They are absolutely professional but they don’t know how to cope with improvised movements which you can then make a part of the performance. And it was a horrendous task because it took me nearly four weeks to thaw them out and when they were thawed - and this I feel very grateful about, as an Indian - they felt they had learned a new dimension of acting and theatre; where things can come without reason; a starting point, not of logic, but of just letting yourself go and then crystallizing it in performance. Vijaya Mehta in Rasa: Theatre and Cinema.
Pic 1: Gottfried Richter as Dushyant in Kalidas’ Shakuntala directed by Vijaya Mehta (lead) and Frtiz Bennewitz,, Leipzig (1980)
Pic 2: Thomas Schneider (Kapil) and Elke Wieditz (Padmini) in Hayavadana directed by Vijaya Mehta in German, Weimar National Theatre (1984).
