Remembering the NSD founder Ebrahim Alkazi on his birth centenary

Artists like me work best in this ‘no man’s land’ of multiple cultures. We are from nowhere and everywhere!

— Ebrahim Alkazi

AS a student at the National School of Drama (NSD) in 1974, I vividly remember waking up at an unearthly hour, and scrambling into a waiting bus with my classmates for an early morning rehearsal. The venue: the misty shadows of Delhi’s Purana Qila.

Amongst the jagged arches and stone plinths, the plays that we were rehearsing — ‘Andha Yug’, ‘Tughlaq’, and ‘Sultan Razia’ — delved into the themes of blind fury and existential dread, reflecting the fragmented psyche of post-Independence India. These open-air spectacles transformed historical ruins into a vibrant stage, drawing an eclectic audience, from the local Delhiwalas to the elite.

The atmospheric backdrop demanded inventive staging, where wooden platforms added to the stone structures, and birthed larger-than-life characters amid destiny’s turmoil. This created an immersive experience that broke traditional proscenium barriers, and patterns of ‘seeing’.

I recall that during the grand rehearsal of ‘Tughlaq’, the magnificent Manohar Singh, while reciting a soliloquy, was interrupted by a blood-curdling cry — a soldier-actor tumbled mid-monologue, fracturing his leg.

Alkazi’s command pierced the night: “As no one is dead, we continue.” The performance surged on, embodying his unyielding ethos and commitment to the axiom — the show/rehearsal must go on.

Born in Pune on October 18, 1925, to a Saudi Arabian trader father and a Kuwaiti mother, Ebrahim Alkazi’s roots spanned continents, yet India claimed him irrevocably. In 1947, as Partition tore families apart — his siblings went to Pakistan — he chose to stay, enrolling at Mumbai’s St Xavier’s College and diving headlong into the city’s effervescent arts scene. There, under the tutelage of Sultan Padamsee, he co-founded The Theatre Group in 1950, a crucible for progressive artists like MF Husain and FN Souza.

These weren’t amateur skits; they were bold experiments blending western modernism with Indian ethos. Alkazi’s early productions, like ‘Medea’ (1961), introduced technical rigour — precise lighting, immersive soundscapes, and actor-training drawn from his stint at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1950.

At the age of 25, he returned to India not as an emigre artist, but as a catalyst for decolonising Indian stages.

Alkazi’s true alchemy unfolded at the NSD, where he served as the founder-director from 1962 to 1977 — the institution’s ‘golden years’, as his students fondly recall. His work combined western theatrical methods, including Stanislavsky’s system, with Indian traditions from the Natyashastra to create a uniquely Indian modern theatre pedagogy. The syllabus he crafted emphasised a correlation of visuals, acoustics, literature, and movement, where sets weren’t backdrops but characters in their own right.

In our dramatic literature class, Alkazi, while reading Chekhov’s ‘Three Sisters’, didn’t merely recite the dialogues — he became the characters, his voice and presence breathing life into Irina, Olga and Masha. It almost seemed as if the characters had jumped out of the book and become alive in his voice, emotions.

Under his watch, the NSD became a pan-India melting pot, drawing students from remote villages and the urban elite. He mandated regional language plays, elevating folk forms like Bhavai from Gujarat and Yakshagana from Karnataka to the national discourse. He underlined the fact that theatre was not a hobby class, but a valid profession to be approached with the same seriousness as studying for a law degree or doing MBBS. Theatre was not a dilettante pursuit, was his dictum.

The other significant contribution was to shift training concepts in the performing arts from the entrenched systems of the guru-shishya parampara to a formal training system. This became a crucial moment in the history of theatre training in India, as it created a definite rupture from systems that existed in the transference of knowledge and expertise from the past.

Alkazi was no soft touch — the strict disciplinarian’s surprise inspections at our Hailey Road hostel could jolt sleepy students into 5 am fitness runs. He enforced quirky rules, like skipping garlic or onions post-lunch to spare co-actors from oniony breath during rehearsals.

Beyond the stage, Alkazi instilled humility. No job was too menial — he’d sweep up cigarette butts or napkins from the NSD compound. He taught us that theatre’s glamour was an illusion; its core was sweat and detail. Brewing tea for the crew, mopping floors, ironing outfits, organising green rooms, even scrubbing toilets were integral to character-building. Post-show, he’d insist we slip away unseen, shunning audience accolades and curtain calls. “The work stands alone,” he’d say, discouraging star egos.

We nicknamed him Chacha — a colloquial tag clashing with his suave Clark Gable-meets-James Dean aura. His clean features, deep eyes, and wavy hair with a neatly trimmed French beard turned heads, belying his modest height but amplifying his magnetic presence.

Spotting his mud-splattered Standard Herald pull up, we’d dissect his impeccable outfits more eagerly than our Chekhov thesis. Onstage, he demanded authentic belief; offstage, a protocol of conduct. He gifted us an “acting grammar” — universal principles drawn from diverse traditions, transforming raw creativity into thoughtful existence. Reading, rehearsing, dissecting scripts, revisiting heritage — it all became intellectual fuel.

Alkazi, with his uncompromising vision, had transformed theatre from a polite drawing-room diversion into a visceral confrontation with history, identity, and power. He combined the roles of teacher, director and head of institutions almost effortlessly, attaining mythological status in the theatre world. He reassessed the legacies of not only European theatrical practices, but also explored Asian traditions and regional forms.

His role in the creation of modern theatre sensibility is something that even the most trenchant critics cannot erase or devalue. Alkazi’s work embodied the radical spirit of the times and he re-fashioned modern Indian theatre through hard questioning, rigorous training, storytelling, space, language and myth. But above all, in his own special ways, he challenged entrenched assumptions, refreshingly reformulating them.

His own directing tally? Over 50 plays, each a masterclass in audacious fusion. Classics like ‘Oedipus Rex’ (1964) and ‘King Lear’ (1964) were reimagined for Indian sensibilities, humanising mythic figures.

His open-air spectacles at Delhi’s historical sites weren’t gimmicks; these were reclamations, turning monuments into stages that interrogated colonial hangovers. In an age of CGI spectacles, Alkazi’s plays with the epic grandeur — hand-painted backdrops, live percussion echoing ancient rhythms — feel like a defiant antidote to spectacle for spectacle’s sake.

As a director, he emphasised that you have to believe in what you do on stage. And what he shared with us as a teacher was attentiveness to certain theoretical laws that we can find, interestingly, in all traditions of acting. But one thing is undeniably clear: Alkazi provided an acting grammar, a protocol of what it means to be onstage, backstage and offstage!

Decades later, as we mark the centenary of his birth, his legacy isn’t mere nostalgia; it’s a blueprint for how theatre can reclaim cultural sovereignty in an era of digital fragmentation and algorithmic storytelling. His influences in shaping the contour of modern Indian theatre aren’t fading into archives and musty memories, but are a vital playbook for reclaiming cultural narratives amid today’s digital echo chambers and AI-driven tales.

Alkazi’s spirit feels more alive today than ever before. His legacy as a teacher endures not in seminars or notebooks, but in the generations he taught. His charisma was no mere flourish; it was the spark that ignited empathy, transforming his students into interpreters of the human condition.

The methods of this ‘inflexible guru’ — unbending in the pursuit of truth — shaped modern Indian drama’s lexicon. Today, as echoes of his play ‘The Trojan Women’ resonate in global crises and the longings of ‘Three Sisters’ in urban alienation, Alkazi’s classrooms remind us that great teaching does not inform, it resurrects. Through him, the pages of Euripides and Chekhov forever pulsate with life, a testament to the maestro who taught us to see — and feel — the theatre in every shadowed corner of existence.

— The writer is a theatre director based in Chandigarh