“It has taken me many years to realise that I am actually doing something significant,” confesses actor and theatre director Lilette Dubey, who started the Primetime Theatre Company exactly 20 years back. Ironic, coming from someone who has directed and acted in a series of extraordinarily versatile plays, which have done some serious good to the theatre scene in India. Further, the Primetime Theatre Company can take credit for being one of the first to move away from the traditional mould of performing Shakespeare, Tom Stoppard and Samuel Beckett and providing a platform for Indian writing in English. It also pioneered the art of running a professional theatre company that did long runs and took plays abroad to a global audience.
“One of my primary goals when we started off with Primetime with my friend Sita Raina in March 1991 was giving a voice to Indian writers. But it wasn’t as easy back then. At that time there was no Internet, so it was really difficult to get access to these plays. But once we did, I realised that it’s like unearthing a treasure,” says Dubey. She has gone one to direct works of writers like Girish Karnad, Mahesh Elkunjwar, Mahesh Dattani and Pratap Sharma, almost starting a sort of revolution among theatre groups who realised that turning to Indian writers was in fact a refreshingly relevant option. “I had by then performed plays by Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Bertolt Brecht — name it and I had done it. It was great to be called Martha and Jean and talk in a mid-western accent, but at the end of the day that was just not me. I was dying to direct plays and that too plays by Indian writers that would be relevant to the socio-political scene in India. I think we managed to set the ball rolling with our production of Mahesh Dattani’s Dance Like a Man,” she says.
Dubey attributes her world view to the time she grew up in. “Most people who grew up in the sixties have this Bohemian outlook to life,” she says. “I always knew I couldn’t wear a suit, go to work and lead a conventional life.” Her film and television career has given her ample opportunity, but she is clear about the fact that her heart lies with theatre. “I have some really interesting film roles at the moment. In fact, I just got back after shooting with Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Dev Patel. It was a wonderful experience. But I got back and stepped into the theatre to rehearse a really old play and I felt this familiar ‘tingle’. And I knew this is it for me. There can be no greater high.”
The Primetime Theatre Company’s plays have travelled to over 40 cities in the world and have won acclaim and rave reviews. But for Dubey, a particular review from New York holds a very special place. “We had taken Dance Like A Man to New York and suddenly when we were performing we were told that a critic from the New York Times was watching. At that time we really didn’t know how difficult it is to be reviewed by the New York Times. We had just blithely gone there with our little play. But we got a rave review. And what made it really worth it was the fact that the American critic had actually researched Natyashastra and Nehru’s socialism before he watched the play and cross-referenced it.” Dubey points out that the audience that watches her plays abroad is not the nostalgia-hungry NRI audience, but a global audience. And that, she thinks, is the challenge. To make the language of theatre transcend cultural barriers and reach out to audiences across the globe.
To celebrate the completion of 20 years, the company has put together a festival and is taking six of its favourite performances to Delhi, Mumbai, London and seven cities in the US. But how does one pick six from 24 performances that are close to your heart. “Quite honestly, we picked them for their versatility. There is a historical like Sammy, a social drama like Dance Like a Man, Womanly Voices that is sheer prose narrative, an absurd comedy like Love in the Brink, 30 Days in September that was driven by a social issue and Wedding Album — a delightful family drama,” she says.
However, the one thing she hasn’t yet done so far is made a foray into regional theatre. Something she plans to change very soon. “In all these years I’ve never acted in or directed a Hindi play.” And what better way to start, than with Mohan Rakesh’s poignant play about a dysfunctional family Aadhe Adhure. She also plans to direct Girish Karnad’s The Dreams of Tipu Sultan, a historical and a narrative on the history of Indian theatre with Zohra Sehgal as the protagonist.
Dubey admits that she never imagined that theatre would actually be a sustainable career option. Coming from a professional family with doctors and mathematicians, the least that was expected of her was to become a nuclear physicist. “Art for them was not something you dedicated your life to. It was for pleasure. You had to work for science,” she laughs. Adding, “It’s now that I realise that it is in fact art that illuminates life. Mathematics may give a high, but some of the most important things in life are because of art.”
Nuclear physics’ loss thankfully has been theatre’s gain.
The festival will be on from December 14 to 19 at the NCPA Experimental Theatre and January 8 to 16, 2011 at Prithvi theatre