There isn’t another figure that has captivated and puzzled the theatre community more than Ebrahim Alkazi.
Anyone who came in contact with him, felt that they knew him. But the enormity of his personality could only be grasped in facets. Myth, fact, fiction, all coalesced into truths, half-truths, and hyperbole. A maverick, a disciplinarian, an autocrat, a creative genius; he was all of that and much more. A humanist, a teacher, an aesthete, a painter, an actor, and a man of vision were the adjectives that described him. Conflicting opinions pursued him most of his life.
Being in his presence made one constantly question, where am I going and what am I doing with my life? When you looked at him, you almost felt as if your mind and spirit were being x-rayed. And when he was angry, you definitely required the safety of an oxygen tent.
The son of a Saudi Arabian horse trader who had made Poona his home, Alkazi studied at St Xavier’s College in Bombay in 1945 and graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA), in London, in 1950. At the age of 37 – in 1962 – he was appointed director of the National School of Drama, or NSD, a post he was to occupy for the next 15 years till he stepped down in 1977.
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During these tempestuous years, he re-fashioned modern Indian theatre through hard questions regarding training, storytelling, space, language, and myth. He also challenged the entrenched assumptions behind theatre’s prevailing canons, completely reformulating them. He extended boundaries, pushing actors in directions they never thought possible and continued goading them to unlock and get a glimpse of the hidden possibilities within. He was truly a flamboyant and abrasive showman with puckish exuberance, much like a magician, capable of driving his students to both great despair and joy in equal measure.
At Purana Qila in 1974: Alkazi’s rehearsals had a discipline that made even breathing a sin in case it disturbed the rehearsal ambience. Photo: Courtesy of the Alkazi Theatre Archives
One of his first changes after joining the NSD was to extend the two-year course to three and to introduce specialisation after the first, one-year consolidated course. He effortlessly combined the roles of teacher, director and NSD head, becoming in time the most celebrated director who was, indeed mythologised.
He not only reassessed the legacies of European theatrical practices but also explored Asian traditions and regional forms, in production work. Their role in the creation of a modern theatre sensibility is something that even Alkazi’s most trenchant critics cannot erase or devalue.
As a teacher Alkazi could switch between playing father figure and a dictatorial director. His rehearsals had a discipline that made even breathing a sin in case it disturbed the rehearsal ambience or interfered with the actors’ concentration.
Exactitude is what Alkazi strived for – exactitude in movement, gesture, speech, costumes, entry and exit, make up, lights, all of which upended existing theatrical cannons. From the length of the actor’s stride across the stage to the manner in which he or she stirred their sugar in a cup was measured and precise. Examples of the precise movement of dancers were held up to emphasise these points and nothing extraneous or improvised was encouraged.
Alkazi also gave students like me, from small towns across India, a glimpse of a larger world which we were not exposed to. The Oberoi Intercontinental in New Delhi was a venue where Alkazi invited students in groups for coffee in an attempt to erase the awe of being in a five-star ambience and to make us feel at ease in unfamiliar environments.
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He generously gifted shirts and books to his students and many male actors were instructed in knotting ties. On one occasion I saw Alkazi personally polishing shoes kept outside a rehearsal space by the actors, much to the chagrin of the students. Thereafter, we never saw an actor walking around with grubby shoes.
Personally, the most far reaching impact he made on me, was to make me realise that working in theatre was not akin to joining a hobby class. He introduced me to theatre as a profession which demanded as much seriousness, labour and commitment as one would need to become a doctor or a lawyer.
The first time I saw Alkazi was at The Panjab University in Chandigarh when he walked into a classroom wearing a grey cape and a beret jauntily angled atop his wavy hair. Almost to a person, a collective gasp went up, his disquieting good looks reminding us of Hollywood heroes like Clark Gable and James Dean. He talked effortlessly about Stanislavski, Brecht, Method acting and myriad other unfamiliar concepts. The manner in which he spoke gave the impression that he was sharing intimate secrets; he gesticulated with his hands, plucking ideas from the air.
At the time, the word ‘art’ was floating in my consciousness, but I had no idea whatsoever about what it meant. My motivation was based on making my mundane life more interesting than any burning passion for the stage, and the NSD seemed to offer a venue.
The author receiving her diploma certificate from Ebrahim Alkazi 20 years after graduating from the NSD (in the mid-1970s). In fact, all students from 1976-1996 got their diploma that day. Alkazi gave the keynote address. The author recalls that while “for obvious reasons, his students were euphoric when they saw him, the rest who had heard so much about him felt that meeting him was like a dream come true”.
Joining NSD, to use a cliché, was life altering and life affirming. Overnight, all conventional do’s and don’ts, which one was conditioned to believe at the time, dissolved into nothingness. I was surprised to learn that the debonair Alkazi was called chacha by his students, a somewhat colloquial moniker for a man who epitomised the highest standards of urbanity and sophistication. I could never make myself use that term for him.
Before Alkazi joined the NSD, the students were exposed to one-act plays that were more like classroom productions. Even though sometimes full-length plays were featured, they were never performed before an audience. Alkazi, however, linked production work to professional actor training in all aspects of performance: from analysing complex characters to contextualising them historically through sets, costumes, make-up and props.
In transforming the contours of modern Indian drama, nothing was too much or too little for Alkazi. The esoteric and the mundane were both embraced with equal fervour and its significance was certainly not lost on us. He thought nothing of scooping up a cigarette stub off the floor, or a soiled paper napkin lying in the school’s corridors. This rounded aspect of training was necessary for all his students to comprehend that making tea, swabbing the stage, ironing costumes, arranging the green room, and cleaning the toilets were as much an integral aspect of training as creating a character.
I recall him telling NSD students that after a show, actors must make themselves invisible and not wait around for demonstrative kudos from their audiences. Curtain-calls were not part of Alkazi’s theatre culture. In a certain way the students were not allowed to think of themselves as public figures or luxuriate in the indulgence of praise.
Another of his constant refrains was that ego and moods have no place in theatre, debunking all the notions one had gathered about being an artist. NSD, after all, was not only about theatre; it was as much about a cleansing of the mind and spirit.
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Alkazi was an obsessive topic of conversation and a subject of debate and conflict. At night in the hostel, students huddled under blankets in winter or furiously fanned themselves in the summer heat, wildly debating not Ibsen, Chekov or Sanskrit Drama, but Alkazi; his likes, dislikes, his clothes, his eating habits, what he said, what we hoped he would say. It was our late-night aphrodisiac! It was almost as if our happiness and life hinged on his validation, his appreciative glances. To be ignored or chastised by him was enough to cause in us an apoplexy of emotional distress and remorse for lapses, real or imagined.
At times, I stood guard over my own thoughts. I could not allow them to sink to the level of trivia, as I felt Alkazi would be disappointed. No, he was not an authoritarian figure, but gave us the space to argue, investigate, analyse and to question. His qualities as a quintessential teacher, made one recognise oneself and the endless possibilities within.
Alkazi’s involvement with his students was all-encompassing and did not end just in the classroom. Unannounced, he would arrive at the hostel on Vakil Lane at six in the morning, shake us out of our sleep and make us exercise. He would periodically stress on clean underwear and advised us to avoid eating onions before rehearsals and emphasised the importance of daily bathing. Explaining that, as theatre was a space of contact and intimacy, adherence to certain basic principles were imperatives.
Sometimes before a rehearsal he would examine the actor’s underwear to stress the importance of hygiene in theatre. And, even though it was embarrassing, its significance was not lost on us, as there is nothing more foul than to enact a scene with a co-actor with a bad case of halitosis along with smelly underarms.
Alkazi as a master technician, staging a play of death and destiny against the monumental backdrop of history: Tughlaq (by Girish Karnad), directed by Alkazi, was staged at the Purana Qila in Delhi, in 1976. Photo: Courtesy of the Alkazi Theatre Archives
During my days as a student in the mid-seventies, Alkazi directed three plays that are often hailed as his definitive work, Andha Yug, Tughlaq and Razia Sultan, which were staged at the Purana Qila in 1974. The backdrop of the brooding structure, seeped in history and destruction, conjoining the past with the present, seemed like an extension of the text that was being performed. The stone edifice, with its monolithic arches, columns and stone plinth, wooden levels, platforms and steps, resonated with history. It brought forth Alkazi as the master technician, combining practicality with creative sweeps of imagination, allowing the mythic drama of death and destiny to be played out against this magnificent backdrop.
I recall an incident that made me recognise “that art is hard”. An actor playing a soldier in Tughlaq, hurtled down from the parapet in Purana Qila and though a broken leg cut short his career as a soldier, it did not in any way interrupt the play in progress. The rehearsals continued without any fuss, “As no one is dead, we continue,” said Alkazi.
The last time I met Alkazi was at his daughter Amal Allana’s home in 2018. Sitting in a wheelchair he looked handsome, but frail. I was overwhelmed to see him and whispered my respect and fondness for him. He pressed my hand and seemed to communicate through delicate gestures that what I was sharing was comprehended and valued by him. I thanked him for gifting me a way of seeing and unlocking doors of perception that enabled me to explore and access my creative resources.
Farewell beloved teacher, today we are what you made us. Your death has certainly left us grief-stricken, and I may have to wait another lifetime to hear you call me lovu, again.
Neelam Man Singh Chowdhry, who runs her theatre group, ‘The Company,’ in Chandigarh,is known for her plays like Kitchen Katha, Yerma, Nagamandala and The Mad Woman of Chaillot. A recipient of several awards including the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 2003, and the Padma Shri (2011), she is presently Professor Emeritus at the Panjab University.