Satish Alekar recently retired as head of the Center for Performing Arts, University of Pune. He was adjunct professor of performance studies in the Tisch School of Arts, New York University, as a Fulbright scholar. He has been practicing theatre in Maharashtra since 1971 and is one of the founding members of India's best-known theatre group, the Theatre Academy, which he administered from 1973 to 1992.

In the spring of 2003, I was a Fulbright scholar in the Performance Studies Department of the Tisch School at New York University (NYU) teaching famous Indian plays like Ghashiram Kotwal, Wada Chirebandi, Hayavadan, Mahanirvan, Begum Barve and many others. It was a rewarding experience to see how a private institution like the NYU functions, how it organizes finance and how the corporate philanthropy functions in the liberal economy. Thinking of the Indian model of higher education, we could benefit by merging the US financial ethos in our education system, including those of the classical and fine arts.

My teaching also gave me an excuse to be in New York, the hub of vibrating theatre. I was under the care of theatre guru Richard Schechner; hence, my schedule included conducting just one class per week and then involving myself in active theatre. It was perhaps the coldest winter in New York in many years. On two occasions the city came to a standstill because of the heavy snow. It was fun to attend rehearsals of the experimental play, Yokastas, in such weather. The play was being directed by Richard Schechner for his own theatre group – the East Coast Artists.

I had been in New York before my Fulbright, too. The first time was in 1983 when I received the Asian Cultural Council (JD Rockefeller 3rd Fund) fellowship as a young playwright. Then in 1985 I went with playwright Vijay Tendulkar to work as a consultant for the Pan Asian Theatre Repertory on invitation by Tisa Chang, the artistic director of Pan Asian. We worked on production of the English version of the Marathi musical play, Ghashiram Kotwal. Ghashiram was first produced in 1972 by Theatre Academy, Pune, a non-profit theatre organization established in 1973 by Jabbar Patel, Mohan Agashe, me and many others. The English version ran a full season in New York. In 1992 I went to Connecticut with famous theatre actor Girish Karnad where we attended the annual theatre event, the National Playwrights Conference, at Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. This was conducted by the American theatre guru Lloyd Richards. Lloyd (1919-2006) conducted this very innovative playwright development program annually from 1966 to 1999 with great commitment and creative imagination.

With more than thirty years in active theatre and my learning from the Fulbright experience, I can say it is time for higher education in India to give importance to providing subsidies in the field of performing arts. Though the National Theatre School in Delhi is doing a good job, especially in promoting plays in Hindi, we need to build more world class theatre schools. We are fortunate in having very good theatre functioning in the regional states of Maharashtra, West Bengal, Karnataka, Manipur, Kerala, Assam and Tamilnadu. Young artists from these states are taking theatre very seriously. I retired recently as a professor and head from the Pune University, Maharashtra. Some of my students, after graduating in performing arts, are now studying at US and UK universities supported by various educational funding. The heartening thing is they are inclined to return to join the regional theatres in their states. Because of students like them, I think theatre in India has a bright future for the next 60 years at least. I belong to the post-independence generation of Indian artists; they are the face of the 21^st century Indian theatre!