Without batting an eyelid, I'd say that a lot of playwrighting, acting and production styles today are based on what Rangayan created. I lost my innocence, gullibility, became an adult. Rangayan collapsed when I married Farrukh Mehta and went to England. How much did your theatre laboratory Rangayan shape the growth of playwrights and actors? Why did it break up? The old school people were unused to this emotional restraint - a drop instead of a flood. I talked in the ‘icebergian' way in which he wrote, showing only the tip. Only initially! I kept telling Tendulkar, ‘I am very much your actress'. I was barely 21 when I directed Tendulkar's ‘ Shrimant'. Adi Marzban said: ‘Don't talk, jump in', and made me a theatre director. Learning about the interconnectedness of all the arts in theatre from Alkazi was a revelation. Instinctively I knew cinema was not for me. With filmstars Nalini Jaywant for aunt, Nutan and Tanuja for cousins, and Durga Khote for mother-in-law, were you not enticed by the glamour of cinema? Excerpts from an interview with the veteran Vijaya Mehta has been chairman, National School of Drama, and continues to be eExecutive dDirector, National Centre for the Performing Arts. After age 40, she directed and acted in memorable films (“Smriti Chitre”, “Rao Sahib”, “Pestonji”, “The Party”). Her 20 years' collaboration with director Fritz Bennewitz in Germany, produced not only Brecht, but plays from Kalidasa to Karnad, in an amalgam of Indian styles. Rangayan, the theatre laboratory she founded ( in 1960) with Vijay Tendulkar and Arvind Deshpande, launched the experimental theatre movement in Marathi, with landmark productions of Indian plays (Tendulkar's “Shantata Court Chalu Ahe”, Khanolkar's “Ek Shunya Baji Rao”, Elkunchwar's “Holi”), and adaptations of foreign masterworks. Training in backstage and direction with Adi Marzban strengthened her tools. After her success as Desdemona in a college production (“Othello”), a theatre course with veteran Ebrahim Alkazi became a turning point. This will trace not only her journey in Marathi theatre, but also record a pioneering phase of Indian theatre.īorn in a family of radical humanist Theosophists, following the Varkari tradition, young Vijaya was with Jayaprakash Narayan in her teens. Thespian Vijaya Mehta has just finished writing her autobiography in her mother tongue, and is working on its English version.
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