An actor friend who had worked with some notable theater groups in Delhi came to Naya Theater once. He was playing a character in 'Agra Bazaar'. This is his story which tells us about Naya theater back stage and the difference between this troupe and other troupes that I have seen and worked with.( I do have a problem calling the naya theater actors 'rural' because it seems to signify that these guys were people who had no inkling of an urban life, in fact , these actors stayed and negotiated with city life since the troupe was based in the city. Though the distinction between the two categories is evident as the naya theater actors had the advantage of the two worlds- village and the city. In terms of theater they had the advantage of having done 'nacha' and also negotiating the proscenium)
Now, backstage in 'Naya Theater' was even more exciting than what was happening on the stage. The theater ran on a shoe string budget. Habib saab ensured that the expenses were minimum. Costumes and properties from various old plays were used in the new ones. (As an aside , the first time when I went to Naya Theater , Habib saab asked me to prepare a role from a play, I got the whole script photocopied and spiral bound on theater's expense and Dhanno presented the bill to Habib saab, he told me that if I needed the full script then I could get it done through Anup Ranjan Pandey's office- the theater seldom gets the full script photocopied. So, there was a lot through which the theater saved its money. The first time I met Asad saab who played the 'taskiranavis' in 'Agra Bazar' and was a part of the troupe at its inception and had rejoined in 2004 after his retirement, I was astounded to find that he took a master script, sat through the night and wrote his portions of the script , copied from the master script, in Urdu…that is a world that was unknown to me)
I had learnt after a few shows at Naya Theater that there is pajama and chappal politics in the theater. If you didn't get your pajama, dhoti at the right time and hid it well then you would probably land a torn pajama or dhoti. And sign up for embarrassment. Especially in a play like 'Agra Bazar' which had a huge cast. There were times when the actors would do deals like this- okay so if you give me the chap pals for that scene when you are not on stage, you could use my dhoti in the later scene when you need to go without torn clothes. There was major micromanagement of time behind the scenes. You would always find a lot of action going on in the green room of Naya Theater.
Now coming to the original story where I had begun from. The actor friend was to play a 'sikh' who comes to a kotha ( a place where you would find not in the strictest terms 'prostitutes' but ladies who were trained in dance and music apart from the sex part of it)in 'Agra Bazar' and recites Nazir's poetry written in Punjabi by the poet. He needed a turban, which I think was there but he also needed a kurta and pajama which wasn't. He came inside the green room where the costumes' trunk was kept and asked udai ram for his costume. Udai gave him the costume , he looked at it and said- but this is torn!!! Udai said- this is what is available!!! otherwise manage…our friend was aghast, he looked at me, he was also very nervous because he had one line rehearsal on stage- Naya Theater had different ways of blooding you into performance- you could be sent on stage with just one rehearsal- since in scenes like this the others too knew your lines- somebody or the other would handle it if it went wrong. This actor in Habib Tanvir's den was lost initially with the goings on which he could not fathom- but then Naya Theater was a different world. Then he figured out a way to get a kurta- I think from Rana who decided to give him his kurta for that scene- I gave him the shoes which he needed to wear since he was a client who had come to a kotha.
Eventually the actor friend did a good job…but I am sure also learnt from the experience. While writing this am thinking, maybe there is a film in all these stories!!!
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