Lit for Life 2025: A daughter’s ode to Ebrahim Alkazi, the architect of contemporary theatre in India

Amal Allana in dialog with Ritu Menon at The Hindu Lit for Life 2025.
| Photograph Credit score: R. Ragu

Theatre director Amal Allana, who lately launched a riveting biography of her father Ebrahim Alkazi: Holding Time Captive gave a racy account of Alkazi’s revolutionary contributions to arts and tradition within the artistic panorama that was rising in pre-independence India into the later a long time.

The Hindu Lit for Life 2025 Day 2 LIVE

She mentioned the title of her guide was apt as she discovered the phrases scribbled by her father in his notes that learn ‘I want I may stay longer to carry time captive.’

A six-minute documentary on Alkazi charting the journey of his quest for a liberal strategy to the humanities within the Indian sub-Continent preceded Amal Allana’s dialog with Ritu Menon at The Hindu Lit for Life session on the second day.

Setting the narrative in Bombay of the Nineteen Forties when Alkazi got here because the son of a migrant dealer from Saudi Arabia, Amal spoke about how his modern concepts from the younger age of twenty-two coupled with daring new experimental initiatives reworked the theatre actions pan-India and later led to the institution of the Nationwide College of Drama in Delhi within the Nineteen Sixties. It was the time when artistic historical past was under-researched and Alkazi strode the stage with vanity, resoluteness, and brilliance.

Because the daughter, Amal introduced a private perspective to the intangible panorama of Alkazi’s passions as she step-by-step unfolded the layers of his cultural, creative and nationalistic id. “His pedagogical expertise took kind as a response to the social and political life. He launched language in theatre and nationalised it,” she mentioned.

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With Sultan Padamsee (elder brother of filmmaker Alyque Padmasee) and different independent-minded artistic people, he broke boundaries and embraced the novel and precarious theatre life. They had been all progressives and reinforcing one another. Amal narrated how Alkazi went abroad to check fashionable theatre and took Nissim Ezekiel alongside. He had the disposition of taking folks together with and their thought of complete theatre included all types of arts feeding into each other.

“So with music, lights, costumes, literature, discussions and brochures he created dramatic experiences translating, producing and directing performs from the Western pantheon,” Amal mentioned and added Alkazi was significantly influenced by Tagore’s idea of Santiniketan integrating liberalism with fantastic arts.

Not solely was Alkazi fascinated with coaching a physique of considering actors however he additionally skilled audiences to understand modernity in theatre, she mentioned.

The Hindu Lit for Life occasion is introduced by KIA India and is in affiliation with Christ College. Affiliate Companions: LIC, RR Donnelley, Blue Star, Brigade Group, NITTE Deemed-to-be College, PROchure, Singer, Chennai Port Authority & Kamarajar Port Ltd, Uttarakhand Tourism, Vajiram and Ravi, Indian Financial institution, Akshayakalpa and ICFAI Group. Realty Companion: Casagrand. Bookstore Companion: Crossword. Meals Companion: Wow Momo, Beverage Companion: Beachville, Radio Companion: Large FM, TV Companion: Puthiya Thalaimurai Reward Companion: Anand Prakash. Supported by: US Consulate, Chennai, Water Companion: Reputation