The National School of Drama will set up its first academy outside Delhi in Bangalore. Though the performing language will be Kannada, as activists have demanded, the linguistic debate continues to percolate, says Margot Cohen.
After quitting a coveted job at Infosys this year, 23-year-old Dhananjaya threw himself into rehearsals with an amateur theatre group in Mysore. Since his teenage years, the lanky Kannadiga had relished opportunities to act. But he never considered chasing a slot at the coveted National School of Drama in New Delhi.
“I can’t speak much Hindi,” explained Dhananjaya, referring to the fact that India’s top theatre institute insists on Hindi as the sole performing language. Giving up Infosys was no problem, but the idea of competing for meaty roles with fluent Hindi speakers just seemed too intimidating.
Such thwarted desires have long fuelled a struggle to decentralise the well-funded NSD and allow students in different regions to learn their craft and perform in the language they grew up with. In Bangalore, the struggle was marked by a rather dramatic five-day fast undertaken by director and writer Prasanna (he goes only by one name), in January 2007, as well as various public protests enlivened with songs and manifestos.
Now Bangalore is set to become NSD’s first laboratory in an elaborate experiment in decentralisation. This time, Kannada will serve as the sole performing language at the school, according to NSD director Anuradha Kapur and NSD chairperson Amal Alana.
But even before NSD Bangalore conducts its first rehearsal, this experiment appears fraught with the tensions and nuances of a long-running language debate. Words like “inclusive” and “exclusive” emerge in this script, cast in different lights. The very factors that make Bangalore an increasingly diverse and cosmopolitan city – allowing theatre groups to find new audiences – have also generated some tough questions about launching a highly competitive and prestigious theatre academy, along with an itinerant repertory company.
Woven into the linguistic debate are concerns about autonomy, access and output. For director and writer KV Akshara, the last thing Karnataka needs is a facsimile of NSD Delhi, which he criticises for “criminal overspending” on productions and festivals. Instead, he argues, students should learn that wonderful theatre can spring from low budgets as long as it manages to communicate to audiences, especially in small communities. “If NSD can die and get reborn in Karnataka, that would be good for both NSD and Karnataka,” said Akshara, who trains student actors at Ninasam and leads the repertory company Tirugata in Heggodu, Shimoga.
The stakes are rising as the long-awaited school turns into more than a phantom promise. On August 19, the Karnataka state government issued a written order to rent the entire premises of Gurunanak Bhavan to NSD for three years, ending a lengthy wrangle over space. The complex, just off Cunningham Road, includes a 704-seat auditorium and a warren of rooms still lined with ping-pong tables and trekking posters. Meanwhile, NSD will oversee the construction of a campus on two acres of land near Bangalore University. Plans are to relocate there by 2011. The leafy arts complex known as Kalagram will also feature a local branch of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.
The broad decentralisation scenario will eventually include five schools: one each in the Northeast, Jammu & Kashmir, West Bengal and Maharashtra/Goa, as determined by a committee convened back in 2005. This is not quite acceptable to Prasanna and other activists linked to the decade-old group Abhivyakti Abhiyaan, which is pressing NSD to launch 18 different drama schools to accommodate local linguistic aspirations.
From Delhi’s perspective, though, Bangalore looked like a good place to start. Thanks to initiatives by Ranga Shankara, Tirugata (Shimoga), Rangayana (Mysore) and many other pioneers, audiences are expanding and often demanding higher quality fare. A number of NSD alumni, including Spandana director B Jayashree, have played a key role in this creative proliferation. And they have not been shy about highlighting the need for more trained actors.
“Definitely, Karnataka really needs institutions like NSD. We will be very glad to have it,” said Jayashree. Counting herself among those who struggled with Hindi during her student days in Delhi in the early 1970s, she still emphasises the valuable exposure to theory and practical techniques. Such courses provided a startling alternative to the thick make-up and elaborate gestures taught in her grandfather’s theatre company in Gubbi town, Jayashree recalled.
For years, NSD Delhi faculty members have relied on English and various Indian languages to make lessons clear to students drawn from all over India. Likewise, classes at NSD Bangalore are likely to proceed in a mixture of languages. On stage, however, Kannada will be king – for both practical and philosophical reasons, according to the School’s director, Kapur. Unlike the National Gallery of Modern Art, another Delhi-based cultural institution poised to establish a presence in Bangalore, the drama school won’t cater to the entire south.
“I don’t think we can function as a regional centre,” said Kapur. “We cannot perform in five languages, there’s no way. We cannot even teach in five languages.” Then there’s the bedrock concept of actor-training as intimately linked to the mother tongue, particularly when it comes to improvisation. It is necessary “to think on your feet. To work with sounds and words and tones that you’ve grown up with,” said Kapur.
That concept is hardly alien here. “You need to know the nuances, the pauses, the inner soul of the language,” said filmmaker Girish Kasaravalli, who has tapped alumni from NSD and Ninasam for some of his features.
Yet some basic questions still hover over this polyglot, migrant-filled metropolis. What about Bangaloreans who don’t speak Kannada as their mother tongue? Should budding actors from Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and English-speaking families forget about NSD, just as Dhananjaya did when confronted with the scary idea of spouting Hindi dialogue on stage?
It’s a sensitive subject, given the sporadic violence attributed to Karnataka Rakshana Vedike and other crusaders, ostensibly out to protect the local language. But without denigrating the rich contributions of both traditional and contemporary Kannada theatre, some actors based in Bangalore question the legitimacy of Kannada-only performances at the new school. “I don’t think it’s a fair decision at all,” said playwright and actor Abhishek Majumdar, whose recent production of Lucknow 76 employed multiple languages. While Majumdar predicts that NSD Bangalore will play a critical role in creating a corps of trained actors, he believes the school would only benefit from more linguistic flexibility on stage.
The same holds true for Mallika Prasad, a ’98 NSD graduate who acts in Hindi, Kannada and English plays. She suggests that smaller groups of students be allowed to mount productions in languages of their own choosing, including English.
“Lots of youngsters are writing in English and performing in English,” she said. “How long do you expect to ignore that language?”
Another Bangalore-based theatre artist, who asked not to be named, put it even more bluntly: “They are shooting themselves in the foot,” he said. “They are making it exclusive rather than inclusive.”
Prasanna, speaking from his perch in Heggodu, adheres to a different definition of “inclusive”. Considering that the majority of citizens in Karnataka speak Kannada, he thinks that the Kannada performance policy is a “question of democracy”. While Prasanna said he empathises with those reared in English, he asserted that “English is not a deprived minority. English is a privileged minority.”
In truth, no one wants a fiery language debate to torpedo prospects for NSD Bangalore. Consider the praise heaped on Ranga Shankara for playing a vital role in the process of desegregating audiences. Moreover, many local theatre groups have hosted directors who speak different languages. They have performed in local languages for audiences abroad. And many local artists say they try to support each other at home without dwelling on false dichotomies.
“I do watch English plays, but they should not overtake Kannada,” said Mangala, founder of Sanchari Theatre. “Let them walk with us.”
One compromise might be found in performances offered by NSD’s travelling repertory company, which is expected to roam beyond Karnataka. “We could do more plays in south Indian languages,” said the School’s chairperson, Alana.
In Bangalore, the words that count most could be Kapur’s assurance that the new school will not be remote-controlled from Delhi.
“We would all be committed to autonomy,” she said. “This is not a management institute that can open in ten cities and duplicate what it does… it has to be sensitive to local methodologies.”
A note of caution comes from Alana. “The NSD has a certain brand of training,” she observed. “Each institution we set up in different regions has to follow a basic structure.”
Some fear that NSD Bangalore might get bogged down in a tentative, lengthy process of workshops before recruiting its first batch of students. The local lowdown: just set up shop, start teaching, and take a few risks.
After all, students might discover an ethical code that runs deeper than any language concerns. As the actor Majumdar put it, “A theatre school, at a minimum, should be able to teach ‘Don’t be irresponsible. Feel a little sacred toward your art form. Share your story truthfully.’”
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