one person sitting inside the tent but his legs are out—so half of him is real and half unreal. This gives me the opportunity of seeing the man emerge from the unreal into the real and vice versa. It allows me a great deal of flexibility. Q : Have you done other Soviet productions ? A : Yes, I have put up a couple of other productions. In fact, next to Brecht it is the Soviet playwrights I have done the most. I have done Evgeny Schwartz's Dragon. But that was an adaptation which I called Maya Bazaar. Then I have done Chekhov. According to me Chekhov is probably the greatest playwright after Shakespeare but I didn't feel very comfortable with Chekhov because of this whole static quality which I have talked about earlier. It is not that Chekhov is static but the whole theatre which is associated with Chekhov is static. If Meyerhold had actually done a Chekhov production it might have been different but it so happened that Chekhov's name is linked to Stanislavsky's naturalistic theatre. At that time Meyerhold was only reacting against naturalism but I don't think he ever consolidated an alternative theatre for doing Chekhov. I might be mistaken. My Chekhov production has been greatly appreciated, though. In fact, even now whenever that production is put up the house is full. But then I did not feel very comfortable doing it. I felt at ease with Schwartz's Dragon because I could just let myself go. I was not trying to build at all; instead I was trying to smash things and this play is admirably suited for that. I used techniques with a free hand. For instance, for each scene I decided on a particular primary colour, took that as a starting point and developed from it. In each scene I used a lot of theatre gimmicks, and different styles. The culmination of the process came in the Aitmatov production. Here I was no longer trying to break things. The process of internalization which finds its best depiction here, had been going on through all my previous productions, including the one I had written on the theme of the dictator and the dupe. There too I had tried all sorts of destructive elements. It was a full length play in which one actor plays both the roles. This creates a third dimension as well, because one associates oneself with the actor also. You see him as one or the other. But by the time of the second act the distinction between the two starts dissolving—and deliberately at that. The audience is no longer sure as to whether the actor is now the dictator or the dupe, etc. But now, with The Ascent a/Fujiyama things are getting internalized. And I don't as yet know what this is going to lead to. 26 Numbers 12-13