Theatre and Stage

Hootoksi Tyabji

My childhood friend Jer called me the other day from Canada and while we were chatting, she asked if I remembered the plays we used to “produce” when we were kids.

I have some faint memories of Jer and my cousin Aban who were always a part of my fantasy world and we created many "theatre productions" in which we were the writers, wardrobe and set designers, actors and often the audience too.

We loved Enid Blyton and she fueled our imaginations so that we went on the rocks by the sea near our home in Nepean Sea road trying to solve non-existent mysteries which we then wrote up in "books" we "published" The only photographic evidence I have of those early creative pursuits is one photo of me dressed as Cinderella (1959)!!!!

All the world has always been a stage for me, and I have managed to avoid paying fines to policemen, taken my family through Immigration without proper paperwork, convinced people of situations that did not exist and escaped into the characters of the roles I so enjoyed playing.

There were also those memorable gaffs on stage still make me smile!

I went to Presentation Convent Kodaikanal, a boarding school in the Nilgiri Hills from 1960 - 1968. The highlight of my acting “career” came when I landed the part of Arleen in the opera Bohemian Girl which was the most ambitious production undertaken by our director Sister Magdalen, affectionately called Maggie.

The sets and costumes were talked about and rustled up weeks ahead of time and a carpenter from Kodai town was hired to build a balcony from where I trilled the famous "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls." To frame myself in the exact position from where I sang this famous aria, there was a step ladder placed backstage and I had to stand on the second rung and belt it out "with feeling" One night someone inadvertently removed the step ladder - a quick-thinking sister Gregory knelt on the floor and hoisted me on her shoulder from where I belted out the song!

41 years later, Robert and I were visiting friends in Bangalore and their neighbors came over for a drink one evening. After being introduced as ‘Hootoksi Tyabji’, the gentleman said that he had only once come across a Hootoksi & wondered if I knew a Hootoksi Pundole. I replied I thought I knew her well as she was me, and he gasped and said, "You have to sing for me now!"

Air Vice Marshall Teo Osman and his wife Havovi were on their honeymoon in 1968 in Kodaikanal when the buzz on the bazaar streets was The Bohemian Girl at the convent. For lack of anything better to do, they attended the performance and Teo said he had never forgotten my rendition of "I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls." I wonder if he was there on the night, I sang it from Sister Gregory’s shoulder?

Then there was that time I played Susie Hendrex in Wait Until Dark I was supposed to walk on to a dark stage and say, "Why is it so dark" while I tripped over a body. On opening night, the lighting man got his cue wrong and I walked on a brightly lit stage with no body to trip over. Fortunately, I was able to make up some nonsense till the lights turned off and the ‘body’ was there for me to trip over!!!

The Primary English Class is a hilarious play where all the students speak their native language and only the teacher speaks English. We were in Dar es Salaam at the time, and we found all the nationalities we needed for the cast except for the Japanese student. I was given the role and I spent many hours listening to Japanese till I was able to mimic the tone, inflection, and rhythm without knowing too many words, and I hoped to get away with this!

Imagine my distress when I saw a Japanese couple in the audience one evening, and worse - the lady came up to me after the show and congratulated me on my perfect accent. She asked me what dialect I was speaking, and I quickly replied that I could not remember the name.

I later learned that Japanese has different dialects; the Tohoku-ben is so different from standard Japanese that even native speakers cannot understand it. They need subtitles whenever people speaking this dialect act in movies or on TV and the lady probably thought I was speaking that dialect!

In 1974 in New Delhi, I played Nancy in Oliver and Marcus Merchant played Fagan. He always forgot his lines and would ad lib brilliantly - He was a veteran actor of the Delhi stage, I was the new kid on the block, but being with him on stage I learned fast but he was undoubtedly the greatest acting challenge of my life!

Oliver received quite a lot of press coverage. Here are a couple of samples - Clipping 1 and Clipping 2, click to view.

We performed Jesus Christ Superstar at the Kamani Auditorium in New Delhi. I played the part of Mary Magdalen and one night I had to sing "Could we start again" over and over till Jesus remembered to make his entry!!!!!!

Here are some photos of these and other productions I acted in...

The Lady of Shallot, Presentation Convent, Kodaikanal, 1966

SAKUNTALA, Presentation Convent, Kodaikanal, 1967

MARAT SADE, New Delhi, summer of 1973

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, New Delhi, India, summer of 1974

THE MAID, Parsi Panchayat, New Delhi 1978

DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE, Parsi Panchayat, New Delhi 1979

RASHOMON, Thimphu, Bhutan, November 1981

Staging Rashomon in Thimphu was a highly ambitious project materminded by the director Kusum Hydari, an accomplished stage director and wife of the Indian Ambassador in Bhutan. Rashomon was Bhutan's first major stage production and had the full support of the Royal Government as well as the Indian Embassy. Many of the actors were high level government officials, some of who had never appeared on a stage before. Thimphu's public badminton court was converted into a makeshift theater, the stage was fabricated from scratch and the lighting and audio equipment had to be brought in from India. The technicalities of sound and light were Robert's responsibilities. I played the Samurai's wife.