NSD readies its Stage for South

This story was written when I had visited a friend of mine during my stint at the Deccan Herald Bureau office at New Delhi some time in 1993. Since it had a south connect and more so with Bangalore I went back to the office and discussed it with my seniors who asked me to write it and send it for the Sunday pages.

Theatre: National School of Drama’s decision to open its first regional center in Bangalore augurs well for theatre in Karnataka, Writes S Shiv Kumar

After several years of debate on strengthening theater traditions in various regions of the country, and a recommendation of the Haskar Committee, the Delhi-based National School of Drama (NSD) has decided to open schools at Bangalore, Bombay, Calcutta, Guwahati, Varanasi/Patna and Chandigarh.
The first of these zonal centers is expected to begin functioning in Bangalore in March. It will be a resource-cum research center (RRC) which will conduct its activities in the local languages.
NSD Director Kirthi Jain told Deccan Herald that these regional centers were meant to rejuvenate local theater traditions. Bangalore has been chosen as the first center because “it has people from virtually all parts of the country. All languages of the south have a presence in the city, which will enable the center to turn mobile and access villages and tap the right potential”.
The Bangalore center- which will work in co-ordination with State level cultural bodies-will begin short-term courses of 15 days to two months, for serious students from all over south India to be chosen on the basis of entrance tests and interviews. Experts like G V Shivananda, B V Karanth, Prasanna, Raghunandan and Walter D’Souza are expected to guide the students and monitor their progress. Prominent NSD alumni in the State like C Basavalingaiah, Srivivas Prabhu, Jayatheertha Joshi and Chidambara Rao Jambe will be on the faculty.
The State Government has assured the NSD that it will provide the premises to house the regional center. “Otherwise, we will hire an apartment to start with,” says Keerthi Jain, which hopes funding agencies like the UNESCO will lend a helping hand later. Depending on the response in Bangalore, “we will start in Calcutta followed by Bombay. That would mean a center in each of the four zones.”
All these days, as she points out, people from various parts of the country came to Delhi only to realize that they were taught in Hindi. This will change now. The regional center will conduct training programmes, promote research, encourage children’s theater through workshops and activities in schools, undertake field work, mount exhibitions, take up documentation and data collection. It will also coordinate the activities of university drama departments assist them in their activities.
An advisory committee with representatives from all the States, the NSD, the regional centers and the repertory companies, and headed by the NSD chief, will be formed to achieve these objectives. A decision is yet to be taken on who will head the regional center.