NEW DELHI, Mar 19: Stunning images from the world of Indian theatre featuring in action stalwarts like Zohra Sehgal, Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, Manohar Singh, Seema Biswas. Mohan Agashe, Ratna Pathak Shah can now be seen in an upcoming exhibition.
Captured by director of the Shriram Bhartiya Kala Kendra, Shobha Deepak Singh, the exhibition comprising nearly 60 photographs is scheduled to commence here from March 26.
India Habitat Centre’s Visual Arts Gallery is hosting the six-day long show “Theatrescapes” that has been curated by Alka Pande who has conceptualised the show on the theme of the navarasas.
A book by the same name published by Roli Books and edited by Pande featuring nearly 200 photographs would also be released. The book has a foreword by Ebrahim Alkazi, and essays by Pande, Amal Allana and Shobha Deepak Singh.
“From the age of about six, I remember myself with a camera and spending hours with silver paper-making imprints of various objects. I have gone from wielding a Rolliflex to a Yashica; onto Contaflex, a Minolta and Nikon F5 and finally now I have Nikon F6. Today, I have more than three lakh images in my collection,” says Shobha Deepak Singh.
Singh says her time spent at the Living Theatre under the tutelage of theatre doyen Ebrahim Alkzi for a course in directing helped her experience the vast scope of photographing theatre performances.
“Being completely self-taught, I have often strapped myself with my camera and lenses to often rush out for an unexpected shoot. As a child, my camera saw the light of my personal space: siblings and nature. Later it turned into a coveted opportunity to play with lights, performance, and theatre at the Living Theatre.” she says.
Singh has documented over 40 theatre productions by Ebrahim Alkazi, Amal Allana, Lillette Dubey, K N Panikkar, Nadira Zaheer Babbar, Neelam Mansingh Chowdhury, Ratan Thiyam, Ratna Pathak Shah among others.
Curator Pande calls Singh an archivist whose dogged perseverance with the camera compounded with her obsession for capturing the single-shot of a theatrical performance has led to rich collection of images on theatre for posterity.
“Through the camera eye, Shobha captures the moment of unpredictability in theatre. In a country which has not witnessed any formal documenter on Indian theatre, the visual archive accomplished by Shobha is a rare work.
“To bring a structure to the vast cache of Shobha’s photographs, I thought of leaning on by Bharata Muni’s Natyashastra. Emotions are integral and endemic to theatre and there could be no better way to bring some kind of thematic structure to the vast range of emotions than through the theory of navarasa invested in the Natyashastra itself.”
Both the show and the book relive the experience of theatre through the navarasa: vibhasta (disgust), saundarya (beauty, eroticism), hasya (comic), karuna (pathos), raudra (fury), bhayanaka (terrible), vira (heroic), adbhuta (marvelous) and shanta (peace).
A vast treasure trove of thousands of images, capture the moods and emotions of a diverse range of actors.
Amal Allana says in an essay of the book “As we view her photographs, the color and movement appear to arrest her attention. Trying to capture actors moving at great speed, with colored costumes and lights streaking in vibration around them creating a penumbra like aura, results in images of loose or soft focus, that in a more experiential manner are able to capture the essence of fleeting moments.” (PTI)
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