Our job is to constantly challenge. Tell theatre groups this isn’t good enough. We don’t want Dinyar Contractor; he has his own audience elsewhere. Feroz Khan, yes. That’s box office, but there’s quality there

[Sanjna Kapoor]

I hate cricket," says Sanjna Kapoor, looking around at the match in progress. "All of us hate cricket: Kunal, Karan and me. That’s always been Dad’s woe. That mother produced children who hated the game." Dad (Shashi Kapoor to you and me), of course, loves the game, and there he is in the commentator’s box, giving us a laconic (and humorous) description of the match.

But even Sanjna and Kunal and Karan forget their antipathy to the doings of "22 flannelled fools" once a year, because what’s unfolding itself before us is more, much more than a game. This is theatre and anything to do with theatre has the Kapoor clan in thrall. During every Prithvi Theatre Festival, the Prithvi Players take on the Film Valas XI . Since this is the 21st festival, this is the 21st match; but over the years, the dramatis personae have changed: Film Valas, Shashi Kapoor’s movie company, no longer exists. Now Prithvi Players take on the sponsors, so some of the young, lean men (and not so lean, not so young men) on the field must be from Orange, the mobile phone people and ICICI Bank, the money people.

Twenty-one years of the festival…. Twenty-five years of Prithvi…. A quarter century of dedication and unrequited love. Unrequited, at least in the material sense, because neither the once-a-year event, nor the 365-days-a-year theatre venue make a profit. The returns come only in the form of a passion reciprocated: these Kapoors love theatre, and theatre loves them right back. Which family, at least in the cut and thrust world of entertainment, would work with such a bottom line? Whose chartered accountants would be happy with such a balance sheet?

But if you believe in karma, there’s no greater example of it than in this particular branch of the Kapoor clan. Shashi’s father, Prithviraj Kapoor, after whom the theatre is named, ran India’s best known theatre group; Jennifer’s parents were the Kendals who ran Shakespeareana, the touring players who took Shakespeare, Shaw, Sheridan and Wilde to all parts of India. For Sanjna, that’s both sets of grandparents who lived and breathed theatre; but not just that. Shashi became part of the Kendal troupe, fell in love and married Kendal’s older daughter.

Genes and Karma

Sanjna got sucked into Prithvi without even planning a move. "Kunal and Feroz (Khan) ran the theatre. As for me, I just ran," she says with the uninhibited laugh that is her trademark. "I ran after Kunal wherever he was shooting to get his okay on the allocation of dates for the theatre." She conducted children’s workshops, ‘ran after Kunal’, then, slowly, swam into the deep end. "That was 13 years ago!" she says, laughing again. "But I’ve survived. More important, Prithvi has survived."

Its survival, even now, seems to be at the centre of her universe. The ‘even now’ being defined differently after her union with ‘Tiger man’, Valmik Thapar, and their young son, Hamir, both toddling around just outside the boundary rope, waiting for Mama to finish her interview. Prithvi’s survival, even now that she is in Delhi, is at the centre of her thought processes. "Now that I am at a distance and don’t have to deal with it minute to minute, I have a better perspective." That they cannot go on like this, hand-to-mouth, year-to-year, depending on the kindness of sponsors.

Part of the problem, though she doesn’t say it, is that there’s no government subsidy forthcoming. You only have to look at the scene in Britain, the world’s theatre capital, and the contrast hits you like a sledgehammer. London’s West End Theatre may be run on commercial lines, but their most prestigious and most permanent theatre companies like the National Theatre in London or the Repertory company in Shakespeare’s birthplace at Stratford, are heavily subsidised, with annual government grants which run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. "I don't want to complain," says Sanjna. "This constant cribbing must end that the government doesn’t do this or the government doesn’t do that. The government does do many things for the arts, and it’s for us to find out how we can work together." Distance, obviously, lends maturity to the view.

This wiser perspective must also come from the satisfaction of reaching the quarter century milestone. That journey has encompassed harnessing the excitement of starting a new venture. But, more important, it has included the, weathering of the low point in the early ’90s when "everyone wanted to do slapstick or comedy or ‘box office’ masala." Says Sanjna, "We then thought if Prithvi is going to do what everyone else is doing, what is the point? Our job is to constantly challenge. Tell theatre groups this isn’t good enough. We are not against box office. After all, everyone has to survive. But we don’t want Dinyar Contractor; he has his own audience elsewhere. Feroz Khan, yes. That’s box office, but there’s quality there."

Some of the more important milestones in the Prithvi journey have been ambitious festivals which included international companies from places like Germany and even Japan, but the latest, ‘The Theatre of India’ seems to Sanjna to be even more important. "We have started a discourse," she says, using a rather surprising word, usually reserved for spiritual matters. Perhaps, that’s what she wants to suggest; this is a dialogue between practitioners for whom theatre is religion. ‘The Theatre of India’ festival invited delegates from all over India, paid their expenses and got everyone to talk to each other. "We exchanged stories. We found out how theatre survives in small towns and in other big cities."

Hamir has decided it’s time to reclaim his mother’s attention. She dangles him on her leg, kitchicooes automatically and continues talking. This is Sanjna Kapoor in serious mode because what she’s talking about is the future of Prithvi. "Yes, as I was saying, we can’t go on like this. A management team is now in place to run the theatre. A national alliance of theatre people where we can exchange views has begun. But we need a corpus of funds, to sustain what we are doing in the future."

Thapar now looms over us. "We are going to miss the plane," he growls, tapping his watch. "There isn’t enough time." There is, of course, never enough time. Never enough time to do all that you want to do. Especially when you have multiple talents. You then have to make hard choices, do what has to be done and give up what you might really want to do. "Yes, yes," says Sanjna, "I do want to act. It’s hugely frustrating for me as an actress to not be on the stage. But one day, who knows, we will have a touring company again…." She turns wistful. "Just like the Kendals. Just like Mama and Papa."