It’s a scene of controlled chaos at the Ranga Shankara theatre in Bangalore at four in the afternoon. The chaos is an inevitable part of the 17-day festival of plays that’s about to start to mark the theatre’s first anniversary. It’s controlled because Arundhati Nag is controlling it with an iron will and little else.

Nag is the force behind Ranga Shankara, officially managing trustee of the Sanket Trust that runs the theatre and unofficially, it’s reigning deity and dedicated slave. And she has to check up on everything, even if there are competent people looking after the various aspects of organising the festival. Within a space of minutes, she runs to a shed where benches are being made, checks up on posters and stops to examine the work of a school-age volunteer who’s painting tins to be used as ashtrays at the Ranga Shankara caf?.

How does she do it, you ask when there’s finally a moment to get a word in. Bangalore theatre’s first lady chuckles, “I don’t do ‘it’. ‘It’ gets me to do all this, gives me the drive and the energy and the strength to go on. Some projects are like that, they make complete slaves of you.”

She has been in thrall to theatre all her life, starting her career in Mumbai at the age of 16 with the Indian People’s Theatre Association in English, Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati theatre. It was in Mumbai that she met Shankar Nag, the late actor and director who was the doyen of Kannada films and who remains alive in national memory as the man behind the much-loved Malgudi Days on Doordarshan. The Nags were obsessed with the performing arts, and it was Shankar’s dream to set up a space exclusively for quality theatre in Bangalore. Fourteen years ago, he died tragically in a gruesome road accident, which also left Arundhati injured and battered, in more ways than one.

It was some time before she could pick up the threads of her life, but when she did, Ranga Shankara was the prime obsession that kept her going. From getting the land and a Rs 25 lakh grant from the government to “going begging” to corporates for sponsorship, it kept her on her toes for five years and more. “I would eat, drink, sleep Ranga Shankara. Often, the first thought in my mind on waking up would be, who can I ask for money today?” remembers Arundhati. It makes her do strange things to this day. “I’ve never done an actual job in my life. I am a terribly disorganised person. I didn’t know what it was to sit in an office. But Ranga Shankara has made me sit behind a desk.”

To the cultural life of Bangalore, Ranga Shankara is more than just a place where plays are performed. Modelled on the Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai, it is meant as an exclusive space for theatre, with very occasional music or dance performances. “We don’t rent out our space for corporate meets and Garden Vareli saree exhibitions,” says Arundhati. Secondly, for all its innovative design and world-class stage services that allow innovation and theatrical experimentation, the money it charges in rent is low enough to be ridiculous. At Rs 2,500 for a performance, it is lower than what the most modest school auditorium would charge. Ticket prices range between Rs 49 and Rs 100, making it possible for people from all income groups to watch good theatre.

In just a year of its existence, it has become the nerve centre of all cultural activity and intellectual thought in Bangalore. In the last 365 days, there have been no less than 300 performances. Among its patrons are doyens of cinema and theatre such as Girish Karnad and M S Sathyu. And because of its vibrant, youthful, non-stuffy atmosphere, it has also drawn the young in droves. At any given point, Ranga Shankara is abuzz with the chatter of the young, and they are not just there to ‘hang out’. Hundreds of school and college students volunteer with RS (as it is fondly called). “What’s heartening is that they don’t dismiss theatre as ‘oh that boring, oh that intellectual jholawala stuff’,” mimics Arundhati. “Their energy goes a long way towards running Ranga Shankara.”

What it has also done is encourage good theatre in the city. Because the rental is so very affordable, the number of young theatre groups keen on innovation has grown in Bangalore. “Ranga Shankara has done a tremendous job of energising theatre in Bangalore. The city has always been keen on theatre, but it has provided the right spark, the space and the atmosphere,” says Sathyu, a member of the panel of experts at Ranga Shankara.

And how do the economics work out? No, she hasn’t got hold of a genie of the lamp. It’s cellular service company Hutch that is acting the fairy godmother. It’s they who pick up the tabs on losses incurred and will do so for another three years. “That’s why we don’t call them sponsors but partners,” says Arundhati. “Sponsors will put up their posters, have us announce their names and pack off. Hutch is there behind us all the way.”

She bemoans the fact that with so many software giants operating in and around the city, none have stepped forward to offer the kind of help that Hutch has and that Ranga Shankara needs. “They do a lot of charitable work, one of their main areas of interest being primary education, but somehow theatre and other cultural activities have never figured in their priorities. What they don’t see is that there can be no education without culture. Do we really want a nation full of educated but uncultured young people? That’s something they need to ask themselves,” says the impassioned actress, who admits she hasn’t had much time to act in the last one year, the only important role she played being that of the protagonist in the Kannada version of Girish Karnad’s latest play, A Heap of Broken Images, and a role in a hit Kannada film called Jogi.

Her obsession for Ranga Shankara is something she views in the light of a payback. “You have to settle your scores. I find it completely unjustifiable that young people join theatre, take so much from it, get all their training from it and then go earn their money in cinema and television. I agree, there is very little money in theatre, but there has to be some form of return some time,” she asserts.

Meanwhile, all hell is breaking loose a floor below us. Fielding panic calls from her daughter Kavya who is sitting at a printer’s office getting posters printed, Arundhati rushes out into the bedlam that rages around her, but which she can’t do without anymore.

Photograph by Shashi Kiran K