An Interaction with Satyabrata Rout, an Eminent Scenographer

 

An Interaction with Satyabrata Rout, an Eminent Scenographer

Prasanta Chakraborty

Visiting professor

M.B.B. University

Agartala , Tripura

 

Satyabrata Rout (born 17 March 1958) is an Indian Theatre Director, Scenographer, Author, and Theatre Academician. A former faculty member of the National School of Drama, he retired last January as theProfessor and Head of the Department of Theatre at the University of Hyderabad, India. Hehas come back home in Orissa. He is known for his contribution to Visual theatre in India. In 2016 he received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for the field of Theatre Direction from the President, Ram Nath Kovind in New Delhi. Besides, he won the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Award in 2013 for 'Matte Ekalavya’; the Sahitya Kala Parishad Award in 2015 for the play ‘Tumhara Vincent’ by Best Manuscript award; Manohar Singh Smriti Puraskar for his contributions to the field of theatre and B. V. Karanth Memorial Award in 2019 by the National School of Drama.

 

This introduction of Dr. Rout is for those audiences who take interest in modern experimental plays.

 

Dr. Rout came to Agartala to attend a workshop of NSD, Agartala branch. We were lucky to have him amongst us for some time, which enabled us to know a lot about his dedication and contribution to the field of dramatics, which facilitated him to accomplish his present position.

Being so close to him, we could hardly miss an opportunity to interact with him. So, along with Sri Sanjoy Kar, an eminent theatre personality of Tripura, I went to meet him in the NSD guest house to interview this great Scenographer of our country. I had a set of questions for him which he answered jovially.

 

1.      PC- To begin with, would you please enlighten us on how are you attracted to the theatre? Is it accidental or inherited?

 

SR- It’s not at all accidental that I choose dramatics as a priority in my career. Rather, it can be better interpreted as inherited. Our family was culturally very much active. My grandfather himself owned a Yatra Company. I have seen in my childhood my father acting in some of the plays of this company. So my entry into the domain of theatre, in a sense, is right from my childhood days. But acting in a certain play and making it a career is completely different. Nobody in my family wanted me to see me as a theatre personality. I was not allowed to see Yatras. Instead, they advised me to devote my time to my studies. Although my father performed in some plays, he was an academic - a Headmaster in a reputed school. So my father was an occasional actor while my grandfather was professionally attached to the company.

I have seen eight bullock carts carrying the props. Costumes made in Murshidabad were bought forthe Yatra Company.The characters are mostly historical or mythological in the yatras- no social drama those days. My family was resisting me to join as an actor in the yatras as there was hardly any social recognition. And financially too, it was not viable.  Yatra performance was looked down upon as a low-ranked performance. I was not even allowed to see any Yatra. My grandfather was a zamindar in those days and we had a railway contract in Bangladesh before the partition in 1947. They came back to Orissa during 1946-47 and settled here. After partition, my grandfather stopped his business in erstwhile East Pakistan and had enough money to open a theatre company in Orissa with good Oriya actors and actresses for the company. Although my grandfather owned this company, I never saw him acting although he was a wonderful violinist. Of course, my grandfather’s father was an actor.

2.      PC- Is there any other influence on you?

SR- Yes. The second influence that I received is from my village priest who used to give us primary education from scripture in his pathsala under a tree. He was good at sculpture. He used to make effigies of gods and goddesses and sell the same during some festivals. So my idea about visuals developed, in a sense, from these sculptures. My father was a kind of folk-artist too. All these activities of my family and my pathshala guru had a bearing on me which coxswained my choice to be what I am now.

3.      P.C. -Where did you have your Graduation from and what was your stream of study? Please tell us something about your activities there.

S.R.-I studied for my graduation at Ravenshaw College in Botany as my family wanted to see me as a doctor later on. But this college had lots of cultural activities. We had a dramatic club in college and I joined the club I acted in three plays in four years of my college life. The directors used to come from outside.

In Orissa, there is a tradition of Naba Natya Andolon. In the 1960s, 70s, and even 80s, there were new waves of drama coming up under Western influence. Many Western playwrights were introduced to us through our teachers. Thus we came to know about Harold Pinter, Brecht et al and their plays had been introduced to us in the Oriya language. Thus, I came to know about the famous Doll’s Houseand also about the Bengali Doll’s House of Sambhu Mitra as well.  As a result, I became very much fascinated with theatre.

4.      PC- What did you do after Graduation?

SR- During my graduation, I applied twice to Medical College. There was a provision for students to join Medical College after Intermediate but I could not manage a seat in Medical College at that time. So after my graduation, I got a seat in Medical College. In Medical College, there were two teachers who acted in films and I was fascinated by the Oriya films.

5.      PC- When did you meet Mr. Karanth for the first time and what happened next?

SR- After I completed two years of studying Medicine, in my third year, I met B.V. Karanth who came to Orissa in 1979 to attend a seminar. I met him and expressed my desire to do theatre. He shouted at me and told me to continue my studies in Medicine. I came back disheartened but decided to apply for a Masters from NSD. Although I did not leave the Medical seat at that time I was in Delhi for the first time and stayed in the quarters of an MLA. From there, I went for the interview. I found Karanth sitting on the interview board. He refused me any seat in NSD. I started crying. I was a twenty-one-year-old guy at that time. However, another senior member of the board, Mrs. Rita Kothari, a dancer and singer, wanted to give a chance to face the interview. She was a motherly figure to me. She asked me to show what I had prepared for the interview. I was a bit nervous. But I performed for five minutes. I was not at all satisfied with my presentation. Upset, I cut short my stay in Delhi and came back to Orissa the next day.  I thought Medical studies was not my area. So I thought of finding some source to do some theatre or film in Bhubaneswar. However, I got a renowned Oriya film artist who agreed to give me some work in the Oriya film industry.

 After one and half months, I got a selection letter from NSD with a handwritten note from Karanth warning me not to join NSD leaving Medical studies as this will dishearten my parents.  He asked me also in that letter to submit an endorsement letter signed by my father if I want to join NSD. I signed for my father by my left hand and went to Delhi to take my admission in NSD.

6.      PC -How did your father come to know about your joining NSD and what happened next?

SR- My father used to send money orders to me in Medical College but to his utter surprise, he found that the money orders were coming back to him. He came to Cuttack to see what was going on. I told my friends before not to tell him about my whereabouts. But my friends told him that I was in Delhi. It shocked my father very much to know that I joined NSD leaving my Medical studies. The middle-class sentiment prevailed in him. He came to Delhi during the Dussehra and told me to pack up and go back to Orissa along with him. He told me that he would be there for three/ four days to meet the   Director Mr. Karanth, which I tried to avoid on some pretext. But one day while I and my father were sitting in the NSD mess, I saw Karanth passing by the mess. I wanted to distract my father but he saw Karanth and asked me if he was the Director. I nodded and he hurriedly left the place to meet Mr. Karanth. Introducing himself, my father told Karanth that he wanted to talk with him. Mr. Karanth told my dad to meet him in the office after lunch. I became totally upset sensing danger. After lunch the same day, my father met Mr. Karanth at his office. I sat outside while they talked for 45 minutes inside. I found my father coming out with a smiling face. Karanth had convinced him completely saying that I was a good student and that I had a bright future. They would take care of me. My father was happy.

After six months, my father came to Delhi in a CCRT training program and told me that he wanted to be trained under the guidance of Mr. Karanth. So both of us, me and my father, became students of Mr. Karanth.

7.      PC- Please tell us about your professional life after obtaining your degree from NSD

SR- I completed my course in NSD specializing in design and direction. But there was no job for me although in Noida there were a number of studious coming up. One of the reasons was that I was not a Hindi-speaking person and in Delhi, my language became a barrier to acting in a TV serial. My seniors Nasiruddin Shah and others set a trend of joining the Bollywood film industry but for me, the language was a barrier firstly and secondly, my preference was design and direction. Further, I felt my interest was not in film but in theatre. I was a painter and I had already started doing lots of work on the painting. I took a temporary job as a floor manager in NCERT in their multimedia program. My wages were twenty-seven rupees per day at that time for three months. The contract was renewed after three months and my earnings a month were about five to six hundred rupees.  I was there for five /six months.

I was a victim in Delhi for my language problem and I planned to leave Delhi. I can’t go to Mumbai because of the same language problem and also film was not my preference. So living there would be tougher for me. I couldn’t go back to Orissa as there was no job for me. I came across a vacancy for a drama teacher in a mining area central school in Dhanbad. I went there for an interview. I was selected and I worked there for a week. But the atmosphere there was suffocating for me. Wherever I looked, everything was blackish, which I could not tolerate. Even the teachers coming to the school were black. I told the school authority that I needed to bring my luggage. Saying this, I left the school never to return.

I came back to Delhi. The salary I used to receive from NCERT was very meagre. In order to earn more, I joined an evening repertory at the request of Shila Vatia, the famous singer and director to work as a designer there. So my income rose to a handsome thousand rupees. I used to do both the jobs for another six/or seven months.

8.      P.C. –We heard that you met Mr. Karanth again in Bharat Bhawan, Bhopal. What was the occasion and how did this affect your career?

SR- It was a turning point in my life. I met Rajendra Gupta. He was a friend of mine and I worked under his directorship. He wanted me towork with him in a play as a designer in Bhopal, MP. By that time Karanth had shifted to Bhopal as the director of Bharat Bhawan. He opened a repertory company Madhya Pradesh Ranga Mandal. Karanth had access to Arjun Singh, the then chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. He persuaded the C.M. to open a cultural complex in the state, particularly in Bhopal. With Rajadra Gupta, I worked as a designer in his plays in Ranga Mandal on one month’s contract. After the contract was over, Mr. Karanth who noticed my performance as a designer, told me to stay back there for one year as a technical person to look after the set, light and costume. For this, I would be paid an amount of 1200/- per month, which I accepted and started working in the repertory.  The contract was extended for another five years and six months till I resigned in 1989.

9.      P.C.-Do you feel that NSD training is sufficient to be a professional theatre artist?

S.R. - What I found there is that NSD training is not enough. Rather, the work experience in the repertory paved the foundation for my further journey. NSD training was very much sophisticated and westernized with Alkajitaking care of this aspect. Although Karanth as the director wanted to break this, he failed. That is why NSD is even today inaccessible. So we had mostly theoretical knowledge in NSD and practice in the Bhopal repertory.  In this repertory, I designed and directed forty-five plays. I worked there almost 2000 nights. In the meantime, I traveled to different places of MP for shows. It was very strenuous but that was my foundation, which brought me recognition. Mr. Karanth was a man of music. I learnt from him too. He did a lot of experiments and never used forms following the tradition. He was always destructuring and defracturing the form. So I learned from him how to experiment with the form.  For example, the Chau dance has its form and structure but I saw Karanth destructuring the original form and using the Chau dance for his own purpose. Theatre has its own part to play. Karanth defragmented the structure of Chau and used the essence of the dance in his play to meet his own purpose. The audience may not understand that the Chau form has been used. It is Karanthian style, as he used to say, which gave me the impetus to face the challenges of life. I understood theatre is contemporary and not the one we see in our villages. Everyday life is changing. So theatre is changing.

10. P.C. –Tell us something about the concept of Scenography.

S.R. - The concept of Scenography, if I analyze it in Western terms, is the visual lexicon- the visual language of the theatre. It is what we see in theatre- costume, lights, actors’ choreography, stage- everything. All these make the Western concept. But my concept of Scenography is entirely different. My concept is not only what is created on stage in front of the audience by lights, sets costumes, etc. but it is visuals that are created in the mind of the audience through the language of the theatre in the form of words and movement of the actors. It is not possible to show everything on the stage. But we can create an ambiance so that the audience can see more through their mind’s eye. This is what I learned from Karanth. Thus when a man is singing in a valley, the sound he throws creates an oval sound and sometimes an echoing sound. That is why in Assamese music and songs there are repetitions and waves. A man singing at the river has a different set of words and sounds. Through those sounds, one can visualize the river. It is through sounds we can map the distance. That distance is visible in my mind’s eye. Thus a dramatist can manipulate sound and communicate his thoughts to the audience.

11.  P.C. - Do we find the concept of scenography in the plays of Ratan Thiyam?

S.R. - Yes, Ratan Thiyam too worked on Scenography but he did not theorize it which I did. Further, Ratan followed the Western concept.

12. P.C. – How do you develop the concept of ‘Space’ in a play? Why do you think the dramatist need to train the audience?

S.R. - My concept of space is derived from Natya Sastra. In Natya Sastra, there is only one empty space and in that empty space, everything is created by the actor’s performance- through mudras, postures, body language, dialogues, and narration. The dialogue delivery is poetic. Poetry is metaphoric and our presentation onstage is metaphoric and symbolic. The audience understands that metaphor and that is why they see the plays. It is our duty also to educate our audience. Our folk theatre artists or classical dancers unknowingly train the audience. Thus what an Indian audience understands with the movement of the fingers of a classical dancer, is not possible for a Western audience to follow. So for me, audience participation becomes very important.

13. P.C. -What is your project about ‘Cutting Edge Technology’?

S. R. -With my project on cutting-edge technology, I went to the USA for research and to teach my findings. It is the confrontation of two ideologies. One is cutting-edge technology as explained in Western theory. The new technology, the new way of approaching the equipment like multimedia, video mapping, laser lighting, and holograms in theatre is a Western concept. But our approach to theatre is entirely different. It is performative while Western theatre is external. While they give importance to technology, Indian theatre is based on performance. We, the Indians, never explore external technology. If we do not have space, lights, or design, we don’t have any problem. My actor can take a chair and make it a throne or a stone. The chair changes its values depending on the shape, size, and proportion of the chair. In folk theatre too we find the same object may have multiple uses. The actor and the object have an intimate relationship with one another in Indian theatre. These objects become the props and in this way, there is a perfect improvisation of an object in a play. Therein lies the basic difference between the uses of an object in the cutting-edge technology in an Indian theatre and the Western theatre. In Indian experimental theatre there is minimum use of lights. This is what I want to show in my Sakuntala. I showed it as an example of Indian scenography along with my lectures in the USA or Canada or elsewhere abroad for the comprehension of the theatre audience. Indian theatre has all these elements but no such experiment has yet been done so long. It was done only on the actor’s body movement. But backstage experimentation on designing and exploring Indian technology has not yet been explored on the plea that Bharatmuni has talked a lot on the stage and has used the empty space. But in this empty space, a lot can be created.

Thus our enriched culture has been unexplored so long. Karanth is my mentor and I did my PhD on Karanth’s theory. My thesis explored the unmapped area of Indian theatre. I focused on how sounds can be converted into visuals.

14.  P.C. -Did you get your post in Hyderabad University with the degree of NSD?

S.R. -No. I did a lot of work in the theatre, went abroad, and had my fame as a theatre person. So my entry into Hyderabad University was not that difficult. But afterward, the academics there, it seemed to me, looked down upon me as I did not have my Ph.D. Earlier, I was approached by a student of mine working as an Assistant Professor in Rajib Gandhi Central University to be my research guide. I agreed on condition that the writing part should be done by him and I shall dictate to him my findings. I did not have enough time to write down my thesis. He agreed to do the same. I worked on Karanth’s theory. At that time, I was not acquainted with the concept of Scenography.  That professor took leave for a month and worked with me, checked my work, and wrote the thesis. It was ready within a period of 45 days. But I did not submit my thesis till then. I joined the University of Hyderabad in 2006 and submitted my thesis in 2007.I used to write notes regularly.

15.  P.C. - Tell us something on your book On the Crossroad of Theatre.

S.R.- The book is a product of my notes and experiences of working with famous Indian dramatists and my experiences abroad. Also what I took during the production of my plays.  I could not find any big publisher for my book as it was on theatre. Later on, one publisher agreed on the condition that copyright would be his. I agreed and he gave me royalty for three years. My PhD and my first book came up almost at the same time. The UH professors who neglected me at one point of time have changed their attitude completely towards me. The book is an asset, I must say, for those who are doing PhD on theatre.

16.  P.C. -Have you done further studies to get further academic degrees?

S.R. -I promised myself to hold the highest academic degree in my field in order to throw a challenge to other academicians. I decided to invest ten thousand rupees per month in buying books in my field to further my studies. By now I have a good personal library having six/seven lakhs rupees.

After my Ph.D., I started writing on designing and it took me ten years i.e. 2018 to complete the work. It is not essential to read the whole book but the chapters which are needed can be used as reference. I met a friend Professor Mahesh Champak Lal, a great scholar from MS University who worked on Bhasa and Kalidas. He wrote a huge volume of books and two of these are very popular. He went to the Indian Institute of Advance Studies Shimla to write books. He was doing his D.Litt. On my inquiry, he explained to me how to do D.Litt. Not only this, he inspired me and motivated me to do D.Litt. I thought of writing on the dialectics of new dramatic theories practiced in India after independence. I took long interviews with 15second-generation Indian dramatists. I studied their way of presentation in the theatre. I was awarded D.Litt. in 2019 for my comprehensive work of 800 pages. I have started writing two more books. I applied for two years of fellowship in IIAS.

17. P.C. –Do you think a play has only one textwhen it is staged?

S.R. - Not at all. I found five texts on a single play – one by the playwright, another rewritten by the director, a third text by the actor, a fourth text by the set and costume designer, and the final text is by the audience. That is a new discovery on which I am working.

There are two dialogues – one is listened to while the other one is visualized. The audience uses both the ears and eyes for understanding and interpreting a play. One text is the thoughts and the other one is the light, costume, and movements of the actors on stage. Both the dialogues go hand in hand on stage.

18. P.C. –What is your concept of three ‘I’s?

S.R. - I have made a synthesis of my concept in three ‘I’ essential for a play. These are- a play should be interpretative, indicative, and imaginative.  Your performance should be interpretative. Secondly, it must be indicative –may be very subtle. Gestures are indicative. It may be that the audience may create this.  References of these are there in Natya Sashtra also. The third one is imaginative.

19. P.C. -What do you think of the dramatic performances of Tripura?

S.R. -I have seen the play Nagin Kanya by Sanjay Kar and am very much impressed. I have started writing an article and will publish it in a renowned journal.

Thank you, sir for enriching us with your experience. We are highly benefitted by your deliverance. I believe the same feeling will be shared by the readers of this daily too.