1950s
On her return from the United States, Prema Sastri worked with Ebrahim Alkazi and his theatre group as an actor, usher, understudy and was greatly influenced by his work.
She was with Alkazi’s Unity Theatre, when with the young Madhur and Saeed Jaffrey worked with Alkazi. She was very impressed with Zohra Sehgal, who was 60 years at the time, and quoted Sehgal saying: “Prema I am going to London to make a new international career.”
When Sehgal achieved her dream, Prema resolved to never consider age as a barrier. She continued to write, direct and produce plays right to the last days of her life. At the age of 80, she wrote and directed short-plays from her wheelchair for Raksha, the club for the wives of army-officers and the local church in Indiranagar, Bangalore.
After her work with Unity Theatre, she was selected to attend a workshop on script development and street theatre at the National School of Drama (NDA), set up by the Sahitya Kala Academi and the Ministry of Arts in India.
1960s-1970s
Moving to Bangalore, she was the drama critic for Indian Express. She realised her love for theatre was greater than critiquing work by others.
She started her theatre work with the Bangalore Little Theatre (BLT) and for over a decade, co-produced and directed plays before creating her own theatre company Kalidasa Theatres in the 1970s.
She produced and directed both Shivaji and Gandhi that played to packed halls at Ravindra Kalakshetra, Bangalore’s largest theatre at the time.
1980s-1990s
When Peter Brook was in India, Prema was the only person in the English language theatre, to be chosen to attend a theatre workshop held by the British Council and run by Brook who was touring his production of the Mahabaratha in the Indian sub-continent.
She completed her play on Gandhi and started writing radio plays. A pilot of Changes, written for Feba (formerly known as FEBA Radio), about the troubles and travails of a south-Asian family resulted in letters pouring in to the broadcaster and she went on to write 24-episodes for the channel.
In the mid 1990s, Robert Small, the director of her staged reading of Gandhi by the Pan Asian Repetory in New York, invited Prema as one of two international writers to attend the Shenandoah International Playwrights Retreat.
A mother and wife first, Prema declined this prestigious offer.
2000-2017
When her husband, passed away in the year 2000, she took a break from writing plays. She directed and acted in the local church’s Nativity plays every year as a comfort and solace, writing only after nearly a decade passed. These plays, written for the army-officer’s wives club, were short 15-20 minute plays, which she directed and produced right up to 2016, a year before she passed away.
3-Act-Plays
Shivaji
Written under the pen-name Lata Narain in the late 1960s through to the 1970s, the play was dedicated to Ebrahmin Alkazi.
In 1975 The Chhatrapati Shivaji Coronation Tri-Centenary Celebrations Committee, congratulated her for her literary contribution. She was invited to New Delhi, by the Vice-President of India, BD Jatti, who released the book at the Inauguration Ceremony and distributed 200 copies of the books to senior government officials.
Shivaji, the founder of the Maharashtra Empire, fascinated the author, as he was shaped and influenced by three key women – Sai and Soyra – two of his seven wives and his mother Jijabai. She saw Shivaji as a “misfit amid the obsequious inanities of court life” – a reflection of her own life as her father worked as a senior advisor with the Nehru Government.
Gandhi – Man of the Millions
In the foreword to the play, Prema writes “To write a play on Gandhi is to invite criticism”, having met the Indian freedom fighter when she was at the age of 10, she was impressed by his great sway over the millions of Indians who had gathered to hear him speak.
She focused on researching Gandhi and decided to write a play about the man and not the politician. The play, dedicated to Kasturba and Madeleine Slade (Mira Behn), once again shows the author’s interest in the women who shaped the great men of Indian history.
Written in the late 1970s through the 1980s, the play was published by The Writers Workshop in 1989. In 1993, Harsh Nayyar, ironically played Gandhi in a staged reading of the play in New York. Nayyar, who made his career acting in Richard Attenborough’s film on Gandhi, played Nathuram Godse, the man who assassinated Gandhi. Madhur Jaffrey, much to the author’s delight, played Kasturba.
Radio Plays
Across the Border
Originally titled, The Dividing Line, this 1-Act Play was written as a radio-drama, however in the 1990s, the play was performed at The Watermans Arts Centre, in a festival of plays by south-Asian writers. The director, Simon Nicholson, now an established writer in his own right, was at the time an award-winning, graduate of Cambridge University. Nicholson worked with the author suggested modifications to the play as well as the title.
The play won Nicholson, the best director award while the Akbar Kurtha, won best actor. The Kiln Theatre, then known as the Tricycle Theatre, commissioned a double bill of Across The Border and Gandhi to be performed in London.
Changes
When FEBA and TAFTEE (The Association of Theological Education Extension) approached Prema to write a short play for the radio, she was using role-play in teaching communications and leadership. TAFTEE was looking for social issues that would encourage young leaders to make wise decisions. Many of these issues started in families.
Prema looked at key social issues with episodes titled Divorce, Teenage Struggle and Voilence in the Family. Assertiveness, wisedom, compassion were some of the themes she explored in the process of decision making and leadership.
In their marketing flyer, TAFTEE highlighted these themes “Can there be Unity in Decision Making at Home” and “How does a woman juggle work, home, husband and children”, were some of the slogans used to market the series. Many of these slogans were issues close to the author’s own experiences. The producers of 24-episode series often received several emotional letters and calls about how the imaginary worlds of the characters resonated with their audience.
