Enter Stage Right, The Alkazi / Padamsee Family Memoir

Bombay, 1943. The young Parsi actress who was playing Salome in the newly founded Theatre Group s production of Oscar Wilde s eponymously titled play drew the line at performing the Dance of the Seven Veils, a sort of Biblical striptease . So director Sultan Padamsee s 19-year-old sister Roshen stepped in. And met the handsome, intense Arab who played the male lead Ebrahim Alkazi. In 1946, they were married.

Thus was forged one of the greatest alliances in the world of theatre and art in postIndependence India. Ebrahim Alkazi took English theatre from its early beginnings in Bombay to national and even international acclaim as he directed and acted in more than a hundred plays, ranging from Oedipus Rex, Murder in the Cathedral and Macbeth in the 1950s, to Ashadh Ka Ek Din, Andha Yug and Tughlaq in the 60s and 70s. As director of the fabled National School of Drama from 1962 to 1977, he launched some of the finest actors of our times, including Om Shivpuri, Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Rohini Hattangadi, Manohar Singh and Uttara Baokar. Chief costume designer and seamstress for all his productions was Roshen Alkazi.