Legacy of a theatrical titan

If there was an exhibition that embodied my father’s ‘internationalist’ philosophy, it was ‘The Family of Man’, which had been shown in Bombay’s Jehangir Art Gallery in 1956 as part of its travels across the world. This phenomenal photographic exhibition was curated and designed by Edward Steichen, the head of the photographic section of MoMA, New York. I remember being totally mesmerized as my father held my hand and led me through a maze of huge blowups of faces. Conceived as a response to the horrors perpetrated by the war, Steichen refused to

highlight the devastation and grimness of the war; instead, he focused on the people’s will to live, to survive! Today, Steichen’s approach reminds me of Brecht’s advice to his actors to ‘play the opposite’ in order to make your point!

A row of narrow, nine-foot-tall cupboards stretched from floor to ceiling across the length of an entire wall of our Vithal Court flat. Very 1950s in its design, behind its Burma teak elongated doors lay a world I would feast on every evening as soon as I returned from school. Throwing down my satchel, I would fling open the refrigerator door, grab the large bowl of freshly cut fruit, smother it with malai (fresh cream), pluck a book or magazine from one of the cupboards and settle down cross-legged on a very Jane Drew-looking chair to spend the next half hour in a state of total bliss!

I was inevitably drawn to illustrated books and magazines like Plays and Players, which my father regularly subscribed to, revealing the latest Old Vic productions or books on modern dancers, and, of course, my old favourite, ‘The Family of Man’ catalogue with its images of peasants, factory workers and artisans—people close to the land who worked with their hands. These were the first socialist-inspired images I had ever set eyes on and they left an indelible impression, shaping my own aesthetic in later years.

My father would often reference ‘The Family of Man’ exhibition in his talks on art or in rehearsals. I believe it awakened in him a deep and abiding interest in photography as a creative medium as well as a historical document. In later years, this developed into a passion, leading him to create an expansive collection of rare nineteenth-century photographs. The design aesthetic of the exhibition also left its traces—the huge blowups of faces suspended at different heights, many above eye level, was an idea that Alkazi developed to compelling effect in the layout of his own exhibitions. Also of great interest to him was the juxtaposition of images with poetic texts that played off one another to create an exciting new audio-visual experience that induced alternative ways of ‘seeing’ and ‘reading’ artworks.

On a more humane level, the exhibition featured images of ordinary people whom Alkazi had always been sympathetic to in daily life. ‘There was sunlight and beauty to be found everywhere,’ he said. My father would always end his productions, even deep, dark tragedies, on a note of hope, never despair. This constituted his belief in mankind, ‘the essential oneness of humanity throughout the world’ that Steichen had so remarkably achieved in his landmark exhibition.

From where I sat, I could see my mother at the far end of the flat furling and unfurling her lightly starched, gauzy cotton sari around her, looking over her dainty shoulders at herself in the full-length mirror. Her movements had become lighter and more graceful under Balasaraswati’s rigorous training, while her figure had filled out slightly—a slim waist resting on curvaceous hips. This was the time after her afternoon nap and cup of tea when my mother would be getting ready to attend rehearsals. My father was currently rehearsing Miss Julie.

On her return from Madras, my mother had taken her cousin Nicky Padamsee’s advice to consult a psychoanalyst, as he felt it might help her come to terms with her anxieties. In those days, going to a psychoanalyst was frowned on, but my mother persevered, confiding in me in later years that she had found the analyst’s suggestion to write down her recurring dreams and feelings an invaluable exercise in understanding her deep-seated fears and looking at her life more objectively. It was around this time that my mother began penning her thoughts, filling up notebooks, until she gradually taught herself to abbreviate and contain her responses and emotions into exquisite haiku-like poems. This was my mother’s strongest quality; she always found ways to channelize her pain and anguish into something more constructive and creative. First, it was dance and now poetry. Here, in her poem ‘The Search’, my mother reiterates the need to understand:

To know beyond the fact,

To grasp the core of meaning

This is the futile search,

But barren husk Is all the mind can reach

Beyond the mind there is a truth

A truth which must be found

This force within moves blindly forth

Impelled against the will

It batters down each feeble wall

With elemental power

This seeking, searching soundless thing

This pounding from afar

Denying all that has been known

Demanding evermore

Pursuing with relentless grip

The all-consuming flame

Whose touch destroys yet reaffirms

The life force within.

***

Making good on her word, my mother, on her return from Madras, wholeheartedly supported my father in the hope that this might strengthen the bonds of not just their marriage but, more importantly, prevent the dissipation of the work they had collectively built. Now, as they lived through this dark, unsettling period of their lives, both my parents made herculean efforts to avoid their work becoming collateral damage caused by their strained relationship. Somehow, my father created some of the most intense, masterful productions of his entire career during this turmoil-filled period.

Alkazi’s relationship with the two women he was so closely involved with must have preoccupied him. As with all artists, life becomes the raw material to shape into art and one sees Alkazi using his own understanding of the conflicts that Roshen and Uma were experiencing reflected in his choice of texts. Uma, willing to forego the security of her marriage and live independently on her own terms, was even so facing the repercussions, whereas Roshen felt betrayed, ignored and unacknowledged. In his own family, Alkazi had observed how his mother and five sisters had yearned for the freedom to explore a world beyond the four walls of their home. So did the young actresses he now worked with, struggling daily against parental and societal prejudices to pursue a public profession like theatre.

Undoubtedly, these were times when women were the agents of change, the new protagonists. Therefore, it was the woman in her multiple guises—with all her uncertainties, assertions of selfhood, suppressed anger and hysterical breakdowns—that became the major theme that preoccupied Alkazi in his productions between 1956 and 1961.

It was the classics that he would invest with contemporary significance: Strindberg’s The Father, Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, Anouilh’s Antigone and Eurydice, Strindberg’s Miss Julie, Lorca’s The House of Bernada Alba and Yerma and Euripides’s Medea—each a powerful, woman-centric play that allowed Alkazi to explore the psyche of the modern woman.

(Excerpted with permission from Amal Allana’s ‘Ebrahim Alkazi’; published by Penguin)