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Princess of Prithvi
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Sanjana Kapoor, daughter of Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer Kendal, keen on taking theatre to places across the country. In conversation with GEETA DOCTOR
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SHE COULD be a flower child who has just wandered in from the Sixties. She has got the clothes, long layered garments in earth colours. She has got the beads, dangling earrings and chains and she has got the hair. Sanjana Kapoor wears her hair around her neck as if it were a wild thing that she has to continually keep twisting into knots and flinging behind her, only to have it curling back over her shoulders.
Sanjana is also part of the legendary Prithviraj Kapoor family, a princess of a cinematic dynasty so glorious that just talking about it brings with it a longing for the tinselled kingdom that they once ruled. From her mother Jennifer she inherited the irrepressible genes of the Kendal family, who were known for their vivid rendering of Shakespeare in almost every school and college of worth in the country. More than anything else, she is now the Mistress of Prithvi, the small theatre with great dreams that both her parents Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer created at Juhu in l978, as homage to Prithviraj Kapoor's own wish to have a permanent place in Mumbai for Hindi theatre.
Transcends language
"I think I inherited the passion from both my grandfathers. It was Prithiviraj Kapoor's dream to start a small theatre for a Hindi audience in Bombay at a time when there was no space at all for such an audience. It was a keen audience, but tiny. Today we cater to audiences in English, Gujarati and Hindi. With Marathi it's a different type of audience based on locality. But Marathi theatre is going through a problem because while there is a huge audience for commercial theatre, they do not have space for alternate Marathi theatre. For me, there is no question of any divide. I don't have to cater to a specific audience. When we take a play to Kolkata we hope that a Bengali speaking audience will listen to an English play and that an English speaking audience can enjoy a Bengali play. For me theatre transcends language, or at least most theatre does, except those that are based completely on language. That's what "Footsbarn" does. They are this group that was founded in Cornwall and now based in Paris who actually travel around in a caravan and are able to reach out to people all across the world because of the incredible physicality that they bring by using masks and circus acts and the language of theatre in such a way that everyone understands."
"They used to do adaptations of different plays of Shakespeare, and yes, that did ring a bell for me. It was so much like what Shakespearwallah was all about, what I had heard about those performances in my childhood." For those who will remember them, Geoffrey Kendal, his wife Laura and younger daughter Felicity (who later went on to become a famous actress in London) came to Chennai and performed their repertoire of Shakespeare at the Queen Mary's College in the early 1960s.
Sanjana is charged with the idea of forging links with local theatre groups across the country.
She has already taken part of the Prithvi repertoire to New Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore, where she was invited by Arundhati Nag to perform at her newly opened Rangashankar theatre during the month-long theatre festival.
Networking, the key
"I think the idea started at last year's Prithvi Festival when we were celebrating 25 years of Prithvi. We usually have these festivals when everyone comes and does their thing and then they go back, but this time we actually spent time talking to each other, there were around 90 delegates and we just chatted. Sometimes you need space just to talk. You need a space like you have here," she says, gesturing to the lovely green setting in which we are sitting at Amethyst, "where you can just forget the world and the one thing that we discovered was how isolated we all felt. No matter where we came from, no matter what differences there were in our ethics, economic reality, or the kind of audiences that we were seeking, one thing that was common was how isolated each one of us felt. It's out of this that we felt that we should form a network, though I prefer the word alliance. It could be a structured or unstructured alliance, or network, where we can strike chords, or maybe not, across the country with our ideas, or perhaps with our skills, our resources, but maybe just with our experiences. It does not have to be propelled by Prithvi. I don't believe in a Prithvi brand that I would like to be stamped with. It's not that I want to create an `Events' company, based on commercial interests. No, not at all. I hope to create a situation where we can have partnerships with local groups, which will reflect the local culture so that in the end it will be propelled by people's needs and requirements."
At Chennai, Sanjana has already started a dialogue with "Magic Lantern". Their first venture will most likely be a performance by the "Footsbarn" group which will be touring the country in January and February 2005. She also hopes that they will be able to organise films based on theatre, exhibitions, workshops and discussion groups between playwrights so that more scripts will get written. "What would I like to do for myself?" asks Sanjana, "There's nothing more I'd like to do than act." For the Princess of Prithvi at the moment, the play is the thing and she's enjoying every moment of it.
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