The National School of Drama (NSD) —one of the foremost theatre institutions in the world and the only one of its kind in India was set up by Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1959. Later in 1975, it became an autonomous organisation, totally financed by the Department of Culture. The objective of NSD is to train students in all aspects of theatre, including theatre history, production, scene design, costume design, lighting, make-up, etc. The training course at NSD Art and Culture is of three years duration. Each year, 20 students are admitted to the course. The eligible applicants for admission to the course are screened through two stages. The Diploma of NSD is recognised by the Association of Indian Universities as equivalent to M.A. Degree for appointment as teachers in colleges/universities and for purposes of registration for Ph.D.
The School has a performing wing, a Repertory Company which was set up in 1964 with the dual purpose of establishing professional theatre on one hand and continuing with the regular experimental work on the other. The NSD has made a significant contribution in promoting children’s theatre. The Theatre-in-Education Company (renamed as Sanskar Rang Toli) was founded in 1989 and has been actively involved in production of plays for children, organising summer theatre workshops in the schools of Delhi and also promoting children’s theatre through Saturday Club. Since 1998, the School has organised National Theatre Festival for Children christened ‘Jashne Bachpan’ every year.
To reach a vast majority of theatre artists in various States with diverse languages and cultural backgrounds, who cannot have access to the regular training course provided by the School, a short-term teaching and training programme titled ‘Extention Programme’ was started in 1978. Under this programme, the School organises workshops in collaboration with the local theatre groups/artists and these programmes are invariably held in the local languages.
The workshops could be broadly divided under three categories, Production Oriented Workshops, Production Oriented Children Workshops and Teaching and Training Programme in Theatre. The School has also set up a Regional Research Centre at Bangaluru to cater to the theatrical needs of the four Southern States and Puducherry.
Publication of Textbooks
Another important activity of the School is the publication of textbooks on theatre and arrange the translation of important books on theatre from English into Hindi.
Celebrations of the 50 years of the NSD are in order with its much awaited, annual drama festival that has been taking place in Delhi, since the past nine years. This golden Jubilee festival will be celebrated with performances by artists from Switzerland, Poland, Afghanistan, China, France, Germany, Norway, the UK, Pakistan, Iran, and Bangladesh. From the Indian side, the plays are from Delhi, Assam, Chennai, Chandigarh and Manipur.
The NSD came into existence when the Asian Theatre Institute in New Delhi, founded on the visions of pan-Asian collaboration and exchange, was converted into a drama school in 1958. It was affiliated to the Sangeet Natak Akademi, one of the three apex cultural bodies mooted by Jawaharlal Nehru to promote art and literature, before it became an autonomous institution. The new institution was headed by lighting expert Satu Sen, and assisted by theatre scholar Nemichandra Jain, who was to play a significant role in the campaign to “Indianise” Indian theatre in the years to come.
The school might have stuck to the beaten path but for a lucky accident in 1962. A diminutive man of great genius, Ebrahim Alkazi, was appointed its Director, and under his direction the scope and vision of the NSD were transposed to another plane altogether.
Classes were held in tumbledown quarters in Kailash Colony. The drama school had no theatre of its own. Alkazi taught his subject in live practice, not through academic lectures. So the students were first told to dig in the backyard and put up platforms and steps. Alkazi explains, “Since we built it ourselves, we could make our theatre into anything we wanted—the backyard of a village hut, a vast battleground, or a palace of pillars and towers.” He staged Girish Karnad’s Tughlaq and Dharmvir Bharati’s Andha Yug, among others, in the imposing monuments of Delhi (Purana Qila and Ferozeshah Kotla). Those who saw these plays get animated when they recall their electrifying impact. They continue to astound viewers even as sepia-tinted photographs.
Soon the NSD became synonymous with Alkazi. His students called him Natyacharya, and with reason. With his cosmopolitan background and expertise in the visual arts, Alkazi gave his students exposure to the world without, and made them probe the world within. He taught and directed a range of plays from Sophocles to August Strindberg, and discovered flamboyant drama in Indian plays, until then considered to lack action and movement. His greatest contribution was not just making the drama school visible through fabulous productions, but the professionalisation he brought to theatre practice.
Under his command, the NSD became a comprehensive centre of theatre craft. His inclusive methodology and integrated design envisaged the woods as well as the individual trees. Classroom exercises were replaced by full-length productions, some of them becoming theatre classics of modern urban drama.
The School has a performing wing, a Repertory Company which was set up in 1964 with the dual purpose of establishing professional theatre on one hand and continuing with the regular experimental work on the other. The NSD has made a significant contribution in promoting children’s theatre. The Theatre-in-Education Company (renamed as Sanskar Rang Toli) was founded in 1989 and has been actively involved in production of plays for children, organising summer theatre workshops in the schools of Delhi and also promoting children’s theatre through Saturday Club. Since 1998, the School has organised National Theatre Festival for Children christened ‘Jashne Bachpan’ every year.
To reach a vast majority of theatre artists in various States with diverse languages and cultural backgrounds, who cannot have access to the regular training course provided by the School, a short-term teaching and training programme titled ‘Extention Programme’ was started in 1978. Under this programme, the School organises workshops in collaboration with the local theatre groups/artists and these programmes are invariably held in the local languages.
The workshops could be broadly divided under three categories, Production Oriented Workshops, Production Oriented Children Workshops and Teaching and Training Programme in Theatre. The School has also set up a Regional Research Centre at Bangaluru to cater to the theatrical needs of the four Southern States and Puducherry.
Publication of Textbooks
Another important activity of the School is the publication of textbooks on theatre and arrange the translation of important books on theatre from English into Hindi.
Celebrations of the 50 years of the NSD are in order with its much awaited, annual drama festival that has been taking place in Delhi, since the past nine years. This golden Jubilee festival will be celebrated with performances by artists from Switzerland, Poland, Afghanistan, China, France, Germany, Norway, the UK, Pakistan, Iran, and Bangladesh. From the Indian side, the plays are from Delhi, Assam, Chennai, Chandigarh and Manipur.
The NSD came into existence when the Asian Theatre Institute in New Delhi, founded on the visions of pan-Asian collaboration and exchange, was converted into a drama school in 1958. It was affiliated to the Sangeet Natak Akademi, one of the three apex cultural bodies mooted by Jawaharlal Nehru to promote art and literature, before it became an autonomous institution. The new institution was headed by lighting expert Satu Sen, and assisted by theatre scholar Nemichandra Jain, who was to play a significant role in the campaign to “Indianise” Indian theatre in the years to come.
The school might have stuck to the beaten path but for a lucky accident in 1962. A diminutive man of great genius, Ebrahim Alkazi, was appointed its Director, and under his direction the scope and vision of the NSD were transposed to another plane altogether.
Classes were held in tumbledown quarters in Kailash Colony. The drama school had no theatre of its own. Alkazi taught his subject in live practice, not through academic lectures. So the students were first told to dig in the backyard and put up platforms and steps. Alkazi explains, “Since we built it ourselves, we could make our theatre into anything we wanted—the backyard of a village hut, a vast battleground, or a palace of pillars and towers.” He staged Girish Karnad’s Tughlaq and Dharmvir Bharati’s Andha Yug, among others, in the imposing monuments of Delhi (Purana Qila and Ferozeshah Kotla). Those who saw these plays get animated when they recall their electrifying impact. They continue to astound viewers even as sepia-tinted photographs.
Soon the NSD became synonymous with Alkazi. His students called him Natyacharya, and with reason. With his cosmopolitan background and expertise in the visual arts, Alkazi gave his students exposure to the world without, and made them probe the world within. He taught and directed a range of plays from Sophocles to August Strindberg, and discovered flamboyant drama in Indian plays, until then considered to lack action and movement. His greatest contribution was not just making the drama school visible through fabulous productions, but the professionalisation he brought to theatre practice.
Under his command, the NSD became a comprehensive centre of theatre craft. His inclusive methodology and integrated design envisaged the woods as well as the individual trees. Classroom exercises were replaced by full-length productions, some of them becoming theatre classics of modern urban drama.
No one knows just why Alkazi left the NSD, though he always maintained that he wanted to reinvent himself in another field, the visual arts. People do remember shouts and murmurs against his regime. The international standards he achieved suddenly became “westernisation” of Indian theatre.
The man who replaced Alkazi was equally a genius but without his discipline and meticulousness. With B.V. Karanth, man, milieu and moment coalesced to enable the entry of regional voices, genres, assertions and impulsions into the Nehruvian model of a centralised panjandrum.
Indigenous Motifs
Karanth’s main thrust was to enable students to understand and draw from indigenous traditional forms, folk and classical. His Birnam Van transformed Macbeth, astonishing in audio-visual ambience shift where the primeval images of painted, masked figures evoked an awesomeness unknown. Such powerful indigenous motifs could not be introduced ad hoc. So Karanth devised a 40-day immersion programme to send students to train with experts in the home environments of different genres and to produce a play in that style.
In his approach, dance, music and the martial arts were integral to Indian theatre, and so Karanth invited traditional gurus to work regularly with students. The focus was less on classroom academics and more on voice/body training, and the artisanic honing of technique and craft.
Extension Programmes
The most significant contribution made by the NSD is the extension programmes it has persisted in conducting over the years in remote places, from Jammu to Madurai. The workshops have created awareness about design, direction, acting. “Where it has failed dismally is in developing culture-land-region-specific modules in voice, movement and action. It is easier to adapt readymade models from the West.” “The NSD remains Delhi-centred, it has not carried out its main objective of setting up branches. But undeniably, it has provided inspiration for regional theatre workers.”
At the end of 50 years what has the NSD achieved? It has shaped some fine actors—Manohar Singh, Om Shivpuri, Uttara Baokar, Surekha Sikri, Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, B. Jayashree, Rohini Hattangady, to name a few—and trained some fine directors—Ratan Thiyam, Mohan Maharishi and Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry.
The NSD’s theatre-in-education programme, launched during Kirti Jain’s directorship, overcame the initial uphill struggle of persuading schools to allow their presentations, to become a programme with huge demand in Delhi schools.
The NSD has created an awareness that theatre is not an easy extra-curricular activity. It needs whole-time absorption for training. The school has underscored professionalism as a key ingredient for that magic on the stage. It has suggested that theatre can survive not through realistic productions but with stylisation. Its productions may have ranged from good to bad, but through them all, the NSD has consistently shown that metaphor and image are the springboards for that lasting, haunting impact on the stage.
Creating Awareness
Despite complaints of discrimination, the NSD has created an awareness of the rich cultures of the north-eastern regions, familiarising audiences to motifs from Assam, Nagaland and Manipur. Foreign directors have introduced students to forms such as Noh and Kabuki, as also to the stylistics of European theatre.
The NSD’s failures are many. Some are mainly owing to the short-sightedness and incompetence of those who have been in charge, but far more because it offers a diploma course with no promise of employment or demand. Though Kirti Jain’s decisive action effectively ended the intermittent strikes that plagued the institution until 1988, she is the first person to admit that students have cause for anxiety.
How many among the over 700 students who have passed out of the institution are visible in the world of theatre? What benefits have accrued to society from this training? Why has the state not thought of the livelihood of the youth it has taken the trouble to invest in? Regrettably, the nation’s policies have not allowed for the inclusion of theatre in school and college curricula. Dance and music, the components of natya, are better recognised on all platforms, while theatre is left to lurk in the shadows.
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