Marathi play director Aniruddha Khutwad believes that it is the training and understanding of theatrical basics that would help an actor long-term. He speaks to Rupinder Kaur
Do me a favour, he said, show me where the land of righteousness is and how I can get thereIJ At once the learned man opened his books, spread out his maps, and looked and looked and he said, no, he couldn’t find this land anywhere. The man had lived and suffered, and had believed all the time in the existence of this land but now, according to the plans, it didn’t exist at all. He felt robbed,” narrated luca, the wise, to other social derelicts living together in an underground shoddy lodging somewhere during the 19th century Russia.
It was exactly at this moment, during National School of Drama’s first year students’ production The lower Depths, when we related and empathised. The play, known to be Russian political activist and dramatists Maxim Gorky’s best work, was directed in Hindi by NSD alumnus Aniruddha Khutwad. “I was given a choice between a musical and a realistic play to direct, so I picked the latter which we worked on within 40 days,” Khutwad, also a visiting faculty at NSD, said.
“During the first year, the students are introduced to the fundamentals of theatrical realism but it is during the third year when the course is more intense. lower Depths is a heavy play which I wanted the students to work on since each character has his/her own biography. Everyone explored their roles which are very detailed,” he explained when we asked him why he chose this complex text.
Khutwad also tried to adapt this period play, but that required more time for research. “I was looking for circumstances. I even went to the shelters for homeless people (Rain basera) but that didn’t work out since working on each and every aspect would’ve taken a lot of time,” he told us. The actors watched Gorky’s autobiographical trilogy — The Childhood of Maxim Gorky, My Apprenticeship, My Universities, and also conducted workshops for costumes, lights and music.
Training workshops is what Khutwad emphasises on for all enthusiasts and practitioners. “Many direct plays without holding any training workshops which are crucial for imparting the basic theatrical techniques. Even the participants in a production think it’s all about the lead role and would not make an effort to understand how important the other characters are. This I think is because of the TV soaps and cinema. But once you reason with them, especially the youngsters, they understand and are ready to train. I never commit that they’ll bag movie or soap opera roles,” he shared.
The director, who hails from Pune and runs a theatre group called Theatre Space has also directed many Marathi plays. He is very vocal about his issues with regional theatre directors. “Not many are writing play scripts, they would pick an old text and not adapt it in the contemporary context. Since theatre has become very commercialised, it needs to incorporate more social awareness elements so that people can connect. The enthusiasts also need to experiment because there is more to theatre than just being a source of entertainment,” he suggested.