..........................................................................................Art & Theatre

 A Legacy Examined 

Vijay Tendulkar was the topic of discussion at the National Seminar organised by Ank on October 2, as part of its festival dedicated to the works of the dramatist. The seminar was attended by theatre personalities who have been associated with the legend over the years like B V Karanth, Satish Alekar, Ram Gopal Bajaj, Waman Kendre, Pandit Satyadev Dubey, Bansi Kaul, Kamlakar Nadkarni, Prayag Shukla, Nag Bodas, Jayant Pawar, Jaidev Hattangadi and Dolly Thakore. The occasion was presided over by Kamlakar Sontakke, rather officiously and formally for something that was meant to be an informal, non-academic exercise.

A lot of time was devoted by most of the speakers in their praise of the writer. The eulogies, one thought, were quite unnecessary as the pre-eminence of Tendulkar as one of the most significant dramatists of this century could have been considered as a fact, needing no further assertion. Tendulkar at one point offered to withdraw : " My presence here is making people say things that they do not want to say, and not making them say few things that they do want to say". The odes apart, the seminar did provide quite a few insights into the legend and his work.

Satish Alekar opened the proceedings by shortlisting four of Tendulkar's plays as most significant - Ghashiram Kotwal, Sakharam Binder, Ashi Pakhare Yeti, Shantata Court Chalu Aahe. "I still find it difficult to believe that the four plays that are so different in their treatment from one another, were all written by one person." He went on to add that his own plays could be written because of the work that was already accomplished by Tendulkar.

Ram Gopal Bajaj, the director of the National School of Drama opined that "other than perhaps Ghashiram Kotwal, no director has really been able to do justice to the realism in any of Vijay Tendulkar's plays - we felicitate and honour him, but we all owe him an apology on this count". Jaidev Hattangadi alluded to the directions that Tendulkar gives in brackets to the director and how he effectively directs the director.

Kamlakar Nadkarni emphasised that "none of Tendulkar's characters are representative symbols, they are real people. At one point, they seemed the exception, but today thirty years later, I continue to meet these characters in the streets as I go about my everyday life." Mohan Agashe played both the psychiatrist and the actor. "I got stuck with Ghashiram Kotwal. I had grown a mouchstache for what I thought would be a few performances as Nana Phadnavis. I had to keep the mouchstache for 20 years. For the last 10 years, I have not played Nana, but am still trying to understand what it was that I played for 20 years"

B V Karanth was funny throughout, as he proclaimed Tendulkar as a medium through which an entire generation expressed itself in theatre. Tendulkar could be played in any Indian language as neither the language nor the culture that he wrote about would lose out in translation.

The audience was not prepared for what followed . Tendulkar, despondent, weighed down, and obviously unhappy took the stage. "People ask me how I feel about all this. I do not know how to reply. The fact is now I do not respond. I feel the Tendulkar who these people are talking about is a different person, is someone else. I do not know how I wrote those plays. May be they were meant to be written at that time and I just happened to write them. Nowadays I walk out of discussions on theatre, literature, films - what does it matter? There are more serious things. If what we do does not connect with life, it is trash."

"I am a discontent soul - unhappy, angry. It has nothing to do with anything personal, it is the things that I see around me. It makes me murderous, upset, agitated and helpless. While I wrote plays, there was the knowledge that the characters that I have created are, though never consciously but at least sub consciously, guided by me. Outside of this theatre, I find that I am useless, I cannot do anything, I am a part of the audience. But I watch life itself and I find it difficult to accept. I feel like walking out."

It was a stunned audience that broke for lunch. Tendulkar did not join us after lunch but discussions continued - mostly on the agenda set by him. Bansi Kaul, talking about Tendulkar's despair opined what hurts most is probably that "the issues that were so close to him have become commodities, especially in the four metros that have appropriated the plays from the smaller cities". Nag Bodas examined the limitations of the artist ( a lesser citizen) as an activist. He linked Tendulkar's pessimism with the problems of form in his later plays - Tendulkar was the last Moghul of realism in theatre, a form that Bodas opined was dead and awaited burial.

Jayant Pawar, at the outset, admitted his inability to be objective about Tendulkar, his mentor. He asserted that Tendulkar's influence is seen directly, almost genetically, in mainstream Marathi theatre, ironically the very theatre that had ostracised him in the past. Pandit Satyadev Dubey took the stage to proclaim that theatre is dying and seemed to revel in his prophecy of its death and its rebirth in a new form. He lamented the destruction of language in theatre. On Tendulkar, he said that his name is invoked for the wrong reasons these days, and his contribution to children's theatre and his romanticism has been overlooked.

One of the most interesting contributions came from Waman Kendre- the last speaker and a director who has never staged a Tendulkar play. He admitted that, for all their greatness, he was never excited by any of Tendulkar's plays. The reasons, he surmised, might have to do with the fact that Tendulkar was a bigger director of plays than a writer. All his plays were finished products with plenty of directions that left the director no scope to improvise and be creative. Personally, he would prefer to direct a play more open to the director to interpret. Kendre then talked about Tendulkar as a student of theatre who studied in depth the theatre before him, only to negate it completely in his own plays. The genius did not stop there, but went on to reject the forms that he himself had built in every subsequent play of his. Kendre rounded off by asserting that the future of Marathi theatre lies in it negating the Tendulkar legacy, and finding an idiom of its own.

The question-answer session that followed was far too short and dealt primarily with the issues of language and the supposed impending death of theatre. The young guns like Waman Kendre and Bansi Kaul assured the audience that theatre was very much alive with Kendre thundering "theatre ko nahin marne dene walon main se hum hain". There were a few digs at Satyadev Dubey - slightly ungracious since he was not present to defend himself, and some good natured ones at Tendulkar himself.

Festival Programme