August 1995. Editor: Anjum Katyal
Ebrahim Alkazi on theatre education in modern India: 'Within our idea of theatre must come the concepts and attitudes of a scientific age.' 'We have a plethora of groups, amateur, professional, semi-professional, in all major cities. But the work they do is sporadic, uneven and without purpose. It is this lack of purpose and of a sense of direction that leads all their efforts into the wasteland of our chaotic theatre scene.' In true Modernist manner, the condition of theatre in India becomes a 'problem' -it needs solutions. And thus the monolithic institutions of culture; our Akademis, our National School of Drama,our university drama departments with their faculty and syllabuses and a curriculum for theatre. The drive to categorize,systematize,codify,streamline: The project of Modernity. It is time to recognize the historical specificity of the urge for state-level institutionalizing of theatre education and the presumptions on which it was based. The troubled question of Modernity is examined in another light by theatre scholar and playwright G.P.Deshpande in his essay questioning the necessity for a 'national' theatre. As a national institution NSD does typify a concept of 'Indian' theatre, a unity-in- diversity rhetoric that all too often collapses heterogeneity and the alternative into a dominant recipe for cultural expression which then becomes the normative.
CONTENTS Is there or should there be a National Theatre in India? G.P. Deshpande How Apolitical is cultural policy? The NSD example Biren Das Sharma Perspectives on the National School of Drama Interviews with Kirti Jain, D.R. Ankur, B.V. Karanth, G.V. Shivanand, Jayadev Hattangady, M.K. Raina Prasanna, Surendra Nath, K.Krishan Rajan Academization and De-academization of theatre education: The Kerala Experience Dr Jose George Setting up the Calicut University School of Drama: An Interview S. Ramanujam Theatre Education at Rabindra Bharati University (With an interview with Manoj Mitra) Asok Dasgupta Medea in Bombay: A Collaboration Interview with Nalini Malani, Alaknanda Samarth Theatre Log Drama Critics' Meet in Pune; A Report Dr Sushama Jogalikar Notebook Book Pages Download the complete issue here