Theatre Arts Workshop

The Theatre Arts Workshop (TAW) is a non-profit making, registered cultural organization established in 1966, in Lucknow, India.^[1]

As well as the plays of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries, TAW produces new work from living artists and develops creative links with theatre-makers.

TAW will celebrate its 50 anniversary in March 2016.

In December 1963, ten members organized a theatre play and put through a programme – An Evening with Young Actors – which included Edna St. Vincent Millay's Aria da Capo, scenes from Twelfth Night and Macbeth, The Valiant and a dramatized reading of Hamlet, Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Raj Bisaria produced and directed all the plays, and decided to register a theatre group with a managing body and using local talent. A bilingual group theatre (English and Hindi), the central concern the development of a genuine interest in theatre-craft and creating within its scope, a theatre-consciousness, an ability to appreciate the drama of ideas and technique.^[2]

Bisaria financed the project, selected members for the committee, picked out a group of four English actors and helpers, and established what has since then been called Theatre Arts Workshop.^[3]

Thus in 1966, Theatre Arts Workshop (TAW) was founded by Raj Bisaria, as a president and artistic director, with the aim of creating interest in dramatic arts among the young, and help them to develop an insight into acting, direction and allied arts. The name ‘Theatre Arts Workshop’ is for theatre and allied performing arts; its members are to be exposed to workshop methods of representation. TAW was to be a training organization and then a performing group, with its motto ‘training before performance’. Its philosophy is "your right is to work only, but never the fruit thereof. Let not the fruit of action be your object, nor let your attachment be to inaction." – Sri Krishna to sorrowing Arjuna (The Bhagvadgita, chapter II - 47)

A token grant has been given by the Government of India – sufficient to meet the expenditure for one production.

William Shakespeare's Othello was the first play performed by the group, on 12 February 1966. It was adapted to be played by four actors, all British, and directed by Raj Bisaria, in the English language.^[4]

TAW has mounted over eighty major theatre productions till now. They have included performances both in English and Hindustani, and have included a range of plays from the US and England, major European plays and Indian plays drawn from various regional languages and Hindi. The productions have been interspersed with workshops, talks, arts shows and exchange programmes.^[5]

TAW mounted on stage the plays by European, American and Indian playwrights; its repertory including a selection from William Shakespeare, G.B. Shaw, Sartre, Ionesco, Christopher Fry, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Noël Coward, Ronald Duncan, Rattigan, Harold Pinter, Peter Shaffer, Jean Anouilh, Maxwell Anderson, Mohan Rakesh, Badal Sircar, Adya Rangacharya, Dharamvir Bharati, Shesh and Mohit Chatterjee and productions of Ann Jellicoe, Edward Albee and Orton, which proved too radical in the context of existing provincial attitudes which TAW is trying to change.^[6]

The TAW started its venture in English language with Shakespeare's Othello in 1966, Christopher Fry's poetic play A Phoenix too Frequent and Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist play The Lesson in 1967.^[7]

In 1967 Raj Bisaria decided to produce and direct Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist In Camera, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Aria Da Capo and Ronald Duncan’s translation of 12th century classic Abelard and Heloise in a three-bill presentation, in November, 1967. These were crucial productions as TAW’s audience wavered between shocked admiration and shocked disgust.^[8]

Raj Bisaria invited Delhi groups to produce, under TAW’s auspices, plays in Hindi with a view to making local groups conscious of the potentialities and challenges of Hindi theatre.^[9]

TAW’s first Hindi play was Baqi Itihas, a translation of Badal Sircar’s Bengali play on a thrust stage. It was a non-realistic presentation, using giant slides and specially designed music, the first production of the kind in the country.

Baqi Itihas was followed by a wide range of plays in translation from English, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, in addition to those originally in Hindi; Andha Yug, Suno Janmejaya, Aadhe-Adhure,^[10] The Cave Dwellers, Antigone, Garbo, Candida, The Father, Sleuth, Barefoot in Athens^[11] The Caretaker,^[12][13] The Public Eye etc.^[6]

Apart from the theatre TAW also introduced other allied performing arts for the very first time, like Irshad Panjatan’s Indian mime in 1967, and modern dance by America’s Murray Louise Dance Company in 1968, Indian classical dance by Sonal Mansingh in 1970, Om Shivpuri’s Hindi theatre group Dishanter in 1973, Richard Schechners’ environmental theatre presentation of Mother Courage and Her Children from New York in 1976, and painting exhibition of R.S. Bisht's miniatures in 1973 and the Annapolis Brass Quintet in 1981.^[14]

With its motto training before performance, TAW has been conducting comprehensive theatre workshops since 1966, for young theatre aspirants. Its training primarily focuses on psychological and realistic acting, with special attention on voice and body. As of 2015 over 100 acting and theatre workshops have been organised by TAW.

• Official website at the Wayback Machine (archived 28 January 2015)