The Photographs of Shobha Deepak Singh

A photograph is not merely a factual record of outward appearances. In the hands of a skilled practitioner, the camera can provide revealing insights into situation and character, and the subtle interplay in human relationships.

The theatre is a fugitive and an ephemeral art. The dramatic performance disappears into thin air after its brief two-and-a-half hour passage on the stage, and may survive for a while, somewhat erratically, in the memory of the spectators. As far as the actors are concerned, they cannot see themselves as the audience seen them, and can only guess at the impression they have made, or surmise, from the vocal response of viewers during or after the show, as to the nature of the reaction.
I was often intrigues, and occasionally irritated, by Smt. Shobha Deepak Singh’s obsessive preoccupation with the idea of recording rehearsals and performances in audio-visual form. I was irritated because the presence of the camera constitutes an act of intrusion into the quiet concentration essential at a rehearsal, which is a painful and private period of gestation for the actors and the director.

To have the camera eye constantly aimed at one can be a disconcerting and unsettling experience. One tends to pd perform for the camera rather than be preoccupied with problems of interpretation of the production process. In a sense, a theatre photograph is an interoretation of an interpretation – a view, as it were, at a second remove.

But all such factors notwithstanding, what the camera seizes upon and exposes can indeed be a revelation, not only for the viewer, but for the actor himself.

Shobha Deepak Singh’s camera is everywhere, and freezes the fleeting moment with uncanny precision, and with a sensitive awareness of the multiple layers of being of the actor vis-a-vis the character be incarnates.

Her dogged and indefatigable persistence is rewarded by the images captured as a result of her swift, instinctive reflexes, and her capacity to seize the quintessential dramatic moment of crisis in a character’s development.

Apart from her presience into the individual personality, she has succeeded in capturing the spirit of a production as a whole: the monumental grandeur and spectacle of THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN, where the soft, colourful opulence of the Incas contrasts with the hard, black, metal-and-leather abrasiveness of the Spanish conquistadors; the quiet, shadowed eloquences of sequences from Chekhov’s THREE SISTERS; the vicious brutality of Stanley Kowalski which overwhelms the decadent and at times perverse pursuit of beauty of Blanche Dubois in a A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE; the towering pain and passion of the Greek tragedies.

The video films, shot with a single, static camera, registers the sweep and flow of the productions and their changing rhythms. They preserve for posterity at least some vivid record of a theatrical production, and provide some measure of vindication against the unchallenged distortions of jaundiced viewers.

I would like to express my gratitude to Shobha Deepak Singh for her exemplary dedication and unflinching faith, and my respect for her creative accomplishment. She has been a student in the Director Course.

This exhibition is a tribute to her remarkable talent and also to the equally remarkable achievement of the gifted actors and directors of the LIVING THEATRE’S Course in Drama.

– E.Alkazi

About Shobha

Shobha Deepak Singh was born in October 1943; had her schooling at Modern School and graduated from Delhi University in 1963 (Eco Hons).

She joined DCM as a Management Trainee in 1964 and was involved in marketing and advertising of the company’s leading product lines .She was married in 1967.

She joined Bhartiya Kala Kendra in 1968 and was the first Manager of Kamani Auditorium. Shobha went on to specialise in designing of costumes and ornaments- a field in which she become a trailblazer. Later on, she took over the task of script writing and directing of the Kendra’s ballets. During the past four decades she has for over thirty ballets/dance dramas of the Kendra.

During this period, in 1977, she also completed her degree in “Bachelor of Performing Arts”. She received her diploma in theatre direction in 1996.

In 1992, she joined the Direction Course of Living Theatre under the tutelage of Mar. E. Alkazi During this tenure, she was responsible for the music of several plays. She was Assistant Director to Mr Alkazi, for four of his eight lays.

Shobha has a natural flair for photography and has actually been shooting for four decades.

She has had several solo photography shows.
Her Photographs have been used extensively in leading newspapers and magazines.
Many a time , her images have been used to make a book.
Analogue photography is her forte.
She is self taught, never used a flash and has a bank of 300000 negatives.
Her mentor is E Alkazi and she believes that she would like to capture movement in dance and emotion in theatre.

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