“Nothing has changed since the time I started off”

Reema Gehi Mumbai

For more than two decades, Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry has single-handedly pioneered the theatre movement in Punjab.
She spent her early childhood in England and then migrated to Amritsar, where she studied in a convent school. She has lived in Delhi, Mumbai and Bhopal. And, later the world seemed to have become her address. Now firmly rooted in Chandigarh, she runs a theatre group, The Company, which has produced several splendid productions like The Suit, Yerma, Kitchen Katha and Nagamandala.

In the meditative vista of her vast body of work that celebrates strong aesthetic sensibility, the concept of her mother tongue, Punjabi, has also become a personal quest. "There was a conscious effort to learn the dialect because as an artiste, if you don't know your own history you cannot be truly contemporary," explains the 58-year-old theatre director.

Mansingh Chowdhry, who cuts a sturdy profile, has also designed costumes for movies like Fire and Videsh, besides conducting acting workshops with the ensemble cast of the films. More recently, she conducted a theatre workshop organised by Delhi's National School of Drama at National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai, where Hardnews met her. Excerpts from the interview:

What kind of dynamics does one create through theatre workshops?

It's really difficult to articulate what energies emerge when several talents coming from different education, social and political background and lifestyle patterns, work together in mind, body and soul. It's a very unique process.

What's your primary concern while directing?

My main concern is not to repeat myself. My approach to each production is different. I create a lot of visual images. The training of the body and the transformation of the text to create a visual language is as significant. I essentially like to see how a space is created and animated by using the actor's body.

Didn't you ever think of taking up acting as a profession?

It was never an ambition. During my stint at the NSD, I did act out a few roles. But I didn't have the process of being an actor nor did I have the temperament to share with the audience what's deepest within me.

Soon after your stint at the NSD, you set up a theatre company called Magma with actors like Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah. Why did an ensemble like that disintegrate?

I really don't know whatever happened to it. It seems like a different century altogether. Today, it's far removed from my memory as well as the experience which I have gathered over the years.

We set up Magma, when Om (Puri) returned after his two-year stint at Pune's film institute. It was a time when I had got married and was living in Mumbai. So, couple of us, NSD graduates, came together and performed several plays. But we didn't manage to do anything extraordinary. Inevitably, we went our separate ways.

Who have been the greatest influences on your life?

I strongly admire my teacher at the National School of Drama, Ebrahim Alkazi. He was a wonderful teacher, who taught me about work culture and the importance of hands-on experience. In theatre, cleaning the bathroom and ensuring that the tea is right for the actors is as essential as directing a play.

Another very strong influence on my life was BV Karanth, whom I worked with in Bhopal, since the inception of Bharat Bhavan. His way of working was very different from Alkazi's. While Alkazi was a renaissance man, Karanth was truly a people's person. At that time, winds of change were blowing in Indian theatre. Until then, we were very much part of the training that came from the West. Alkazi's training process was based on the master performer's interaction with urbane actors. Karanth believed in improvisation. He believed that theatre is a celebration of an ensemble work and that it must grow with the audience. Their teachings became a blueprint and a premise when I started my own theatre company in Chandigarh.

Why did you set up a theatre group exploring the Punjabi dialect when much of your training didn't happen in that language?

Much of my tryst with the language began when I moved to Chandhigarh. Besides, I believe that theatre must be local, regional and vernacular, too. What's the point of working in Punjab, if you are staging plays in Hindi or English? Language is not about words. Words are nothing but scratches on the paper. It's really the impulse, which creates the energy.

In fact, there are certain words, which are completely untranslatable. Take, for instance, a word in Punjabi called jutha, which means eating a morsel from someone else's plate. You cannot translate it. Likewise, there's a Marathi word called bindaas. Now, you can't translate it into vivacity, exuberance, because bindaas has its own resonance.

Is Punjab a favourable place to pursue theatre?

People who pursue theatre in Punjab do it more as a hobby. For them, it's a better option to attend a rehearsal in the evening than go to a pub. It's a way of life which some people have chosen.

Which of your plays would you view as the most significant in your career?

I cannot pick out one play and say that it has played the most significant part in my career. They are part of the same alphabet. With each play, I have pushed the scale of my work further. I discovered a different way of working, with a slight point of departure, and a little more risk-taking. If I hadn't done Yerma, I could not have done Kitchen Katha. Likewise, I couldn't have worked on a play
like Nagamandala.

In the present day, do you think a play like Yerma can be revived?

The play was relevant at one point. It was an ensemble work and the music designed by BV Karanth was quite spectacular. Personally, I have moved on from that kind of work. My own tools of training have changed. Back then, I preferred to stage something which was more emotive whereas now I prefer to keep it much more subtle. Now, one would really have to move the text around in order to restage it. But quite honestly, I think it's very important for an artiste to reject his/ her previous work in order to move forward.

But three years ago, you revived the production of Nagamandala, which was first staged in 1990...

Actually, it was Arundhati Nag who requested me to revive Nagamandala for a playwrights' festival in Bangalore. I was a bit apprehensive because I wasn't sure if the play would still speak to me like it did several years ago. But it did. Although the music and some of the actors in the play remain the same, it has been recasted. I have brought in new experiences to the play and staged it
very differently.

What are your thoughts on the theatre scene in the present day?

Theatre today has taken a 180-degree turn. And the change is not just local, it is happening all over. No work is separated from the environment that generates it. There is no standardised form of theatre. You can't pluck out a single thread from a cloth and use it as a prototype. It's part of the fabric. We are multi-lingual, multi-cultured and within that there are individual ways of working. Of course, the perennial problem of finance and infrastructure of theatre still exists. Truth be told, nothing has changed since the time I started off. What has changed is that I have built credibility. So, there's a certain kind of support people offer.

In retrospect, how would you view the years spent in theatre?

Theatre is an ongoing process. You really cannot see it as a retrospection. It takes a long time for a formation to take place. Thus, the journey continues. When I look back at the initial work that I did, it looks very kuchcha (raw) and simplistic. But what happened in the past, actually feeds into today. Therefore, I wouldn't have been able to arrive at this moment without the intellectual, creative, emotional and literary influence which is part of my memory. There are a few things which are good for my soul. Theatre is one of them. It occupies my mind and heart. The intangible feeling has its own pull. It's inexplicable.