JOIN USWith an experience of being a pilot, copywriter and dog groomer, Nidhi Nambiar is now actively involved in directing theatrical performances. “My interest in theatre sparked later than I would have liked,” she says. Her passion was just a passing interest until 2 years ago when she founded ‘Osage’, a theatre, music and public organisation along with her music teacher Shankar.
Her interest sparked while watching a play based on Irvine Welsh’s novel ‘Filth’. She felt that theatre gave more intimate experiences than any film could. 2 years later, when she came to Bengaluru, she started to write plays to hone her skills. She started writing for courtyard theatre (part of Osage), which is for children, and has successfully put up plays like ‘The Whistle Blower’, 'The Adventures of Luna and Nagesh’ and ‘The Riddler’s Box’. The fourth play is nearing completion.
The play ‘Flipsides’, which allowed the audience to take sides on debates emerging within the play, was also written by her to support the ‘social engagement programme for youth’ concept founded by Shankar and her. After writing plays, she slowly moved to directing them and this, she says, was due to the encouragement from Shankar. She directed and staged the play ‘The Noose Doesn’t Know’ in February.
According to Nidhi, “There is good cinema too, but that is a different medium and works according to the different rules of the game.” She says that cinema lacks the one dimension that theatre has — temporality in presence. Theatre performances evolve as the play unfolds. The scale is also different, in theatre there is magic. “Cinema is technology-driven, whereas theatre shares the same space and time and is not alienating because of technology,” she adds.
In her opinion, theatre has taken insidious ideas from cinema and TV soaps. Theatre is not merely entertainment for passive consumption, it is meant to be meaningful. “Osage is doing that in a small but important way,” she adds. Nidhi has had some experience of acting in theatre too but she prefers to call herself a director rather than an actor.
She looks up to artistes like Ratan Thiyam, Heisnam Kanhailal and Habib Tanvir. Being fairly new to the field, she says that she has a long way to go.