It had now been a full ten years since my parents’ return from England in 1951 that they had spent pursuing theatre without it providing them any financial stability. In fact, their personal resources had dwindled substantially. To support and run an institution was an uphill task and I remember this being an incessant topic of conversation between my parents. It was often a cause of tension as my father’s plans and activities only grew, and my mother, who sympathized with her artist husband, was equally heartbroken when there were insufficient resources to fund his ideas. From the meagre monthly stipend that my father received from his partnership in his family’s spice company, she scrimped and saved from monies that were earmarked to cover our household expenses. However, there were occasions when my mother was unwilling to forgo her household monies in favour of TU projects. Such resistance immediately sent my father into a fit of rage. Finally, he would bellow out, “That’s fine, Rosh! Close down the blasted Theatre Unit for all I care!” And with that, he would make a theatrical exit, banging the front door behind him as punctuation! My poor mother, invariably shaken, would try to stop him saying, “Elkins! Please don’t worry! I’m sure something can be worked out! Elkins, please don’t go!”
At the moment, Elk’s urgent need was to secure a dedicated space of his own for his work. He had outgrown the BDI. Not knowing how long the TU would be welcome there caused him great anxiety. Having been given the use of the space gratis, Soli Batliwala had gradually begun charging substantial amounts towards maintenance and sundry expenses and was impatient with delayed payments. One of the rooms allotted to the TU was abruptly withdrawn, leaving them with only one large studio to conduct SDA classes and repertory rehearsals. Besides, the BDI had lost its exclusive charm and solitude, becoming too noisy with art, dance and music classes, artists’ studios, Bal Chabra’s Gallery 59, a bookshop, etc., making performances in the open air impossible. This forced the TU to once again rent auditoriums across the city at exorbitant rates, severely curtailing the number of performances to just the three or four that they could afford. What Alkazi needed was a smaller auditorium where his student–actors could grow over a larger number of shows. Then, as if the gods had heard his lamentations, a solution presented itself from out of the blue!
“I went up to the terrace of our building one day and suddenly things fell into place! I looked around, studied the space and found that with some amount of re-arranging of the water tanks etc., I could accommodate a small eighty-seater auditorium on the terrace . . . totally self-sufficient in all respects! Excitedly, I inquired of our Gujarati landlord whether he would grant me permission to build one. Being a shrewd businessman, he did some quick calculations, and within a few moments readily agreed to rent us the terrace for a sum of Rs 150 per month. It was unbelievable!”
In the blink of an eye, my parents decided to monetise our family’s life insurance certificates, gave up the idea of buying a new car and took an advance on our monthly instalments from the spice company. My father had enough to design and build an exquisite, perfectly proportioned, open-air auditorium on the terrace of our building, naming it “Meghdoot” (cloud messenger) after Kalidasa’s famous poem!
Though this project was undertaken to serve his own need for space, the Meghdoot exercise was also geared to set an example to architects, theatre practitioners and government bodies that simple theatres could be erected almost anywhere, at low cost, and if the space was designed intelligently, could lend itself to the performance of even the world’s greatest classics!
And that is exactly what Alkazi took upon himself to do. He created two magnificent productions, Medea and Waiting for Godot, the first an epic Greek tragedy by Euripides set in the fifth century and the other, one of the greatest post-war plays set in a barren wasteland.
The audience would arrive at Vithal Court, and begin their sojourn up the six flights of steps to the terrace as there was no elevator! Once they arrived, to their right was a tiny “foyer” area to which they could retire during the interval for coffee. The toilets were tucked away behind the water tanks on the opposite side. The orientation of the stage was such that a wide expanse of sky and a sliver of the stormy Arabian Sea would form a natural backdrop to the action. The majority of the audience (approximately eighty people) were accommodated on nineteen white rising wooden bleachers facing the performance space. Another fifteen to twenty people were seated along its right on two raised bleachers. Before each performance, we would roll out long, green, narrow mattresses along the bleachers for extra comfort. There was no raised platform to denote the stage, with the performance taking place directly on the floor. The performance area was approximately 45 feet across and 40 feet deep. Actors made entries and exits from both sides of the stage from behind white Japanese-looking slatted screens. Simple light poles had been erected on the two sides, while the sound and light consoles were accommodated behind the slatted screens from where the operators got a clear view of the stage.
My father had innovatively designed two dressing rooms under the high-rising bleachers. These were equipped with a long wooden rail each, on which the costumes were hung after the dhobi had pressed them. Each dressing room had a makeup table, with light bulbs framing the mirrors. There was no wastage of space whatsoever.
The Meghdoot project somehow became the glue that held our family together – the excitement of my father building upstairs, the fact that rehearsals were on again just above our heads, costumes were being fabricated and ironed in our flat! With shows every weekend, the whole place came alive with laughter and activity. My father barely ever left the building, which meant that we had him around all the time! What was even more binding was the fact that all four of us were in the production of Medea. My father played the Messenger, my mother and I were chorus women and Feisal was Medea’s son. We were really and truly a tightly-knit theatre family!
Now my mother always seemed to be in high spirits! This was also perhaps due to the fact that there seemed to be a thaw in the Theatre Group/Theatre Unit relations. Alkazi, with his mercurial temperament, had abruptly changed his stance, turning loquacious and generous, inviting TG actors to participate in TU plays! Suddenly, Gerson da Cuhna, Usha Amin and Kersy Katrak crossed the floor as it were and were cast in major roles in Tartuffe, Yerma, Medea, Waiting for Godot, Suddenly Last Summer, etc. Rosh was overjoyed; it felt like old times – a veritable family reunion!
Audiences were absolutely enthralled with the majestic production of Medea, in which Usha Amin possibly gave the greatest performance of her life. Playing the jealous tribal queen Medea with suppressed fury, Usha conjured up a tremendous primaeval presence. Alkazi’s set was stark, consisting of a single wooden door set in a highly textured, ruined wall, whitewashed and pierced with thick metallic arrow-shaped protuberances. Gieve Patel, a young medical student at the time, attached himself to my father, playing the role of the Tutor. Vividly recollecting how Alkazi worked on plastering the Medea wall himself, he said,
I got to see the inner workings of theatre . . . I saw Elk actually working physically – creating a screen wall using plaster of Paris and splashing it down with a cloth to give the effect of a ruined house front. These were beautiful actual encounters with theatre that will be with me always.
The “door” had become one of the most prominent of Alkazi’s visual leitmotifs, assuming various shapes, sizes and designs in various productions such as The Proposal (1951), Miss Julie (1951), Oedipus (1955), The Father, Miss Julie (1959-60) and Medea (1960). For him, the door symbolically marked the threshold that separated the inner from the outer world.
“The place is the final place, the last, lone, ultimate place – Death’s door. As in Greek tragedy, the door is never used casually. It is the threshold from life to death.”
All of fourteen years, and cast as one of the chorus women, so caught up was I in Medea’s rage that I can still recollect how my hair stood on end when Usha strode through the door. Holding the door open, her gesture was one of contained fury, like a leopardess ready to pounce; the sky and the sea behind her were a perfect background to visualise elemental forces unleashing themselves.
Looking back, I feel that in the process of erecting Meghdoot, Alkazi had ultimately discovered in nature the appropriate backdrop for his tragedies. This was his first step towards moving fully outdoors. Even at the BDI terrace theatre, the stage area had been covered while the audience sat in the open. Suddenly, here at Meghdoot, Alkazi’s productions gained an epic grandeur by virtue of being performed under a vast canopy of the stars. For Alkazi, building this theatre was a truly liberating and rewarding experience where he had arrived at an understanding of the essential nature of the theatrical experience as being part of a collective ritual.
Excerpted with permission from Ebrahim Alkazi: Holding Time Captive, Amal Allana, Penguin India.