Drama in Roorkee – A Personal Account

by Dr. Pankaj

Before the beginning …

We know that the life on earth slowly evolved over millions of years while the universe began with a big bang. Dramatics at Roorkee did not initiate in either of the two ways. It did not evolve slowly over the years to its present form. There was also no big bang in the 80s though; it is fair to say that it was the impetus provided to dramatics in 82-83 that has sustained it over the years.

 So what drama activities took place in Roorkee prior to 1982 on a regular basis? Activities that happened included Bhawan days and, at the University level, an annual variety entertainment programme. The latter was generally held in the open air theatre, behind the swimming pool and repeated over two days. These programmes comprised of music and drama. The latter included skits, short sketches and sometimes short plays. It was extremely difficult to fit any performance longer than say half an hour in a 3 hour variety entertainment programme. I recall seeing some great skits and sketches, some of which satirised life in the University. Many skits were based on radio shows and some on Hindi films. Short plays were commonly drawing room comedies and generally not as good. Although the quality of annual variety entertainment programmes was good, the drama activities were certainly not adequate. The programme also resembled a school parents’ day – invitations were send out to staff who occupied the front rows while the students sat at the back. The programmes to be presented on the day were also often selected by the staff advisors and some items that had been rehearsed could be cancelled at the last minute. Needless to say that this generated some ill will and the students who did all the hard work did not feel they owned these performances. As a result students booing (or hooting as it was called in Roorkee) or boycotting shows, was not unknown.

 Just before the beginning

I grew up in Roorkee and returned in 1979 to pursue ME in Earthquake Engineering after obtaining a BTech from IIT Delhi. In Delhi I was a very active member of the dramatics group. IIT-D’s proximity to the National School of Drama and its financial resources permitted two long plays to be directed by professionals every year. I had the opportunity to work with the likes of Ravi Baswani, Pankaj Kapoor, BM Shah, Faisal Alkazi and Anupam Kher. While this provided great grounding (we won numerous dramatics prizes and appeared in newspaper and magazine articles and once even competed against Naseeruddin Shah), we did not generally direct full length plays, only short plays were directed by the students. It is from this viewpoint that the subsequent achievements at Roorkee are really significant.

As an ME student in Roorkee, it was easy to be part of the sports clubs. For example one could just walk down to the sports stadium and play football. I became a University team member for squash and billiards. Similarly it was easy to participate in activities such as debating and “just a minute”. But there was no opportunity to be part of dramatics. There was little dramatics activity and there were no publicised auditions. I was extremely keen to get involved with drama.  Of course I could have started a long play entirely on my own, but I did not have the courage to do that as a post-graduate student. I did direct under-graduates for a short play – Us and Them – in 1981 which was staged several times on different occasions.

The beginning

After completing my ME, it used to be of two years duration those days; I was offered a lectureship in Earthquake Engineering which I accepted. Almost immediately I became a good friend of Mr Siddharth Chakravorty. I had known him earlier as a student – he had been a judge for several cultural activities I had participated in. In fact we performed (actually acted) in a play called Albert. I think everyone in the play did a good job but it did not go down well with the audience. Chief, as I called Mr Chakravorty then (subsequently I started calling him Dada) was the Staff Advisor for drama and together the idea of initiating a long play starting taking shape. We decided we would start with Ballabhpur Ki Roopkatha. We chose this because it was a comedy, although it was not the standard drawing room type which was more common in Roorkee. In other words while we were keen to be different, we did not want to be murdered by being too radical with a play like, say Juloos.

Long plays were rare in Roorkee and were only performed when some theatre enthusiasts (sometimes students and often staff) were bitten hard by the drama bug. I recall seeing a performance of The Mousetrap in early seventies. So it would be wrong to say that the long plays were first staged in the 80s. For Ballabhpur we decided that we will hold widely publicised auditions and cast selections will be based purely on how people performed in these as individuals and in groups. Previous acting experience in Roorkee or outside would not be counted. Auditions were held over a period of two days and the selected cast comprised of students from the complete range of years – starting from first year to post-graduates. Having a diverse group and providing an opportunity to everyone interested was, we thought, an important objective to be fulfilled. Interestingly a couple of weeks before we started Ballabhpur, rehearsals for Dhai Akhar Prem Ka also began. Dhai Akhar came about due to the efforts and enthusiasm of Mrs Kumkum Tiwari and Mr SK Srivastava of CBRI and, I believe, the two directed it jointly. Most of the cast of Dhai Akhar comprised of the “veterans” of Roorkee drama – senior students who had performed before on Roorkee stage. Dhai Akhar was staged about two weeks before Ballabhpur and I recall it was well received.

With Ballabhpur we established a number of ground rules, both for rehearsals and for performances. Firstly we decided that we would not use microphones on stage and all actors will need to be loud to be heard right up to the last row. Traditionally all drama performances employed microphones which were strategically placed all over the stage. During performances some lines would be loud and clear while others were not. Often key lines were delivered from close proximity of a microphone. The word I used to get everyone to do their dialogue delivery loudly was “project”. This was regarded as my catchphrase and subsequently whenever my direction was not clear I was asked to “project”.

The second rule was: the director is the king. This meant that all final decisions rested with the nominated single director. Since I was a lecturer it was quite easy for me to enforce this. So the reason for emphasising this rule was with an eye on future productions. It was quite clear to me even before I started Ballabhpur that there was no way I or any other individual could go on directing plays year after year. The only sustainable way was to have students taking on this role. So the rule restricted multiple leaders. This did not imply that discussions and suggestions were not welcome, they were in fact encouraged, but the final say was that of the director.  I believe it created a directorial style in which the director would say something like “we will do this” instead of “what do you think we should do”.  I know this approach was adopted in almost all plays that I was associated with after Ballabhpur. Personally I adhered to this code of conduct in subsequent plays which were directed by students but in which I did help out.

In those days the light and sound people would normally get involved on the day of the performance. Sometimes, if you demanded, they would attend a couple of dress rehearsals. In Ballabhpur I insisted that they be provided scripts and that they attend practically all rehearsals. I think the emphasis on light design and on background music were quite novel at that time. The background music was selected and organised by Atul Varshney, who gave up the opportunity to participate in the IIT-K festival (he was a good musician) to continue with Ballabhpur rehearsals without interruption. After the play he commented that he felt he had learned much more from the play in comparison to what he would have from the festival. This I felt was a real compliment to drama. By attending the rehearsals the backstage group became true members of the drama troupe. We also decided that each and every member of the crew would be named and invited to the stage during the play’s curtain call. I hope this continues to be the case today. Backstage crew making an appearance on stage was not customary in Roorkee at that time and is certainly not a practice in professional theatre.

In Ballabhpur we also decided that we would have a proper set design. Avnish Saxena who was also a part of the cast (Manohar in Ballabhpur) took on this role. Avnish was a post graduate student in Architecture and he had obtained his first degree from Bhopal (I think) where he had done drama. While Avnish was happy to incorporate aspects such as a ramp, from which Bhupati makes his entrance with a rose in hand and music in the background, and entrances for the ghost; his ideas on set aesthetics were completely different from mine. He was adamant that my ideas on set design were meant for a Greek theatre and not for an Indian one. I relented and it was wise that I did, as Avnish designed an excellent set for the play.

The Ballabhpur cast had two female members. In those days young ladies would not readily agree to be part of dramatics activities. The male cast members simply attributed this to their “bhav” and them not being given permission by their Bhawan wardens for late night rehearsals. The reality, in my opinion, was that it was an extremely lonely existence during rehearsals for the female members. Sujata and Ritu who “agreed” to be part of Ballabhpur found themselves mostly confined to each other’s company. The male members kept their distance. Apart from their interest in drama I don’t think Sujata and Ritu had much in common – Sujata was a senior architecture student and Ritu was a junior electrical student. It became apparent in the first few days that the girls were getting very bored. So one day after the girls had departed I had a frank chat with the male members of the group. I told them that if they did not start interacting proactively with the girls they would continue to have difficulty finding female cast members in all future plays. This appeal was immediately taken on board – “sir keh rahen hain ki ladkion se dosti karo, sir ki baat to manni padegi”. I can tell you with all honesty that subsequent to this meeting not only did the two girls have a great time; we never had lack of participation from Sarojini Bhawan. Invariably more girls than required turned up for auditions. And a few years later when I was doing my PhD in the UK , Onkar Dixit visited me with stories of girls having taken on backstage roles as well.

For Ballabhpur we also decided that no photographs would be permitted during the actual performance. It was quite common in Roorkee to have photographers hovering around the stage at times even on the stage during programmes. Many of the cast members felt that it would be good to have pictures of the action. So it was decided to re-enact scenes for the camera only after the show. This separate photography sessions approach continued to be used in the plays that followed Ballabhpur.

As the day of performance came closer I grew nervous. I felt, as directors often do before a performance, that we hadn’t managed to get to an appropriately high standard.  There was also a concern that in the absence of “veteran actors” the play might be booed. A couple of days prior to the performance I was so despondent that I told everyone that I did not care any more and went and sat down quietly in a corner. Everyone tried to do their best to get me involved again which I did after a while. A few years later Onkar told me that pre-performance directorial sulking had become almost a tradition in Roorkee. But I am sure that this ridiculous tradition has met its death by now.

For Ballabhpur both Chief and I decided that we would not be included in the printed credits for the play and also we would not be named or called upon the stage during the curtain call. Our idea was to showcase this as a purely student activity. Abhas (Sanjiv in Ballabhpur) was given the job of introducing everyone during the curtain call. After the first day of performance the audience demanded the name of the director and Abhas was forced to name me as the director. He was also quick to express his gratitude to Mr Chakravorty who had attended almost every rehearsal and provided extremely valuable advice and help. In retrospect I think acknowledging everyone involved was the right thing to do. I continued to help out in subsequent plays and my help was acknowledged in a similar manner. This manner of acknowledging staff help became a tradition in Roorkee. Many years later I was taken by surprise to find myself being acknowledged in a play for which I had not contributed at all. I did express my discomfort with this undue “abhar”. In my opinion no one except those who have actually helped directly should be recognised on stage. The list would become endless if we started naming everyone who may have helped indirectly – Director of the Institute, Dean of Students or even the cook in the bhawan mess for feeding us.

You will have noticed that so far I have avoided talking about the success or failure of Ballabhpur. The play was well received, it certainly wasn’t booed. If I were to say that everyone who saw it was totally enthralled and realised that theatre had finally arrived in Roorkee, then that would be a lie. There were a few who found the presence of a ghost in a play bizarre – there is no such thing you know. At the same time there were others who simply loved the play and saw it more than once.  We also had aficionados who noticed and commented on our “innovative” use of sound and light.

On the whole it was thumbs up for Ballabhpur.

After the beginning

Ballabhpur was successful but the extraordinary manner in which its tradition was taken forward in the plays that followed made it outstanding. The first few plays that followed were, if I recall correctly, all directed by the cast of Ballabhpur who further affirmed Ballabhpur traditions, both good and bad. Avnish Saxena directed a few as did Deepak Malhotra (Bhupati in Ballabhpur). The fact that most cast members of Ballabhpur were not final year students helped a lot. Deepak, for instance, was in his first or second year when he acted in Ballabhpur and he took his lessons far more seriously than others.

If I am not wrong the plays that followed Ballabhpur were Ek Aur Dronacharya and Baki Itihass. These were directed by Avnish and there were some outstanding performances – I particularly recall performances by Onkar Dixit and Kanwal Kishore. An anecdote from Dronacharya is in order at this stage, as it illustrates the power of drama. Let me first tell you about a particular scene in the play for those who may not be familiar with the script. In this scene a female college student, who had been assaulted by the college president’s son, visits her professor seeking help. Drawing a parallel with Dronacharya, the professor is too much of a coward to support her. Dejected and crestfallen she leaves. The young lady who was playing this role was not doing a great job when we started rehearsals. But as we came close to the day of the show, I noticed that her performance improved so much that it had a ring of honesty. I also noticed that after she exited this scene she would disappear for a while before she returned to the auditorium. Only a few of us discovered the reason for this brilliant performance and subsequent disappearance. She was not simply acting; she was transforming herself into her character and actually feeling the trauma. After the scene she would go behind the Civil auditorium where her misery and crying actually increased. We arranged to provide her with several glasses of water. It took her about 15 minutes every time after the scene before she could emerge out of her character and return back to her own self. This demonstrates the power of drama in a scary form.

Some people ask why we spent so much time and energy for a show that was only staged thrice. People involved in other pursuits, such as music, don’t need to put in as much time and a piece of music once prepared can be repeated numerous times without having to call upon a large troupe. Well for me the fun began with the rehearsals and the shows provided the climax. So the not-so-profound reason for doing drama is that we enjoyed it. It gave us an opportunity to feel and often analyse human emotions and characters an experience that is not available in dry engineering courses. It also helped make friends as the camaraderie generated in plays was intense.

Some others ask who in my opinion were the initiators of the drams as it is now called (it wasn’t called drams then). I think it was the group of students who were involved with organising the plays in the 80s were the key initiators. A few non-students were also involved every now and then – I don’t want to list the names and risk missing out people. But the person I think I should mention, who contributed consistently, for a long period of time and to a wide range of cultural activities in Roorkee (and not just Drama) is Mr Siddharth Chakravorty.

Yet some others have asked if I could have predicted that the 80s momentum would be sustained. Well the answer to this is that when doing Ballabhpur I honestly hoped it would. But when the Ballabhpur cast members took on direction in the plays that followed, I knew that we had initiated a sustainable movement.

February 2006