Ebrahim Alkazi

At 98 years old, Ebrahim Alkazi physical status not available right now. We will update Ebrahim Alkazi's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

After his return from England, Ebrahim Alkazi regrouped the Theatre Group in Bombay in 1952. At this point, he was also associated with the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group, which included M. F. Husain F.N.Souza, S. H. Raza, Akbar Padamsee, Tyeb Mehta, artists who were later to paint from his plays and design his sets. Initiating his curatorial practices, Alkazi mounted an eight part exhibition, between 1952 and 1957, called This is Modern Art at the Jehangir Gallery in Bombay. In 1954, after breaking from the Theatre Group, Alkazi formed the Theatre Unit in Bombay along with his wife, Roshen Alkazi and Nissim Ezekiel. In addition to his directing, he also published the Theatre Unit Bulletin which reported on theatre events from India. Alkazi established the School of Dramatic Arts on 4th July, 1956 and became the principal of Bombay's Natya Academy. During his Bombay days Alkazi along with his theatre groups produced 'practically the entire pantheon of western literature', "from the Greeks to Beckett", as the theatre doyen would describe. Few of the later productions, which were staged at the sea-facing open air theatre in Bombay called Meghdoot, designed by Alkazi himself in 1958, included Medea (1961), Waiting for Godot (1961), and Suddenly Last Summer (1961)

In 1962, Alkazi embarked upon his journey to develop a pedagogic discourse for theatre in form of the National School of Drama. He designed a course, which not only focused on actor-training and direction, but on the learning of all aspects of stage-craft. As the director of the National School of Drama (NSD), Alkazi revolutionised Hindi theatre by the magnificence of his vision, and the meticulousness of his technical discipline. From the 60s on, the outstanding talent groomed by Alkazi at NSD was to directly feed an alternative stream of arthouse, and then mainstream cinema and television. His students include many well-known film and theatre actors and directors including Vijaya Mehta, Om Shivpuri, Harpal Tiwana and Neena Tiwana, Om Puri, and (Balraj pandit) Naseeruddin Shah, Manohar Singh, Uttara Baokar, Jyoti Subhash, Suhas Joshi, B. Jayashree, Jayadev and Rohini Hattangadi, Kumara Varma, S. Ramanujam . While there he created the Repertory Company in 1964 and directed their productions until he left. Alkazi pioneered the construction of new theatre spaces on and near the school campus, and most memorably placed his productions of Tughlaq and Andha Yug in spectacular historical monuments around Delhi.

He also founded Art Heritage Gallery in Delhi with his wife, Roshan Alkazi.

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