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Kinnari Vohra is a multi faceted person. Besides being a keen academic (She is head of the Political Science Department at Mithibai College) and a discerning theatergoer, she has contributed richly to the field of theatre. Her experience in the field of theatre includes collaborations on various theatre projects with theatre people like Sanjna Kapoor, Sunil Shanbag, Naushil Mehta, Mahendra Joshi, Joy Fernandez, Ahlam Khan, Ramu Ramanathan and Jaimini Pathak. She has worked in the capacities of dramateur, music & sound designer, script consultant, publicity and production designer.
Kinnari has also produced innumerable small Indian productions of plays written by playwrights like Samuel Beckett, Vaclav Havel, Jean Genet, and Eugene Ionesco. In 2002, she provided the concept and vital research for the historical-play MAHADEVBHAI (1892-1942). Later, she even translated the play from English to Gujarati.
Her academic contribution to the field of theatre is also noteworthy. She has penned seminal articles on the theory of drama, ranging from modern playwrights to the ancient art of Kath kali. Her article, �Saint, Whore, Witch� which was published in THEATRE INDIA, the National School f Drama�s Theatre journal in November 2002 is rated by pundits as a path-breaker. She has penned commentaries such as: �Women That Men Created�, again in THEATRE INDIA, NSD's Theatre journal, May 2003; and �Theatre: From A Women's Point of View�, an article that occurs in the RCWS Newsletter of June 2003.
She even conceptualized a lecture series on theatre at Prithvi. So far three lectures on �Modernity in Indian Theatre� by G.P. Deshpande have taken place. She herself was invited as a coordinator for �What after All is Modernism�, a one-day seminar in which the panelists included reputed academics and media people like Professor Ram Bapat, Prabodh Parikh, Saeed Mirza, Girish Shahane, Dr Ashok Ranade, Sunil Shanbag and others.
Kinnari's most significant contribution has been �Theatre Positive� - a Series of Play Readings that took place on a monthly basis at Prithvi Theatre. This event was born out of a mini-play reading festival titled "�And then there is English Theatre", where six Indian-English Plays were read over 3 mornings. The event itself was a great success, and �Theatre Positive� was subsequently born. On the 1st Monday of every month, a new Indian script was read and critiqued. Over 75scripts have been read in Hindi, English, Marathi, Gujarati, Malayalam and Punjabi. �Theatre Positive� was conceived by Kinnari Vohra and was overseen by both her and Ramu Ramanathan.
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The following interview with Kinnari Vohra is an insight into her personal tryst with the theatre and is commendable of the clarity that she brings to her vision of the field at both the immediate and global level. Her answers are not simple insomuch as providing easy, stock responses. Since the interview was long, we decided to divide it into two parts, spread over two weeks. The two parts of the Interview together leave enough space for someone who may be interested in questioning further the ideas espoused by Kinnari.
Since how long have you been associated with the theatre? How were you initiated to it?
I've been associated with the theatre since my childhood as I was born into a family of theatre people, which included playwrights like Jitubhai Mehta, Harinbhai Mehta, etc. I was lucky that my father had a goodish collection of the great classics. Then I worked on innumerable plays and had the opportunity to produce plays by Samuel Beckett, Vaclav Havel, Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco, etc.
You have collaborated with many theatre people in different capacities. Do you have special memories of any one such collaboration and why?
My collaboration with Ramu Ramanathan for MAHADEVBHAI was memorable. The research for the play was long-drawn and exhaustive. There's so much of material on Gandhiji and Mahadev Desai and it was my responsibility to ensure that he (Ramu) read everything.
Also, in the late seventies / early eighties I was associated with the one-act play movement. Those were heady days with plays like SSSSSH and ASHUTOSH GOWARIKER COMMITS SUICIDE. Then there was ATYARE, a genuine cafe theatre play that used to be staged at Studio 29.
In your stint with the theatre so far, you have played the roles of a dramaturge, a script consultant and a researcher amongst other specialized roles. According to you, will the future of theatre in India acknowledge the importance of these specialties?
This is the age of super-specialisation. We make a big thing of small contributions. In the theatre most of the small things are achieved without much ado. For example, Peter Brook or Satyadev Dubey, have been inspired to interpret a play production due to an essay or a lecture. In the West this is a formal. In India, it is informal and freewheeling. We borrow, we steal, we inspire. It�s happened in the past. It will continue.
As a connoisseur of theatre in India, what would be your description of it?
It could be better!
Having spawned discussions on modernity in Indian theatre, how would you describe the aspect of the modern in Indian Theatre? Can you give any example/s of productions that have struck you as espousing a modern sensibility?
Our modernity has to be our own. But that does not mean that our modernity has to reject the world of ideas generated by Post-enlightenment Europe. We do not have to. Nor can we, in reality actually do so. It is like rejecting science or perhaps worse.
There are innumerable "modern" plays in India.
Your brainchild, "Theatre Positive" was ideal for bridging the gap between the playwright and the director. Moreover, it encouraged new writing. Can you talk of any particular play/s that benefited from this exercise?
Of the seventy plus play readings, we witnessed, quote a few exceptional play scripts. For example, Sayaji Shinde's TUMBARA, which was subsequently directed by Sunil Shanbag. A play whose unique form has resulted in its very premise to be a play, being critiqued. Also, there was an excellent translation of Satish Alekar's BEGUM BARVE into Gujarati by Chandrakant Shah. This translation (titled MASTER FULMANI) magically recreates the entire Bhangwadi tradition. Interestingly, the reading also raised pertinent questions about the fate of the Gujarati parallel theatre movement in the post-Mahendra Joshi period. And then, there was Paresh Mokashi's SANGEET DEBUCHYA MOOLGI, a play, which turns the traditional bhajan-pravachan format on its head.
According to you, what would make up a robust theatre curriculum for those interested in pursuing Theatre Studies?
May be you should ask this question to Waman Kendre (Mumbai University) or Satish Alekar (Lalit Kala Akademi) or Devendra Ankur (NSD), this question. For me what Sunil Shanbag is trying to achieve with the students at Sayadhari School is interesting. Pramod Pathak's work at the Dongri chiller room is a good example of theatre's intervention in adverse circumstances.
In a country, where the Arts and the Humanities are under increasing pressure, how do you think theatre, as a discipline will survive?
A lot of people don't see theatre as a discipline. They think it is a profession, an art form, a passion, a way of life, etc. So, theatre will survive in some form or the other.
You have written and talked about the role of women on the Indian stage. With regard to that, you have talked of the need of a conscious movement to emerge; a movement that will foreground women characters rather than show
them as victims or worse as objects of sexual consumption. How do you think such a movement can be made possible?
Women characters on the Indian stage have more often than not been typecast in the roles that patriarchy has demanded of them. In my essays on this subject, I have examined this issue in detail. I have also talked of women theatre artistes whose works depict a �feminist consciousness�. However, their work is scattered and cannot comprise a body of work. By that measure, there is no conscious movement. There are again reasons for this such as lack of a rudimentary ideology, patronage and the absence of a feminine consciousness. *
You have co-authored a play along with Ramu Ramanathan for the "Vikalp-Coffee Mates-Mumbai Samachar Aayojit Rang Natya Parva 2004". It is a play that deals with a contemporary issue in a manner that is akin to black humour. How do you envisage the future of the play?
The play is a dedication to the late Comrade Kolpe, a journalist and General Secretary of the Journalists Union. The play is a salaam to Comrade Kolpe's spirit of journalism. That's all there was to it when I wrote the play.
In a world of short attention spans and consumption levels seeking instant gratification, what role does theatre have to play?
A 3-hour, wordy play by the German playwright Schiller has been receiving rave reviews on the London stage. Even in Mumbai, there are instances of a good play being applauded. Vijay Tendulkar reads short stories, poems, and essays for 2-3 hours at a stretch. A jam-packed auditorium is very attentive.
Even the much-abused Gujarati theatre has seen plays like NARMADH (Chandrakant Shah), MOJILA MANILAL (Bhuppen Khakkar), PATRA MITRO (Naushil Mehta) and some of the plays by Mahendra Joshi.
*For those of you who may be interested in finding out more about the issue of women in Indian Theatre and the problematic depiction of their characters, please refer to Kinnari Vohra�s article �Theatre: From a Woman�s Point of View�. This article is available in the Features� section of our site.
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