Ace of theatre thinking leaves a void

Chaman Ahuja, the doyen of theatre thinking in India, passed away on January 18 at the age of 88. He was born on April 1, 1933, in a village of Dera Ghazi Khan district, now in Pakistan. He will be remembered as an honest, unbiased and analytical critic of theatre whose columns appeared in The Tribune for over 13 years. He significantly helped the theatre of the region to remain ever conscious of raising its bar. The hard work that he put into his writings was exemplary. On return from my Canadian tour, where I staged the play Kamloops Diaan Machhiaan, he decided to write a few articles on my work and talked to me for over seven hours, spread over two days.

He was awarded by the Sangeet Natak Akademi for 2015 for his contribution to theatre scholarship. He always toiled without being loud about it. His monumental work is the creation of an unparalleled material in the form of interviews with over 500 leading stage directors, playwrights, designers and performers. These recorded interviews are testimony to his inclusive grasp over the theatre thinking of different achievers of the field. He achieved this distinction with his lifelong training in teaching dramatic theory and literature at Panjab University, from where he retired as professor of English. More than 600 hours of this recording was done while pursuing the UGC-sponsored project, ‘Theatre India Today: Towards A New Dramaturgy’ as the principal investigator. He spent 10 years in meeting people of different regions and published Contemporary Theatre of India: An Overview. Another valuable volume, Theatre Thinking in India, was produced with the same material, arranging and categorising the quotes of theatre personalities on different areas of dramaturgy, theatre, aesthetics, art and culture.

In addition to the large spectrum of issues and experts, which included his contemporaries like Ebrahim Alkazi, UR Ananthamurthy, Suresh Awasthi, BV Karanth, Mohan Maharishi, KN Panikkar and Habib Tanvir, views of personalities of yesteryear like Rabindranath Tagore, Vijay Tendulkar, Utpal Dutt and Badal Sircar, taken from published texts, were also included. Many Indian theatre personalities haven’t documented their experiences, ideas and insights, denying posterity access to prized material. It is difficult to find the views of persons like Bhaskar Chandavarkar, who was engrossed in Indian musicology, theatre and films; but didn’t write on the subjects. It is comforting to see his views in this book.

Other publications of Ahuja are Tragedy, Modern Temper and O’Neill, The Same Questions, The Same Answers: Reinterpreting Samuel Beckett, The Mystique of Tragedy: Exploring East and West. For the last decade, he was engaged in writing Urdu poetry and published half a dozen books of his verses.

Ahuja whole-heartedly tried to fill many vacuums, but has also created one with his departure.