`Life has become a drama'
DEV S. SUKUMAR
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Ekbal Ahmed, one of the first students of Ninasam, cannot stop talking about K.V. Subbanna, his teacher, friend and guide. For this actor-director bursting with ideas, theatre is a quest for truth.
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Whatever you adopt in theatre, it gets accepted only if it is true. Stage rejects falsehood Ekbal Ahmed
RESILIENTEkbal Ahmed: `People surviving through theatre is a miracle' PHOTO: MURALI KUMAR K.
THEY wanted something on Subbanna, so the TV chaps thrust a microphone at Ekbal Ahmed and said: "Talk!" No questions, no introduction, nothing. Eleven-thirty in the morning, blazing sun, stifling heat, and Ekbal is being asked to shoot five minutes' worth of monologue on somebody who's been more than just a guru to him. Oh, this world of TV and instant gratification...
One and a half months after theatre legend K.V. Subbanna's death, people look around and wonder if anyone can fill the void. Well... nobody can, because he was irreplaceable... but then, Subbanna isn't really dead. He lives through the people he inspired and the movements he created. Ekbal Ahmed, as one of his confidants and Kannada theatre's most respected names, is also carrying on the legacy.
Ekbal the Theatre Director has been active lately. Two of his plays staged recently — Poli Kitty and Sangya Balya — got rave reviews. But the plays are no more than creative outlets. What sustains him is his painting. So Ekbal the Painter has to earn the dough if Ekbal the Theatre Director has to survive.
Memories...
Ekbal can't stop talking about Subbanna: Subbanna the creator of Ninasam; Subbanna the humanist; Subbanna the connoisseur of art; Subbanna the Gandhian. Ekbal too is partly a Subbanna creation, but now Subbanna isn't around and he has been forging his own way ahead.
Having enrolled in Ninasam in 1977, a year after it began; Ekbal spent the next seven years as Ninasam's acting teacher. Then B.V. Karanth called him over to Bharat Bhavan which he was heading. Two years later Ekbal found himself on a train back home. The Bhopal chapter had ended in ignominy - a fundamentalist government had cracked down upon the liberal institution, and art had given way to repression.
It was on the train from Bhopal that Ekbal dreamt up one of the most unique experiments attempted in India's theatre history. He returned to Sagar in Shimoga, collected Rs. 40,000 from friends, and rounded up nine theatre artistes, some of them Ninasam trained. They went to Shiruvanthe, a village six km from Sagar, and rented a house for Rs. 60 a month. A priest at the local temple agreed to let out the hall for rehearsals. A tea vendor agreed to provide food.
Ekbal had a repertory in mind, a travelling professional theatre group, which would perform for children. They would wake up early, begin rehearsals by five in the morning and wind up by nine in the night. They had selected three plays - Abhayaranya, Poli Kitty, and Gombe MacBeth.
Two months later the repertory began their tour across Karnataka in a rented van. They would approach a school, put up a stage in 20 minutes, and perform for the kids. Each child was charged a rupee for the show. The repertory, named Chinna Banna, became a sensation. Children and adults thronged their shows. Nothing like this had been done in India. In six months, the group performed in 100 villages and 20 cities and towns, in every district in Karnataka.
"There's no such thing as children's theatre," says Ekbal, the short, stout man who always wears a sleeveless jacket that has a number of pockets, sitting on the floor at a friend's office in Seshadripuram. He has trouble finding his keys sometimes - there are pockets on the front and back, and even pockets within pockets.
"We don't need to do any such thing," he says of children's theatre, "— because the life of children itself is theatre. Children live in a fantasy world - they live theatrically. A spoon becomes a plane, a matchbox becomes a bus. They have such confidence of transforming objects. So... we have to enter the world of children's theatre. Children already live in theatre."
Chinna Banna lasted only two years. Ekbal had "some negative tendencies; I was disorganised, did not save any money." Some headmasters would collect money from the children and pay the repertory only a fraction.
So he worked with Rangayana for four years, and then revived Chinna Banna in Mysore, Melkote and Kanakpura. Finally, eight years ago, he arrived in Bangalore. He's still trying to come to terms with this city and its elitist snobbery. But his creative instincts are alive and well. He has developed his own style (The `Ekbal Style'), which is a very physical form that Subbanna had identified immediately after his directorial debut. "My style is an amalgam of various styles. I've picked up whatever influences I have come across. In any case, whatever you adopt in theatre, it gets accepted only if it is true. The stage rejects falsehood. I have an imagination — a Modern Theatre concept. What is Man's future going to be? This conception is Post-Modern."
Sangya Balya itself was a unique experiment, a Kannada folk play presented in the form of a Western musical. The audience was treated to the curious but engrossing spectacle of actors in suits and hats and boots, singing Kannada folk but in Western tunes. As Ekbal said: "I wanted to show that the strength of a folk narrative does not become any less when presented in suits and hats."
Sponsor trouble
Ekbal isn't a glib talker; he isn't the arty, pretentious sort - and that can mean only one thing: sponsor trouble. On a Sunday afternoon, the day after Sangya Balya played at Rangashankara... when things were still and drowsiness hung in the air, he had said: "We're finding truth through drama. In a sense, life has become a drama. People surviving through theatre is a miracle, isn't it, because they're fighting for the truth. Theatre means a quest for truth. People will accept you only if you act truthfully." He continued inspired: "We are all seekers of truth. In real life, we are all actors. In a cafeteria we all put on appearances... actually, the drama happens there. Life, in a sense, has become theatre, and theatre has become life."
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