatre people who did advertising, did theatre. That’s what they really wanted to do. I thought I could also do the same thing,” says Dattani.
Since then it’s been a whirlwind of theatre productions, tours with a bit of film direction thrown in. “There are certain notions I’d like to challenge (with films),” says Dattani. “Movies are like monsters which need to be constantly fed, whereas theatre is more like a pet – treat it well and it responds,” he says.
The intimacy of the theatre setting, compared to the grandeur of cinema, is where good theatre happens, he insists. “Interpersonal relationships are what theatre explores the best. And the film is a sensory medium, a visual medium. So, I would say that both are perfectly the valid medium of art. One can’t expect in theatre what cinema has to offer and vice versa,” he reels off, giving this reporter a small glimpse of what one would expect in his workshop.
The mention of the workshop has him grinning so much; his smile is as bright as the yellow kurta he’s wearing, if not brighter. “Oh I’ve got quite a bit planned. I’ve sort of delved into the fundamentals of acting, which is listening. I’m going to keep it as basic or as complex as it is required. The focus would definitely be on responses and reacting – that good acting is really reacting,” says Dattani.
He seems excited at the prospect of teaching. He is positively glowing. “I love it, because that keeps me connected with young talented people and that’s always a learning experience for me as well. It’s like having a little garden and watching your flowers bloom,” responds passionately.
That passion doesn’t seem restricted to theatre alone. Chennai’s cuisine is also something that is very close to his heart. The vathakozhambu and rasam in particular, he corrects, still glowing. He adds in the same breath, “The theatre scene in Chennai needs to grow. It’s still at a fledgling stage from what I have seen. But I’m very impressed by the young ones around – they are the future. It’s wonderful,” he says.
The need of the hour is to professionalise theatre, he continues. “There’s no such thing as an amateur surgeon. Either you’re a surgeon or you’re not. And I think that’s the attitude that you need to bring to theatre as well.” One of his students walks in, waiting for him to finish. The interview has gone on long enough. But the entire process of the theatre is something that brings out the scholar in him, as much it brings out the veteran in him.
“We need to try and inculcate a sense that there is training, a craft involved. It is creative and it asks for more creativity than other performing art forms. But at the same time, there is a grammar involved, which needs to be studied,” he continues, oblivious to the amount of passion there is in his voice.
But at the same time, he warns against complacency. It’s not just about performing a play in the festivals, according to him. “There is a danger that the product is all you have. The process takes a backseat. You get very content with what little you have, because theatre is about exploring and expanding yourself. In that sense, when you expand yourself as a human being, you expand your potential as theatre artistes as well,” he signs off before being ushered into his workshops, for his waiting students.