The Hindu                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jun 12, 2006   
`Teaching theatre is
rewarding'

G.
Kumara Varma, who has been in the thick of the theatre movement, is
looking homeward after his innings in Panjab University. K. Pradeep has
a chat with him

I HAVE EXPERIMENTED WITH
ACTORS AND SPACE BUT ALWAYS BELIEVED THAT UNLESS IT IS USED TO
COMMUNICATE THOUGHT, THERE IS NO MEANING IN SUCH EXPERIMENTS G. KUMARA
VARMA





HOMEWARD BOUND Veteran theatre personality G. Kumara Varma is
set to make a comeback to Malayalam theatre Photo: H. Vibhu

Professor G. Kumara Varma, familiar to die-hard
theatre enthusiasts of Kerala, is set to make a return to Malayalam
theatre. After a long teaching stint at the Panjab University, this
reputed theatre director will be back by the end of this year. Planning
to settle at Tripunithura, Mr. Varma hopes to get back to where he
belonged. Teaching was certainly not a career that Mr.
Varma aspired for, especially after being so actively involved in the
Malayalam theatre movement during the late sixties and early seventies.
Surprisingly, he slipped into the teacher's role quite smoothly and
soon began to love this new responsibility. But did it blunt his
creative potential? "Certainly not. See, these courses in the
University were all production-oriented ones. Teaching was not all
about books and lectures. It demanded a lot from the teacher and the
students. There were so many productions that we did, experimented with
so many new trends, styles. So many of our students have made it big on
stage and screen. We always had a very willing group of students.
Personally, it was a very rewarding experience," says Mr. Varma.
Ask him to list out some of his illustrious
students and Mr. Varma becomes hesitant. Probe him further and he reels
out a few, "Anupam Kher, Kamal Tewari, Pankaj Berry, Mangal Dhillon,
... I cannot do this, I may miss out on someone. Anupam Kher was
initiated into acting at the University. Then there are so many behind
the stage artistes, directors, art directors, who have done extremely
well for themselves."


Nataka Kalari


The Nataka Kalari movement that flourished in
the late 60s and 70s was a renaissance that was marked by deviations in
text, grammar, style and presentation. And Mr. Varma played a pivotal
role, organising workshops and directing plays in those days. He gave a
fresh, new touch to direction, interpreting the textual inputs of
eminent playwrights like G. Sankara Pillai, C. N. Sreekantan Nair and
Kavalam Narayana Panicker. Some plays like `Bandi,' `Saketham,' and
`Saakshi,' are still considered touchstones in the art of direction.
"That was a wonderful time, those five years.
Theatre was alive and vibrant. For someone like me who has just come
out of drama school this was real fertile ground. I would have
continued had it not been for a call from my teacher, Ibrahim Alkazi,
who was head of the National School of Drama then. I was asked if I
could assist Balwant Gargi in setting up the department of Indian
Theatre at Panjab University. I decided to go ahead and accept the
offer."
This was the beginning of an exploration into
theatre studies. Mr. Varma went on to study at the Rome University and
travelled all over Europe as part of the Berliner Ensemble. The
Ensemble, founded by Bertold Brecht, survived his death to become the
guardian of Brecht's legacy and also often staging innovative,
contemporary and classical plays. This experience, along with three long
decades of teaching, helped him view Indian theatre in a new
perspective. The whole process of transformation in Indian theatre has
not met with the approval of this theatre scholar.


Focus on movements


"The focus today is more on stylised, physical
movements rather than the thought process. There is a firm tendency to
follow the Grotowski system. Under this system the actors, in an effort
to redefine the relation between actor, stage space and the audience,
rely on extensive physical training that eliminates thought. It over
emphasises the importance of the actor and trivialises the role of the
playwright and all other essential elements of theatre. For them the
watchword is don't think, only `act'. I have experimented with actors
and space but always believed that unless it is used to communicate
thought there is no meaning in such experiments."
Mr. Varma has already chalked out his comeback
plans. He hopes to renew his theatre connections and get into the thick
of things. And perhaps to get a feel of that experience, the language,
the life, he adapted and directed M. Mukundan's `Oru Dalit Yuvathiyude
Kadana Katha,' recently, at Jaipur. "All these years I had wanted to do
a Malayalam play but somehow never got to doing it. Then this happened.
It was done for the National School of Drama's Repertory Company and
was staged twice in Jaipur. This Hindi adaptation of the novel was
faithful to the original text. The narratives were retained and the
monologues dramatised. Thankfully it was received well," winds up Mr.
Varma.