Debasish Sen Sharma, a story teller in films & theatre

Debashish Sen Sharma started his career as a copywriter with an ad agency. But, soon he realised that he is not carved out for a full-time job. So, he took up to freelancing, where he would write newspaper columns, scripts and film reviews. A self-taught film maker, Debashish is highly influenced by the late theatre veteran Badal Sarkar’s theatre methodologies. Till date, he incorporates his idol’s notion of space management, body movements and thematic collaborations in his theatre group Bihangam. 

In a chat with My Theatre Cafe, Debashish tells us about the concept of positive psychology in his theatre, his future plans and more.

You have been associated with theatre since the last 20 years. Tell us more about your group.

A: Well, I have been associated with many groups in these years. Sometimes as a director, sometimes as just a playwright, sometimes as an acting supervisor, and sometimes as an actor, or may be all four of them together. Currently, I am associated to ‘Bihangam’, where I write, direct and conduct workshops with children only.

How do you incorporate the elements of ‘positive psychology’ in theatre?

A: Theatre gives us a kind of connectivity, both intra group and outside. Positive psychology acts here as a therapeutic element to communicate and know yourself better. Positive psychology analyses your happiness and locates your strength areas. Its application in theatre, in turn, helps to express your character in a better way.

Emotive kids perform

How is theatre for children different from theatre for adults? Do you use any particular demarcations while working with both of them?

A: I don’t bracket out children theatre as a different genre of activity. What varies may be, is the working technique. Like, while working with the adults, you expect some knowledge base on which you can form your instructions. But while working with children, you may have to explain the things in a much simpler way. But I use almost the same theatre workshops and styles with children as I use with adults. I find children more receptive and disciplined.

Whose work in theatre inspires you? Do you try to involve any inspirations in the kind of theatre you do?

A: If you want me to take one single name as my inspiration in theatre, then that has to be one and only Badal Sircar. I did a workshop with him during my university days, which actually changed my perception towards theatre. Till today, I try to use those techniques on space management, body movements and thematic collaborations in my theatre. Apart from him, I am hugely indebted to the works of Habib Tanvir, Kanhailal, Rudrapsad Sengupta, Utpal Dutt and many others.

From being a journalist to a film maker, how did the transition happen?

A: After I did my Masters in English and Film Studies, I started my career in advertising as a copywriter. But soon I found myself unfit for any kind of office job and was not been able to do justice to my theatre and hence decided on a freelance living. I started writing. I used to write scripts, write columns for newspaper along with movie reviews. All these experiences developed the film maker self in me, a self who could observe and tell stories in the audio visual medium. I got a chance to work in a television project and my pen turned to a camera.

Tell us about your feature film Bicycle Kick. When can we expect a nationwide release?

A: Bicycle Kick is my debut film, which talks of a turnaround story of an ordinary guy. Is this a sports film, a film with a social message, an experimental film or an ordinary youth film, people often confuse its genre. But for me, it encompasses all. Whatever, this is surely a film on positive psychology, where football is used a tool. The film got a pretty good response here in Bengal and in some film festivals in India. No plans of nationwide release as yet. But I am eagerly forward to invitations from any sectors, be it an organization or institution, to exhibit my movie.

Any advice for theatre or film aspirants?

A: The only advice is to observe people and have an open mind to enrich yourself in all possible ways. Never stop learning your trade. The rest will fall in place.

What are you currently doing?

A: Currently, I am working on two scripts to make my next feature films. If things go right, I may start shooting my next film by October. I am also directing a new play with a mix cast of both children and adults for the first time in my life. The rest of the time occupies my engagement in taking classes in Universities and doing different workshops on theatre and film.

What are your future plans?

A: To extend my work in theatre in extensive ways, working with school children and corporates. Planning to launch TIE in Kolkata and working accordingly. Many stories are floating in my mind. Need to pen them down properly and make feature films out of them.

For more updates about Debashish’s latest release, visit https://www.facebook.com/BicycleKickBengaliMovie

The author of the article also writes for www.mytheatrecafe.com
The original link of the article: http://www.mytheatrecafe.com/meet-debashish-sen-sharma-story-teller-in-theatre-and-films/

Theatre is a powerful medium, says Sameera Iyengar

Acting or direction never interested Sameera. All she wanted was association with the medium of theatre, which she considered to be so powerful. In fact, with this desire in her heart, she was introduced to Sanjna Kapoor by a cousin. Soon this meeting translated into a job, which Sameera adorably loves as she gets to meet interact with interesting artists, understand the world of theatre and explore multifold growth opportunities for Junoon. Today as co-founder of Junoon (along with Sanjna Kapoor), Sameera Iyengar talks to My Theatre Café and shares her passion for the creative medium. 

1.     What interested you to theatre?

A: I dabbled a bit in theatre in school and remember that I loved to watch my seniors rehearse in the free time I had between swimming and basketball practice. But I really got into theatre in college, at MIT. Even though it’s a science and engineering college, they have a requirement that all students take 25% of their courses in the Humanities, Arts or Social Sciences. I chose to try out theatre, because I thought it would be great to do a course, where there were no text books!

They had great teachers and I slowly got hooked, and took more and more courses and even acted and directed – and got deeper and deeper into the world of theatre. I experienced it as a great space of collective creativity, but also a medium through which you learned so much about yourself and the wonderful complexity and richness of the world. That has remained my enduring fascination with theatre.

2. How has been the journey so far in this field?

A: It’s kept me on my toes! J I never thought I would be able to work in theatre in India – we didn’t have any real institutional setups, and I wasn’t really interested in being an actor or director. I just wanted to work with the medium – I believed so much in its power.

While I was visiting Delhi, wondering how to work with theatre, I ran into Sanjna – my cousin Smita was in her workshop. When Sanjna heard I’d done my further studies in theatre, she asked me if I’d come to Bombay – and I said, sure, if you give me a job. And there began a journey of learning and growing that was exciting, immensely trying at times, but always stimulating.

I was very lucky to begin work with theatre in India under Sanjna, as she is very open to new ideas and possibilities that contribute to the field of theatre. So once I understood a bit of the work, I got a very free hand to try things out. And that’s allowed me to come to this very exciting period of my life with Junoon.

I have to say that a big reason for being in theatre today is the people, who tend to veer towards theatre. From my early days in college, the person, who embraced theatre seemed to have an attitude towards life that made sense to me, and that inspired me.

During my research across many parts of India – in cities, towns and villages – I met amazing performing artists, people who really lived life on their own terms and made such tremendous contribution through their work. Today I can’t imagine working with any other medium or community of people. The theatre community is an amazing group of people – rich in their diversity and their lovable eccentricities, united in their passion and complete commitment to making theatre, and always up for new efforts and endeavours, as long as it’s a good idea, no matter what the risk. It’s humbling and inspiring to be a part of this world.

 3. What are your views on the current state of theatre in the country?

A: I think we have an amazing amount of talent, creativity and passion amongst people, who do theatre in this country. However, the environment theatre functions in is so sparse, so lacking of support structures, that it affects the work that people do.

Artists are forced to make far too many compromises in the process of creating, for lack of rehearsal space, time (because they cannot earn from theatre, and have to give time to earn by other means), training possibilities, exposure, affordable performance spaces, and other things critical to the life of theatre including, of course, money. My sense is, even the excellent work we see in India could possibly be doubly or triply excellent if we simply had basic infrastructure in place for theatre, so the artists did not have to struggle so hard simply to put on a play. I do believe we have that kind of talent and possibility.

4. Whose work in theatre inspires you?

A: It’s hard to name one person. I guess it would be true to say that most of the people, who most inspire me are directors. Habib Tanvir has of course been a great inspiration – his plays are one of my earliest theatre memories, and they were simply magical. Then of course, Satyadev Dubey – I did not get to see much of his work, but I did see his Antigone, which was simply brilliant. But more importantly, Dubey was just theatre personified. He lived, breathed and demanded for theatre in ways that have inspired and injected theatre into so many people.

Chetan Datar was someone, who was really coming into his own with some brilliant work, when he was struck down with a tragic illness. I miss him, and often think about the cruelty of his life being cut short as he was reaching the pinnacle of his career. I find Sunil Shanbag’s (Arpana) work fascinating – I love the journey’s he is taking in the theatre that he is creating, the form he is playing with and the worlds and social histories he is opening up for us to see. Sex, Morality and Censorship and Stories in a Song and now I am looking forward to the new musical he is creating.

Shaili Sathyu (Gillo) is one of the young directors, whose work I am thoroughly enjoying – I love watching her work for young audiences. These are just some names from people, who’ve been in my immediate circle of theatre life – there are many more.

Internationally, Complicite’s work has been an eye-opener, combining effortlessly great thought with wonderful choreography and performance, and a lovely ease with technology – though I’ve also seen work of theirs with absolutely no technology, and it’s equally good. And a few years ago, I saw the work of another UK based company, 1927, combining animation with performance – and was quite blown away.

 5. Any advice for people, who wish to make a career in theatre and performing arts management?

A: My advice – do it. This is a good time. We are all recognizing that with some good management, the field of theatre and performing arts can really benefit. But do it with full knowledge that you are in the service of the creativity of the theatre and performance artists. You exist because they do. They will always exist, whether or not you do. You are the fan, who wants to support their work, and give them a better playing field. You figure out how to work with them, instead of blindly imposing structures that don’t work for them. You could be a catalyst to help them thrive. That’s your role.

My other piece of advice – don’t blindly impose management practices that exist in the business sector or in the West. The bottom line for the business sector is profit; the arts have multiple bottom lines. The West has infrastructure they can rely on, and management to suit that infrastructure. We don’t have such infrastructure. So we’ve got to be immensely creative and build management practices that will work in our scenarios, taking of course best practices from business and the West that make sense for us.

 6. What are you currently doing?

A: Dreaming up and putting into place the hundred million ideas we have with Junoon!

We have just launched our annual school programme, and our annual corporate programme, and are currently working on our public spaces programme – it’s all very very exciting. We are dreaming of having regular spaces for arts engagements across the city of Mumbai – and it is beginning to look like this dream is on its way to becoming a reality. More on that as it comes together J

7. What are your future plans for Junoon?

A: We’d like to be working across the country, bringing the experience and richness of theatre through shows, interactions and workshops to school students and the immediate decision-makers in their lives – teachers and parents.

We’d like to be unleashing arts experiences across the city of Mumbai, and have a model set up and documented that people across the country could implement if they wished to.

We’d like to be working in collaboration with like-minded people across India to infuse the richness of the arts into people’s live in multiple ways.

We’d like to be developing people who can work for the arts, professionally, with rigour, and with a deep understanding and respect for the arts.

We’d like to be touring world-quality theatre regularly across the length and breadth of this country.

We’d like to be touring theatre for children across the length and breadth of this country.

We’d like to be waking up every morning as energised to take our efforts forward as we do today, as excited about possibility and finding new partners, and sharing and realizing dreams. We’d like to have grown into a larger team that shares this dream and passion, and that is equipped to make it happen.

And we’d like to have huge community support and ownership in our endeavours – so that we infuse the arts into our lives together, and sustain the world we collectively create. 

For more details about Junoon, visit the website: www.junoontheatre.org or email them: info@junoontheatre.org

The original post could be tracked here: http://www.mytheatrecafe.com/sameera-iyengar-theatre-is-a-powerful-medium/  

Book Review: Mughal-E-Azam revisited by Anil Zankar

The film Mughal-E-Azam began in 1944 and was completed in 1960. With a brief hiatus in between, the film was completed in a span of ten years – the actual shooting days just being 500! At that time, when films could easily be completed within a budget of 12-15 lakhs including the star cast, Mughal-E-Azam was aiming to set records. The budget of the film was around a whooping 1.5 crore during that time. All these facts just sum up was the passion of the film maker K. Asif, the producer Shapoorji Pallonji Mistry and other artisans associated with the film.

 The same essence of the film has been captured by Prof. Anil Zankar in his recently released book Mughal-E-Azam (Legend as Epic). Published by HarperCollins, the book takes a microscopic look at the various aspects of film by drawing upon the heritage of rich Indian arts and culture.

The book makes no fuss about the lead character Akbar in terms his rich lineage or his interests in literature, music, arts and architecture. Rather, Akbar is looked upon as an emperor, who is concerned with the welfare of the state and at the same time wishes to transform his son into a wise prince. However, trouble ensues as Saleem is in love with Anarkali, who is a dancer in the court. Like many tragic love stories, the fate of this love story too is in the hands of Akbar, for whom state welfare is always above his son’s whims and fancies.

The book intricately looks at the all the characters in terms of their personality traits and disguised intentions, which forms the core plot of the story. This along with design of the script, language and dialogue usage, music and aspects like cinematography are minutely scrutinized for better understanding of this cult film.

The film is an adaptation of a play titled ‘Taj’, written by Imtiyaz Ali in Lahore. The book also highlights the deviations from the play, which are quite significant. It must be noted that in the film Hindustan, the nation is the main narrator that introduces the context and the story. According to Prof. Zankar, this lent the film a grand status, which wasn’t seen earlier in other films. Also, the amount of research behind the book will make you want to re-read it every time you watch the film to actually understand the grandeur behind making of a magnum opus like Mughal-E-Azam. 

The book also significantly highlights the perfectionist attitude of the director K. Asif. The book states one of the instances, when Akbar was required to wear pearl-laden shoes in a shot that were quite expensive, around Rs 3000 (a lot in those days). Much to the discomfort of the production team, Asif insisted on buying the expensive shoes. So, when the cinematographer of the film R. D. Mathur asked Asif for his insistence, he replied, “Your camera may not see the shoes significantly in the shot, but when my Akbar wears those shoes and walks, he will feel every inch an emperor and that expression is what the camera will capture.”   

In fact, K.Asif’s admiration for Akbar led to the culmination of a film of this stature, which is being re-told in Prof. Zankar’s book too.   

Trivia:   

For the battle scenes, one whole division of the Indian Army (about 8000 soldiers) was employed for two months in Rajasthan.

Every raag used in the film’s background score was in tune with the time of the day. Yet no reviewer took note of this fact! 

The film released on August 5, 1960 and was premiered at Maratha Mandir in Mumbai

The article was previously published on the website www.mytheatrecafe.com. Here is the link: http://www.mytheatrecafe.com/4673-mughal-e-azam-anil-zankar-harper-collins-k-asif-dilip-kumar-madhubala/