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Photo: Shanker Chakravarty

Fighting stereotypes Feisal Alkazi

His earliest memory is of a house with no walls. The entire space was dedicated to theatre. Feisal Alkazi adds, “Luckily the bathroom had walls!” The house was used for rehearsals. Performances happened on the terrace. The bathroom doubled as the greenroom. Hailing from one of the most illustrious theatre families of the country, Alkazi has been furthering that heritage with the Ruchika Theatre Group for the past 35 years. Even today, his week continues to be a cultural roll-call, as he jostles between counselling, directing, organising events and chairing meetings of the National Council for Educational Research and Training.

Alkazi believes in staging plays “that reflect the people in the auditorium”. Through his work, it’s clear that he wants to explore different dimensions of the modern urban woman. He recounts that even 10 years ago, he had given a talk titled “Mai roti cheekhti, chillaati, nayika se tang aa chuka hu.” Alkazi’s heroines, evidently, can’t be easily knocked into stereotypes.

Fighting stereotypes is what Alkazi has done throughout his career. On graduating from Modern School, Alkazi and a few likeminded people decided to start Ruchika. “At that time we only wanted to do relevant plays,” he asserts, “We are still doing that.” An educationist and counsellor, he has heard out the individual child while also having staged vast productions with 1100 child actors.

With the help of his wife who works concertedly on disability, Alkazi has made 36 short documentaries on disability around the country. He recalls that one of his most memorable experiences was organising a Republic Day tableau with 150 disabled children.

He has also worked extensively with children in conflict areas, including Assam and Kashmir. Through theatre, he helps children whose parents have been killed, to get in touch with their identity. He elaborates, “We use music and drama to bring children out of their experience.

The trauma cannot be the connecting point. The common ground is that they are kids.” He feels that we are unaware of the realities in Kashmir and ignorant of the cultural ban there.

“A cinema hall opened after 18 years. When the children walked in…they asked where was the television? They could not even fathom that there could be such a big screen…”

Over the years, he finds that the generations of children who come to him have changed.

But, the need to be heard out continues. “For kids,” he says, “It’s very tough to find someone who listens. A lot of my work is listening.”

In his theatre similarly, he doesn’t demonstrate, but instead helps children to find their own way. Kids who come to his workshop he says, never stop coming. When they turn 18, he has to gently tell them to stop!

His interest and love for children has also translated into popular children’s books including “Naina’s Village”, “The Raindrop”, “Chilka Lake Adventure” and others. His latest book, “Forever Friends”, is about the friendship between two trees. It is being translated into many languages, and Alkazi says with a full throated laugh, “I’m waiting to read the Punjabi translation!”

NANDINI NAIR

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