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Ebrahim Alkazi (18 October 1925 – 4 August 2020) was an Indian theatre director and
drama teacher An acting coach or drama coach is a teacher who trains performers – typically film, television, theatre, and musical theatre actors – and gives them advice and mentoring to enable them to improve their acting and dramatic performances, prepar ...
. A rigid disciplinarian, he instilled in his acting students an awe and reverence that they still carry with them, with several of them having had the privilege of continuing the practice and training in the NSD Repertory Company, an introduction made to the National School of Drama by Alkazi. His standards later became very influential. Leiter, p.32 - 33 He also remained the Director of National School of Drama, New Delhi (1962–1977) Meyer, p. 9 He was also a noted art connoisseur, collector and gallery owner, and founded the Art Heritage Gallery in Delhi with his wife, Roshen Alkazi. Staging more than fifty plays in his lifetime, Alkazi used both
proscenium A proscenium ( grc-gre, προσκήνιον, ) is the metaphorical vertical plane of space in a theatre, usually surrounded on the top and sides by a physical proscenium arch (whether or not truly "arched") and on the bottom by the stage floor ...
stages and the open-air venues. His designs for the open-air venues were acclaimed for their visual nature and for the original spins he put on each stage production, including those he had previously directed before. Trained at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), he won the BBC Broadcasting Award in 1950. He has directed over 50 plays, including famous productions of: Girish Karnad's ''Tughlaq'', Mohan Rakesh's ''
Ashadh Ka Ek Din ''Ashadh Ka Ek Din'' (Hindi: आषाढ़ का एक दिन, One Day in Ashadh) is a Hindi play by Mohan Rakesh that debuted in 1958 and is considered the first Modern Hindi play. The play received a Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for best p ...
'',
Dharamvir Bharati Dharamvir Bharati (25 December 1926 – 4 September 1997) was a renowned Hindi poet, author, playwright and a social thinker of India. He was the chief editor of the popular Hindi weekly magazine '' Dharmayug'', from 1960 till 1987.The Illustr ...
's ''
Andha Yug ''Andha Yug'' (Hindi: अंधा युग, ''The Age of Blindness'' or ''The Blind Age'') is a 1953 verse play written in Hindi, by renowned novelist, poet, and playwright Dharamvir Bharati (1926-1997). Set in the last day of the Great Mahabhar ...
'' and numerous Shakespeare and Greek plays. In 2002, Ebrahim Alkazi said in an interview with the BBC, "I think that there are certain ground root elements in theatre, there is a certain set of rootedness and earthiness in the work you do, and unless your inspiration and the concept in the work of theatre starts from there, I don’t think you can create fine work. You have to create an atmosphere; you have to work within salubrious surrounding".


Early life and education

Ebrahim Alkazi hailed from an Arab family with a keen interest in arts. Born in Pune, Alkazi was the son of a wealthy businessman with roots in Unaizah (present-day Saudi Arabia) and a Kuwaiti mother. Educated in Pune, at the
St. Vincent's High School St. Vincent's High School is a private Catholic primary and secondary school and pre-university college for boys located in the city of Pune, Maharashtra, India. The English-medium convent school was founded by the Jesuits in 1867, located an ...
, Alkazi shifted to Bombay in late 1941, after his enrollment at the St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, which provided his first encounter with the new techniques of theatre at the Dramatic Society of the St.Xavier's College. In 1947, the rest of his family migrated to Pakistan while Alkazi stayed back in India. Alkazi was educated in Arabic, English,
Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...
, and
Gujarati Gujarati may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India * Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat * Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them * Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub- ...
. While he was a student at St Xavier's, he joined Sultan "Bobby" Padamsee's English theatre company, Theatre Group, where he acted in several plays, as well as directed a few of them. Thereafter he was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London in 1947. In London he was offered career opportunities after being honored by both the English Drama League and the British Broadcasting Corporation, however, he turned the offers down in favor of returning home to rejoin the Theatre Group, which he ran from 1950 to 1954. Alkazi was also a keen artist and student of art; in England, he had spent hours studying major museum collections, and
F. N. Souza Francis Newton Souza (12 April 1924 – 28 March 2002) was an Indian-American British Asian artist. He was a founding member of the Progressive Artists' Group of Bombay. Souza's style exhibited both decadence and primitivism. Early life and e ...
was his flatmate. Alkazi's works were exhibited at the Asian Institute, London (1950), the Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay (1952) and at the Sridharini Gallery, New Delhi (1965). In each exhibition he demonstrated a versatile command over a variety of media and techniques, ranging from watercolor, charcoal, ink, poster paint and carbon tracing to the sketch pen, marker and frottage.


Career

After his return from England, Ebrahim Alkazi regrouped the Theatre Group in Bombay in 1952. At this point, he was also associated with the
Bombay Progressive Artists' Group The Progressive Artists' Group (PAG), was a group of modern artists, mainly based in Bombay, from its formation in 1947. Though it lacked any particular style, there might be said to have been a move towards a synthesis of influences from Indian ...
, which included
M. F. Husain Maqbool Fida Husain (17 September 1915 – 9 June 2011) was an Indian artist known for executing bold, vibrantly coloured narrative paintings in a modified Cubist style. He was one of the most celebrated and internationally recognised Ind ...
F.N.Souza, S. H. Raza, Akbar Padamsee,
Tyeb Mehta Tyeb Mehta (26 July 1925 – 2 July 2009) was an Indian painter, sculptor and film maker. He was part of the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group and the first post-colonial generation of artists in India, like John Wilkins who also broke free ...
, artists who were later to paint from his plays and design his sets. Initiating his curatorial practices, Alkazi mounted an eight part exhibition, between 1952 and 1957, called This is Modern Art at the Jehangir Gallery in Bombay. In 1954, after breaking from the Theatre Group, Alkazi formed the Theatre Unit in Bombay along with his wife, Roshen Alkazi and Nissim Ezekiel. In addition to his directing, he also published the ''Theatre Unit Bulletin'' which reported on theatre events from India. Alkazi established the School of Dramatic Arts on 4th July, 1956 and became the principal of Bombay's Natya Academy. During his Bombay days Alkazi along with his theatre groups produced 'practically the entire pantheon of western literature', "from the Greeks to Beckett", as the theatre doyen would describe. Few of the later productions, which were staged at the sea-facing open air theatre in Bombay called Meghdoot, designed by Alkazi himself in 1958, included Medea (1961), Waiting for Godot (1961), and
Suddenly Last Summer ''Suddenly Last Summer'' is a one-act play by Tennessee Williams, written in New York in 1957. It opened off Broadway on January 7, 1958, as part of a double bill with another of Williams' one-acts, ''Something Unspoken'' (written in London in ...
(1961) In 1962, Alkazi embarked upon his journey to develop a pedagogic discourse for theatre in form of the National School of Drama. He designed a course, which not only focused on actor-training and direction, but on the learning of all aspects of stage-craft. As the director of the National School of Drama (NSD), Alkazi revolutionised Hindi theatre by the magnificence of his vision, and the meticulousness of his technical discipline. From the 60s on, the outstanding talent groomed by Alkazi at NSD was to directly feed an alternative stream of arthouse, and then mainstream cinema and television. His students include many well-known film and theatre actors and directors including Vijaya Mehta, Om Shivpuri, Harpal Tiwana and Neena Tiwana,
Om Puri Om Prakash Puri (18 October 1950 – 6 January 2017) was an Indian actor who appeared in mainstream commercial Hindi films as well as Bengali, Kannada,English, Punjabi and one Telugu film, as well as independent and art films and also starred ...
, and (Balraj pandit)
Naseeruddin Shah Naseeruddin Shah (born 20 July 1950) is an Indian actor. He is notable in Indian parallel cinema. He has also starred in international productions. He has won numerous awards in his career, including three National Film Awards, three Filmfare A ...
, Manohar Singh, Uttara Baokar, Jyoti Subhash, Suhas Joshi, B. Jayashree, Jayadev and
Rohini Hattangadi Rohini Hattangadi (''née'' Oak; born 11 April 1955) is an Indian actress, known for her work in Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, and Gujarati films, and Marathi soap operas and theatre. She has won two Filmfare Awards, one National Film ...
, Kumara Varma, S. Ramanujam . While there he created the Repertory Company in 1964 and directed their productions until he left. Alkazi pioneered the construction of new theatre spaces on and near the school campus, and most memorably placed his productions of Tughlaq and Andha Yug in spectacular historical monuments around Delhi. He also founded Art Heritage Gallery in Delhi with his wife, Roshan Alkazi.


Awards and recognition

Alkazi won many of India's most prestigious awards, creating an awareness of theater's sensibility and successfully mixed modern expression with Indian tradition. He was the first recipient of Roopwedh Pratishtan's the Tanvir Award (2004) for lifetime contribution to the theatre. He has received awards including the Padma Shri (1966), the Padma Bhushan (1991), and India's second highest civilian award the Padma Vibhushan in 2010. He has also been awarded twice by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy for Music, Dance and Drama. He received the
Sangeet Natak Akademi Award Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (IPA: Saṅgīta Nāṭaka Akādamī Puraskāra), also known as the Akademi Puraskar, is an award given by the Sangeet Natak Akademi Sangeet Natak Akademi (The National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama in Englis ...
in Direction in 1962, and later the Akademi's highest award the
Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship The Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship, also known as Akademi Ratna Sadasyata, is an Indian honour for the performing arts presented by Sangeet Natak Academy. It is "the most prestigious and rare honour" conferred by the Academy and is "restricte ...
for lifetime contribution to theatre.


Personal life

He was married to Roshan Alkazi (d. 2007) an
Ismaili Isma'ilism ( ar, الإسماعيلية, al-ʾIsmāʿīlīyah) is a branch or sub-sect of Shia Islam. The Isma'ili () get their name from their acceptance of Imam Isma'il ibn Jafar as the appointed spiritual successor (imām) to Ja'far al-Sa ...
Khoja from Gujarat. She designed costumes for all his plays, and wrote two books on history of Indian garments. She also established the Art Heritage Gallery at Triveni Kala Sangam, Delhi in 1977, which she ran for over 40 years. The couple had two children,
Amal Allana Amal Allana (born 14 September 1947) is an Indian theatre director, scenic designer and costume designer and presently she is in her second consecutive term as the Chairperson of National School of Drama, India's premier institute of Theatre tra ...
, a theatre director and ex – chairman of National School of Drama, and Feisal Alkazi a Delhi-based theatre director.


Further reading

* Ananda Lal, ''The Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre'', Oxford University Press (2004),
The Alcazar Of Visual Memory
*


Works

* ''Alkazi collection of photography'', with Rahaab Allana, Pramod Kumar, Brunei Gallery. Grantha Corporation, 2008. .


Notes


References

* * * * *


External links




Art Heritage Gallery, website



''Alkazi to get Tanveer award'', Times of India, 2 December 2004

''Ebrahim Alkazi Biography'', Britannica, 10 October 2013

Alkazi: Saudi-Indian theater icon star attraction at Dammam
''
Arab News ''Arab News'' is an English-language daily newspaper published in Saudi Arabia. It is published from Riyadh. The target audiences of the paper, which is published in broadsheet format, are businessmen, executives and diplomats. At least as of ...
''. "Ebrahim Alkazi, the celebrated Indian theater director, has his roots in Unaiza in Qassim.", 2 February 2015 {{DEFAULTSORT:Alkazi, Ebrahim Indian theatre directors Indian drama teachers 1925 births 2020 deaths Artists from Pune Indian people of Arab descent Indian people of Saudi Arabian descent Indian people of Kuwaiti descent St. Xavier's College, Mumbai alumni Alumni of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art National School of Drama faculty People from Unaizah Indian scenic designers Hindi theatre Indian art collectors Recipients of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award Recipients of the Padma Shri in arts Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in arts Recipients of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship Recipients of the Padma Vibhushan in arts People of British India Indian arts administrators 20th-century Indian designers 20th-century Indian dramatists and playwrights