Hindi theatre is theatre performed in the Hindi language, including dialects such as Braj Bhasha, Khari Boli and Hindustani. Hindi theatre is produced mainly in North India, and some parts of West India and Central India, which include Mumbai and Bhopal. Hindi theatre has its roots in the traditional folk theatre of North India, like Ram lila and Raslila, and also influenced by distant Sanskrit drama. Starting with Bhartendu Harishchandra in the late 19th century and subsequent playwrights like Jaishankar Prasad, Mohan Rakesh, Hindi theatre came of age in the 1940s and 50s, when IPTA movement created a new brand of theatre practitioners in Hindi speaking areas, especially with IPTA Mumbai, Prithvi Theatres of thespian Prithviraj Kapoor, and theatre artiste Habib Tanvir, paving way for next generation of artists who came out once National School of Drama, Delhi started functioning in 1959.
History
Early history The advent of Jainism and Buddhism and emergence of prakrit and Pali as a common language meant the lasting and definite end of Sanskrit as a spoken language though its theatre traditions continued to flourish but also gave birth to a synergistic traditions of Urdu and Hindustani languages, that developed in the aftermath of a fast amalgamating diverse cultures. Traditional folk theatre which included Ramlila, Raslila and nautanki had evolved despite the absence of royal patronage and where it was present, as in the case Ramlila of Kashi Kingdom, in Ramnagar, Varanasi, it evolved into a highly evolved form, with shifting locations. Elsewhere in Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah had been experimenting forms like thumri and stage style known as rahasa, it achieved a definite style in a play believed to be commissioned by him, Inder Sabha, an Urdu play by Agha Hasan Amanat, first staged in 1853.
Besides a separate tradition of Maithili plays, which flourished in the 17th century in present-day Bihar, North India had a pre-existing tradition of folk theatre, this included Braj Bhasa verse plays in the 18th century, Swang, the operatic tradition, which featured full-throated male singers and dancing by female impersonators, which evolved from reciting popular folk ballads and epics, and by the 1860s they were being performed across Meerut, Delhi and Banaras, and illustrated librettos, known as Sangits were being printed in Devanagari script. In the coming decades, it too got influenced by Parsi theatre, and further developed in content both thematic and music, in the 1890s onwards, which somewhere in the early 20th-century started being called nautanki, after the tale of a Nautanki Shahzadi became a popular theme. However this form lost much of its popularity and films made into road to rural area after the 1940s.Hansen, p. 64
Meanwhile, with the discovery of Kalidas's Abhijnanasakuntalam by Western scholars, it became the first Indian drama to be translated into a Western language, by Sir William Jones in 1789. In the next a hundred years, there were at least 46 translations in twelve European languages.Review of Figueira's Translating the Orient: The Reception of Sakuntala in Nineteenth-Century Europe at the complete review website. This in turn initiated a concerted study and interest of Sanskrit drama tradition. In time the full extent of ancient Indian theatre's prowess came into light, which had been long lost, as classical Sanskrit drama mostly written from the 4th and 8th century AD faded out, with death of Sanskrit as a spoken language by the 10th century, only to be discovered many centuries later.
Just as the first capital of British India, Calcutta, saw the rise of Bengali theatre in the light of the Bengal Renaissance during the early 19th century, at the same time Parsi theatre was coming up in Mumbai, inspired by English-style playhouses which had come up in the late 18th century in Mumbai and Kolkata, exclusively for the Raj gentry. Taking over the same proscenium stages, Parsi theatre took cue their European theatricality, but it brought in Indian themes, thus it "blended realism and fantasy, music and dance, narrative and spectacle, earthy dialogue and ingenuity of stage presentation, integrating them into a dramatic discourse of melodrama. The Parsi plays contained crude humour, melodious songs and music, sensationalism and dazzling stagecraft." Though it originally was in Gujarati language, by the 1870s, a flourishing Parsi theatre lead to the creation numerous travelling theatre companies, though they mostly used Indianised versions of Shakespeare's plays initially, soon Indian legends, epic and mythological tales made an appearance as source material, as Parsi theatre companies started travelling across North India, and employed native writers to churn out scripts in Hindustani the popular language in the territory, akin to Urdu, the court language in the Mughal era. These sources had also provided themes to the native Swang tradition, leading to cross-enrichment after Victoria Natak Mandali became the first Parsi theatre company to perform in Varanasi, in 1875. These theatre companies presented their mix of pure entertainment and nationalism during the Indian freedom struggle. This return of written dramatic text to theatre, after centuries, made Parsi theatre not just the role model for the first Indian talkies, as numerous Paris theatre producers moved to cinema, but also gave birth to a theatre tradition, that continued even after Parsi theatre died out as the talkies made their first appearance.Hansen, p. 75 Panned by Hindi litterateurs, Bhartendu and Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, Parsi theatre through its veritable presence, however provoked the elite theatre of refinement as a clear reaction.Hansen, p. 77
Modern Hindi theatre 1868 and after
Early development of modern Hindi theatre can be traced to the work of Bharatendu Harishchandra (1850–1885), a theatre actor, director, manager, and playwright based in Varanasi (Banaras), who is also the father of modern Hindi literature as in his short life of 35 years, he edited two magazines, Kavi vachan Sudha and Harishchandra chandrika, wrote numerous volumes of verse in Braj bhasa, essays and eighteen plays, thus laying the foundation of modern Hindi prose style. Well-versed in folk theatre styles and oral literary traditions of the region, he was influenced by the Bengal Renaissance, however his principle influence was the ancient Sanskrit Drama, many of which he translated and established a stream of dramaturgy which has run parallel to development of the Western drama, though he even translated a Shakespeare's play. Rooted in the rising tide of Indian nationalism, he is most noted for his politically charged plays like, Andher nagari (City of Darkness) written in 1881, a clear satire on the British Raj, as it implied that a society which tolerates a lawless state is doomed to fail.Dimitrova, p. 14Hansen, p. 62Hansen, p. 78 Eventually Bharatendu became director of Hindi Natak Samaj (Hindu National Theatre) in Banaras.Hansen, p. 81
After Bhartendu whose productions were largely funded by himself or at times by Maharaja of Kashi, Hindi theatre went through a phase of struggle, due to lack of sponsors, impresarios or efficient theatre managers, thus there was hardly any professional theatre for many decades, discouraging writers to take to playwrighting, even works of important playwrights of this period, Jaishankar Prasad and Upendranath Ashk were mostly read, yet hardly staged. Prevalent conservatism didn't allow the female actors to take to stage and unlike Marathi theatre of Mumbai or Bengali theatre of Calcutta, Hindi theatre remained a struggling force, despite the presence of a large audience, which went to the extent of the entertainment-driven Parsi theatre companies. Only a handful of amateur theatre groups presented their works at improvised or makeshift stages, in a period when like many popular writers, intellectuals too had turned away from theatre.Das, p. 159 The arrival of talkies in 1931, with Alam Ara, meant outflow of Hindi theatre audience that had already dwindled away after the incursions by Parsi theatre across the Hindi-speaking belt. Soon theatre actors, director, writers and technicians followed suit, shifting to Mumbai, the base for Hindi cinema, where the promise of easy money from studios was too captivating to resist. As a result, numerous theatre companies and playhouses closed down and some started showing cinema, the new medium of the age. As the masses moved away from theatre, lured by the glitz of cinema, which Parsi theatre provided readily till now, theatre landscape was now populated by an educated and sophisticated audience, moving away from cinema in response to its escapism, looking for realistic and socially-relevant plays.Chambers, p. 380
20th-century Hindi theatre received a fresh impetus through Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA). Though formed in 1942, with left-wing ideologies, after the All India People's Theatre Conference was held in Mumbai in 1943, IPTA Mumbai was formedIndian People's Theatre Association. Article in mumbaitheatreguide.com An important contribution of IPTA was that it was first time that women started taking part in theatre in such a number.Rubin, p. 182 It created and inspired a generation of theatre practitioners and playwrights, like Krishan Chander, Kaifi Azmi, Balraj Sahni, Mohan Segal, Dina Pathak, Shanti Bardhan, Durga Khote, and others, one of them was Prithviraj Kapoor who founded Prithvi Theatres, a travelling theatre troupe, based in Mumbai in 1944, with actors like Prithviraj himself, apart from Uzra Butt, and Zohra Sehgal. The group was largely funded by Prithviraj Kapoor's film career and functioned till in 1960, when Prithviraj Kapoor's ill health forced its closure before his death in 1972.Kissing the firmament with Prithvi Theatre The Hindu 22 November 2004.
After independence Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA), The National Academy for Music, Dance and Drama, was established by the Government of India in 1952, to promote performing arts. Another big change in the realm of Hindi theatre was the establishing of National School of Drama in Delhi in 1959, which had Bharatiya Natya Sangh (BNS) as its precursor. BNS, with the assistance from UNESCO, independently established the Asian Theatre Institute (ATI) in 1958, and in July 1958, ATI was taken over by the SNA, and merged with newly formed NSD, which initially functioned under SNA before it became an autonomous organisation. With its principal instruction language being Hindi, and stalwarts like Ebrahim Alkazi and Shanta Gandhi, in the coming decades it produced a number a noted theatre actors and directors. The National School of Drama Repertory Company was set up in 1964, with actor-director Om Shivpuri as its first head, followed by Manohar Singh, and other actors like Uttara Baokar, Sudha Shivpuri and Surekha Sikri.National School of Drama ..over the past 50 years The Tribune, 2009. RADA-trained Alkazi turned out to be the most influential director in the post-independence period; his Hindi productions of Sanskrit classics, like Abhijnana Shakuntalam, Dharamvir Bharati's Andha Yug, Girish Karnad's Tughlaq, and the realism of his take on Mohan Rakesh's Asadh Ka Ek Din brought a fresh approach to theatricality, and sophistication to Hindi theatre, and set up standards that inspired an entire generation.Rubin, p. 200Rubin, p. 190 His production of Dharamvir Bharati's Andha Yug premiered in 1964 at the Firoz Shah Kotla and was attended by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.