This is not a mourning play
The first play that opened the Akshara Theatre Festival’s tribute to Jalabala Vaidya, its co-founder and the face of the theatre for over 50 years, yesterday, was her last. The play was Women in the Dark, by two Ukranian playwrights, and it is told through emotional and humorous conversations between two women stuck in a bomb shelter as missiles whizz overhead in Kyiv. Jalabala—she died on April 9—and the late Gopal Sharman, the playwright, were Delhi’s pioneering couple of theatre of the ’70s. They started what was perhaps the first family-run theatre company in independent India in 1972. It predates even Mumbai’s Prithvi theatre.
“Mother was involved in the conceptualisation, scripting, rehearsals and the first readings of Women in the Dark,” says Anasuya Vaidya, director of Akshara Theatre, her voice sounding sore, from all the work that the coordination of a theatre festival of scale requires. But the throw of her voice is assured. It’s a skill that has been nurtured and watched over by all the family’s actors (Anasuya and her three childen included) as part of Jalabala’s training and that has prepared them for a life without her.
“From the smallest things which many of us actors didn’t even think were important, like the posture, or the right hairstyle for a role, the tiniest of costume details, of whether a brooch should be placed on the right or left, right down to when the music should fade in and out—she literally oversaw everything,” says granddaughter Yashna on the eve of the festival.
Jalabala would have approved of the festival lineup. It focuses on the feminine experience in theatre; all the stories are about women or are scripted and directed by them. Veteran theatre artist Sohaila Kapur, who acts in today’s play, Like Mother Like Daughter, which shows a single woman at 60 living it up—vodka plays a supporting role—while her daughter in her 30s, has forgotten how to, talks of Jalabala as a woman and artiste of rare and firm spirit.
“She was very clear who could perform at Akshara,” Kapur says, recalling a time in the ’90s when Jalabala’s 22-role act from the Ramayana—a role that made her reputation—had almost been packed off due to the public being drawn to Delhi’s new theatres of Sriram Centre and Kamani. “She let us perform our adaptation of a German play, at Akshara…She has been generous also to young groups. If you had a passion for theatre and were not getting a forum or a platform anywhere else, you could get it here. Akshara is a very personal and intimate space, the family lives upstairs,” she says.
It is perhaps this continuity between work and family life--the stage is literally part of the home—that led the theatre couple to set the early example to encourage the concept of a ‘paying public’ in a capital city with a sarkari tradition. No free passes. These were theatre people living a life of theatre, with all its ups and downs, so show your commitment to theatre by paying up, was the unsaid motto. Tragi-comedy was part of the family weave and part of Akshara’s theatre tradition, as it were.
Jalabala’s cats and dogs were often drafted into plays. Gopal had no qualms, standing near the exit holding the bottom hem of his kurta, asking the audience, at times, to donate. “If Prithviraj Kapoor could do it, so can I. It’s a theatre tradition,” he would say. But the door was always open for the young—Akanksha Sharma, Dahab Chishti, Shreeja Chaturvedi are women standup comics for whom Akshara was the stage of some of their early routines. Papa CJ, too, has been a strong Akshara supporter. This festival, too, has first-timers. Mansi Grover is making her directorial debut in Chai-Kahaani; Like Mother Like Daughter is helmed by new director and playwright Sonali Sharma.
Sunit Tandon, another theatre veteran of Delhi, recalls other pioneering moves by Jalabala, who was half English. In the ’70s, Akshara did Indo-English plays at a time when this mix wasn’t fashionable. This festival, too, includes three—Like Mother…, Scarred and Kuch Life Aisa. “Jalabala’s long solo show, the Ramayana, was perhaps one of India’s longest-running solo shows. She did it for almost five decades. People still talk of some groups like Arvind Gaur’s because he is still active as a director. Jalabala was of an older vintage. Her contribution to Delhi is that she trained scores of its young actors and was invested in children’s theatre,” he says. Akshara continues her training programme. Anasuya has plans to revive her mother’s version of the Ramayana by year-end. “Right now it would have been too soon, so it’s not part of the festival,” she explains.
Nisa, Jalabala’s other granddaughter, who is acting in The Women in the Dark, says she was very particular “about not dropping the ends of sentences while delivering dialogues. She always gave importance to using correct emphasis on certain words and the importance of clarity and intent when delivering a dialogue. I will miss her sitting in the audience. In fact, I just realised that this will be the first time I am doing a play at Akshara and she will not be around watching me.” The festival is on Aug 13-20, 7:30 pm, at Akshara Theatre, 11B, Baba Kharak Singh Marg. Tickets: www.bookmyshow.com