Oh, the wonderful magic of theatre! – Alyque Padamsee
Alyque Padamsee
Having grown up in Mumbai in the mid-1980s, I remember Alyque as the brand father of Indian advertising. I remember the Rin lightening ad, the famous Liril girl, Lalithaji of Surf, MRF and many other brands. I also remember the great role played by him in Gandhi. Alyque is the guru of Indian theatre and has over 70 major productions to his credit. He has received numerous awards for his achievements and today, in recognition of his enormous contribution to the world of theatre, the Rotary Club of Bombay is pleased to present the Shyam Munshi Award for Lifetime Achievement in Arts to Alyque Padamsee. — Rtn. Siddharth Punshi
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances;” And last Sunday at the Tata Theatre, I had the most marvellous exit… I fell off the stage and broke my leg.
However, I love the quotation, “All the world’s a stage…” I do not know what I would have done if I did not have theatre in my life. In fact, my life itself is theatre. Some people tell me that I have made a theatre of my life – married three times and God knows what else I have done. But, believe you me, I love the theatre. If India, for some mad reason, like Pakistan did under Zia-Ul-Haq, ever bans theatre, music or dancing, I would emigrate. I will, otherwise, never leave this wonderful country. I think my greatest ambition is to actually die on stage. I think that is the only way to go – for an actor and a director.I believe that unless you fall in love with what you are doing, you can never really be good at it. I fell in love with theatre at the age of seven. My elder brother, Bobby Padamsee, was producing The Merchant of Venice and wanted two slave boys. So, my brother and I dressed in black make-up and appeared on stage. I have been in love with theatre ever since.
What does it mean to be in love with theatre? It means: what it is to have a vision. Take the play Death of a Salesman; it is about an American-Jewish family; but it could be about any family in the world. It is really amazing how relevant it is to India. I feel that to make my plays relevant, they must have an identification point for the audience sitting in the theatre. Death of a Salesman, for example, has a relevance to us as family members or anything in our lives in Mumbai or Kolkata or Delhi.
In Evita I drew a parallel between the rise of Evita Peron, the then Vice President of Argentina, to Indira Gandhi who had risen to be the most powerful woman in the world. Albeit many people then did not even know about the existence of Argentina, Evita ran for almost five years. This was because of the parallel that had been drawn.
About four or five years ago, when I did Macbeth, which my daughter Raell Padamsee produced, I tried to understand the concept of witches. How could witches be relevant to the Indian audience? I thought for a long time and after some research found that in India we do have a strong belief in Tantricism. Tantrikas are women who are, in a sense, witches or jaadu-makers. They gather together and foretell the future and that is what the witches do in Macbeth. We, thus, had a parallel and incorporated a lot of tantrik symbolism in the play. At the National School of Drama, I was very happy that students immediately realised the parallel because a lot of people in India, particularly in the East, very strongly believe in Tantricism.
When I did Jesus Christ Superstar, which probably is the most popular play I have ever done, we wrote a song about all the people who had preached love but died at the hand of violence. For instance, Jesus was crucified although he had preached love. I drew a parallel between Gandhiji and Jesus’ message, finding them to be similar. Love is more important than violence and only love is the real achievement. I am happy to say that I am going to direct a revival of Jesus Christ Superstar next year.
I like to draw parallels because I feel the audience should not be left just saying, “Oh! It is art… art with a capital A.”
Besides relevance, theatre is also a place of magic. Oh, the wonderful magic that is there in theatre! In all my productions, I try to portray the idea that the director, with the playwright’s words, is a magician. Peter Brooke, one of the greatest directors the world has ever seen, had said, “The theatre is a place of magic. Directors are the magicians that leave the audience wonderstruck.” I have always believed in that.
While directing Girish Karnad’s Tughlaq, which was one of the most unprecedented successful Indian plays in the 1970s, I selected a young model named Kabir Bedi to play the role of Tughlaq over some other very formidable, experienced actors. I wanted to show that everyone has the ability to become an emperor if the occasion demands. In Tughlaq the occasion demanded it because Tughlaq became the emperor of India just after his father died in a mysterious accident. I wanted to show the audience how a man can actually become an emperor.
In my opening scene, therefore, which was not written by Girish, the curtains open to a nude man. Kabir, who had worked out at the gym, looked splendid — tall, handsome and broad-shouldered. He is standing there nude and his back muscles and thighs are fantastic. There is then this ominous kind of music and from the wings of the stage come in two servants who begin to dress him. He has his back to the audience while they dress him in his cloak and gown. In the end, they put on the crown which is like a pagdi. He then turns around, fully dressed with the crown on his head. Just then, the lights go off, meaning anyone can be transformed from just a bare creature to an emperor. That is the magic of theatre.
In a play, many years ago in St. Xavier’s College, I took over the entire auditorium of the college and made it the stage with the audience on the upstairs balconies, right around the hall, looking down into a mad house. It was about the French Revolution and the aristocrats were being guillotined. The first person who comes up to the guillotine is blindfolded and his head is put on the block. The blade is raised and the scene is enacted in such a way that when the blade comes down, the audience sees his head bleeding on the floor.
I remember the entire audience gasping and asking, “Did an accident happen?”
It was not an accident. It was part of the magic of theatre.
I love shocking and astounding the audience. I also like to have them giggling. When I did Hamlet, I asked myself how one could create a ghost on stage; how does one visualise ghosts? A relative whose son had died told me that she spoke to her son every day through a medium. That gave me an idea and in the play, when Hamlet is on the battlements, there is a strange kind of sound to which he listens, goes into a fit and falls on the stage. When he gets up and speaks, it is in his father’s voice. A shudder runs through the audience.
The father is speaking through his son and telling him that the person who killed him was the uncle. So, the ghost appeared; but you did not see it. The ear is also a wonderful medium to feel emotion.
I love Shakespeare. Totally. Othello with Kabir Bedi, Macbeth with Lushin Dubey and Vijay Crisna, Romeo and Juliet at the Tata Theatre…
Another dilemma was how to make Romeo and Juliet relevant but unusual. So, I had a Muslim Romeo and a Hindu Juliet. One always understands what conflict means when two people love each other but belong to the wrong religions, the wrong families. The play itself begins with a kind of altercation between the two parties and, much to the horror of the Tata Theatre authorities, the actors on stage begin screaming and shouting as a bunch of rowdies start knocking down and killing people. That was relevant; it was happening in Bombay and not 500 years ago. And it was soon after the riots.
Towards the end of the Emergency era, I did Julius Caesar, calling it Caesar and having the role played by a brilliant actress called Usha Katrak. We dressed all the actors in kurtas and churidars or sarees. Caesar was dressed in a white saree with a white streak in her hair, like Indira Gandhi. I did not change a word of the play, except that males became females. When we performed at schools and colleges, the audience related to it and said, “That was the way Caesar behaved. He was a dictator. Indira Gandhi is a dictator.”
My favourite character in Shakespeare is Shylock. Shylock the Jew in The Merchant of Venice. Now, how does one make Shylock relevant? I was doing a programme for schools on Shakespeare and I wanted to tell the students how Shylock was relevant. So I told them: “Shylock is not a Jew; he is an Indian. He is not in Venice; he is in Australia. It is not 500 years ago; it is today. An Indian who is in Australia today knows what discrimination is. Antonio is an Australian who comes to borrow money from Shylock, the same man whom he reviled and cursed. Shylock is a Naxalite and not a non-violence fan.
Shylock looks up at him and says, ‘Antonio, many a time you have berated me about my monies and I have a borne it with a patient shrug, for sufferance… sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog… and all for use of that which is mine own. And now you come to me and you say, Shylock, we would have monies… And kick me like a stranger cur over your threshold… What should I say to you? Should I not say is it possible a cur can lend?’”
The greatness of Shakespeare is not only in the words but in the emotions that he evokes in the audience. Words without emotions are on the printed page and I always tell students, “Do not read Shakespeare on the printed page. Read it through your mouth.” The best way to reach an audience is from the mouth of the actor to the ear of the audience. This is particularly true for Shakespeare because he wrote such fantastic stuff.
Without further ado, I want to end with a little joke I heard relating to Shakespeare. Richard Attenborough was doing the film Gandhi and I was playing Jinnah. One day, after shooting was over and we were chatting over a drink, he told me the story of an Indian actor in New York who was dying to do Shakespeare. He went to meet his agent, who did not give him much hope since the actor had messed up his lines earlier. The Indian pleaded and the agent finally told him that he would try his best. The next day his agent called him to say that an actor on Broadway had broken his leg and that the Indian would have to reach the theatre in 20 minutes. The actor is excited and asks the agent to tell him his dialogue. The agent tells him it is, “Hark, is that cannon I hear?” The actor rehearses the line all the way to the theatre, dreaming about doing it in a different and unusual way. He imagines headlines saying: Indian breaks record; does Shakespeare in the most fantastic way. When he reaches the theatre, he runs in and is told that he has to be on stage in a minute. He shrugs into his costume, rehearsing his line all the while.
Then, he is thrown on to the stage and there is a big boom. A big black cannon ball whizzes over his head and the surprised actor says, “What the hell was that!?”
You have been a lovely audience and thank you for the wonderful award.