Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
It's been a fun trip, Gracias!
|
Gracias Devraj found his wings with a humble students' group in Bangalore and finally landed on the German stage
|
The biggest joy is developing a production from scratch, seeing if it works Gracias Devraj
PHOTO: V. SREENIVASA MURTHY
DESTINATION UNKNOWN Gracias Devaraj: `I hadn't imagined I would go to Germany'
His latest role as a pilot from a strange land, stranded on a wooden roof floating across the sea, strikes close to home, perhaps. "When I was young, I wanted to be a pilot. That was my dream. I used to go regularly to Jakkur, I got a flying license and I was part of the NCC." But theatre crept in through the backdoor and took over his life. And watching Gracias Devaraj perform in the German production Robinson and Crusoe, one can see that, sometimes, the best surprises are those least expected.
For Gracias, the performances of Robinson and Crusoe at Rangashankara last week holds a special significance because he has finally returned to the stage in Bangalore after an interval of almost 25 years. His beginnings in theatre are as humble as they come. Way back in the 1970s, a group of young theatre enthusiasts came together to form Gnatak. "The motivation was to do theatre that moves you," says Gracias. "We were just a group of students with no place to rehearse. So we would rehearse under streetlights or depend on the generosity of others to provide us with some space. So we did a lot of rehearsals in old age homes, schools and so on." Out of those origins were born two great hits — The Island, which got the group its initial momentum, and Sizwe Bansi is Dead, which proved that the group wasn't a one-hit wonder.
And so things went until 1982, when a theatre-hungry Bangalore was given a chance to learn from famous German theatre person Milan Sladek. While the results of the workshop on the rest of Bangalore's theatre crowd are unknown, it changed Gracias's life forever. After the workshop ended, Sladek asked Gracias if he would like to come to Germany and be a part of his repertory. "Till then I hadn't imagined I would go to Germany. I had always thought it would be U.K. or the U.S. because of the language," he explains. A two-year interval with no news at all passed by, until one day a letter came from Munich announcing that Gracias had won a scholarship to study theatre in Germany. While studying under the scholarship, he began to take part in running mime productions and was asked to stay on after his study ended. He learnt the German language and began doing plays in German. And the rest, as they say, is history. "I had always thought I would be there for a year or one-and-a-half years. Each season I kept thinking `One more year or one more season', and before I knew it, so many years had gone by."
Indeed, Gracias couldn't be blamed for losing track of the years. After all, his career has soared to great heights in the intervening time. He has worked on various landmark productions, such as being the resident director for the musical The Gambler, which ran for over 500 shows. "I had around 80 people under me and we did eight shows a week," he says. Just before he came down to Bangalore with Robinson and Crusoe, he directed a production titled What a Wonderful World, which was played out in the old German parliament in Bonn on the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.
Besides, he has also written and directed a short film set in New York, teaches theatre, designs logos and writes scripts (Phew!). The biggest joy for him, however, is "developing a production from scratch — seeing if it works and how it works, getting the dramaturgy right, developing a proper script, working with a lot of people and using their experience together with yours, using different media and finally getting it to the stage."
Despite having been away from the Bangalore theatre circuit for so many years, Gracias has not lost his connection with the city. Like all Bangaloreans of his time, he speaks fluent Kannada and Tamil and has passably good command over Hindi too. Moreover, he has purchased a farm on Kanakapura Road, where he is attempting a "pet project". "I want to get people there not only for recreation but also for work on theatre research." But, he concedes, it will take time as the scale of the project requires a lot of finance. "I am still an Indian," he asserts as the interview ends, "and I'll always be that way."
Gracias Devaraj can be contacted at graci@t-online.de
RAKESH MEHAR
This column features those who choose to veer off the beaten track.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
|
