Pearl Padamsee

You need playwrights writing plays, not just borrowing from elsewhere.

You have somebody like a Pearl Padamsee create a repository of actors over a period of time, two decades, two and a half decades.

And that's the backbone of what we have today in terms of a structure.

The third thing I feel somewhere, especially listening to all the stories that we all have been sharing, is somewhere I think we've forgotten, and you alluded to Ruskin Bond, and I'm glad you did, that we've somewhere forgotten that theatre is also about literature.

She had directed Roshan Seth and his brother Haftab and Brinda Das and all these people in a play called The Reluctant Debutant, which I later did myself many years, many, many years later.

And then another landmark production that I saw was Alex Madwoman of Shio with Pearl Padamse and various other Hotshot Bombay actresses.

And these two productions and the National School of Drama in Urdu, I had seen some stuff at the IFAC's hall.

And I think it left a very strong impression on me.

... a bloodbath sometimes.

Pearl, Pearl Padamsee, she, she'd give us notes.

Yeah.

And you'd have to read out your note about yourself and the way we-- the critique.