On Dr. Jamshed Bhabha’s 110th birth anniversary, we bring you an article the founding father of the NCPA wrote in its Quarterly Journal in 1980, discussing the reflection, hard work and scientific thought that went into building the magnificent Tata Theatre.
The construction of a theatre designed specifically to fulfil the exacting acoustic and visual requirements of India’s classical and folk music, dance and drama was integral to the concept, aims and ideals of the National Centre for the Performing Arts. As may be well-known by now, this public foundation was originally promoted by the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust as a pioneering institution to play a major role in preserving for posterity and developing those great national arts which have survived for centuries through oral traditions and master-pupil links, the gurukul system, the guru-shishya parampara. The disappearance of the old sources of patronage from the princely, feudal classes, and the accelerating pace of the country’s industrialisation, since India won her Independence, have, on the one hand, made the survival of masters and teachers more difficult and, on the other hand, provided new and attractive job opportunities in business and industry which have tended to draw the brighter children of performing artistes away from traditional family vocations.
The builders
Indian music and Indian dance forms of all schools, Hindustani and Carnatic, northern, southern, eastern and western, have been performed for centuries in courtyards, temples, palaces and relatively small halls and places. It is because Indian instruments and voices are generally soft and delicate in character and suitable for small audiences that the use of electronic amplification has been accepted as a necessity for performances in modern theatres and auditoriums almost everywhere in the country. Even a great master like Ravi Shankar generally refuses to perform in a theatre anywhere without a microphone in front of him. One consequence of this dependence on electronic amplification is that, excepting for occasional performances organised in private homes or at music classes, it is not possible for present-day audiences to enjoy the sound of Indian music in its purity. To overcome this handicap, it was decided from the outset that the National Centre would build an auditorium of such acoustic properties as to do away with the customary reliance on artificial amplification, and to enlist for this purpose the help of the best available experts in theatre design and acoustics. It was fortunately possible to convince the Ford Foundation, whose policy has been not to give grants for buildings, that a contribution to the National Centre, for the expertise of this kind not available in India, would benefit the country as a whole. We are fortunate that, with the generous grant of $200,000 from the Ford Foundation, the National Centre secured the consultancy services of Philip Johnson, architect of the State Theatre of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, and Cyril M. Harris, Professor of Architecture and Electrical Engineering of Columbia University, who was the Acoustic Consultant for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts at Washington. These eminent men worked on this project on the basis of bare costs and without charging their usual professional fees because of their admiration of the great cultural heritage of India and their respect for the aims and ideals of the National Centre. They explained that, in general, the acoustic properties of the theatres and opera houses of the 18th and 19th centuries were superior to those of modern times because the older auditoriums had a lot of surface decoration on their walls and balconies, with chandeliers and other embellishments, which, though intended for visual beauty, served the important acoustic purpose of breaking up the sound and distributing it evenly over the whole auditorium, whereas the undecorated flat or curved surfaces of modern architecture resulted in presentday auditoriums having pockets of good sound and pockets of inadequate or bad sound. Accordingly, Johnson and Harris, while maintaining the essential beauty of modern architecture, achieved their acoustic purpose by means of specially designed elongated three-sided forms, which from their starting point at the centre of the stage extend in concentric circles over the entire ceiling and also along the walls of the auditorium. These forms of high-density compressed plaster had to be prefabricated on the ground of increasing sizes determined by the auditorium’s shape, which is almost semi-circular and like a fan.
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Sound and silence
Another point Harris emphasised was the importance of excluding all extraneous noise or sound from the auditorium. For this basic reason he insisted on several design and construction features unknown to any auditorium in India, or, in fact, in Asia or Australia, wherever air-conditioning is required for cooling. Firstly, the air-conditioning ducts for the Tata Theatre had to be made many times larger in size than would normally have been installed for a 120-tonne cooling plant system, because Harris did not want tohear a whisper from the system even when he sat alone in an empty auditorium with no sound from the stage: in other words, he did not want the cool air to be “blown” into the auditorium but just to drop down noiselessly. Secondly, Harris insisted on the following structural precautions: a) The Plant Room Block located in the basement has been structurally isolated from the theatre building to prevent structure-borne vibration of equipment being transmitted to the auditorium block. b) All conduits and other piped services crossing such isolation joints have been provided with specially detailed flexible connections. c) All toilet fittings have been “cushioned” from the building structure through special rubber-based mountings. d) Similarly, all water pipes and drains supported from walls or slabs have been provided with flexible connections to prevent direct sound transmission. e) In the same way, all rainwater pipes in the auditorium area have been isolated from the structure. Thirdly, an extraordinary feature—perhaps, unique in the world—of India’s National Theatre, is that the two terminal points of the building at each end of the 100-yard-long main foyer are built on independent pile foundations right down to Bombay’s rock-base, totally separated from the pile foundations which carry the heart of the auditorium. A visitor entering the main foyer from either end will observe a two-inch wide cut in the floor extending upwards on both walls and cutting right across the ceiling, looking like a slice made by a knife in a cake. This cut is filled with a soft mastic compound of a kind that will exclude water without transmitting vibrations or sound. Thus, if a military tank or a road roller were to move along Marine Drive, or if the Municipal Corporation were to use road drills during the maintenance of the road or the footpath, no vibration or sound would ever be transmitted to the inside of the auditorium. Not even the auditoriums of the multi-million dollar Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts have this unique feature which India’s National Theatre possesses.
The perfect size
In regard to the aesthetics of the architecture and the design of the main foyer, Johnson’s thinking was conditioned by the desirability of providing one access to the theatre from Marine Drive and another access from the private road in its compound leading to the car parking area. Accordingly, instead of the traditional rectangular foyer, Johnson conceived a foyer over 100 yards long running diagonally across one corner of the National Centre’s eight-acre plot. The result of this design is to give a magnificent sense of spaciousness to the foyer without making it too large for a 1000-member audience. The simple Kota stone flooring in the entrance at the end of the foyer carries the vision to the spacious staircase with its rich magenta carpets, speckled almost invisibly with blue, and leading the eyes to the upper foyer with the auditorium’s six entrance doors. The ceiling level over the upper foyer is not unduly high for a theatre foyer— being only 19 feet high—and would be considered quite normal. However, Johnson has maintained the ceiling of the entire foyer at one level with the result that, at the level of the lower foyer, the ceiling has a height of 31 feet. Apart from the negligible economy that could have been effected by lowering the ceiling at each end of the foyer, the result would not have been aesthetically satisfactory whereas the foyer as it is has a grand sense of spaciousness. The learned Dr. Samuel Johnson once remarked to his biographer, James Boswell, “Nothing would ever be attempted if all possible objections have to be overcome.” The innovative features of the Tata Theatre, about which questions had been asked, have proved their worth and resulted in a pioneering building of enduring value to the performing arts. In the pre-inauguration trial performances, members of the audience sitting in the rear-most rows were able to hear with enjoyment the music of delicate instruments like the sitar, sarod and sarangi, to listen with clarity to dialogues in dramas, and to see with pleasure and appreciation the subtle movements of the face, eyes and hands in classical Indian dance recitals. Thus, the auditorium has fulfilled the requirements of a national theatre.
This article first appeared in the NCPA Quarterly Journal in December 1980 (Vol. IX, No. 4)
