Culture is usually an uncontroversial sector, a product, frankly, of its insignificance. Appointments, though, at any of the 32 autonomous institutions, fully funded in most cases, within the protective fold of the Ministry of Culture, have always been a touchy business. And so it is with the latest controversy over the appointment of the next director of the National School of Drama (NSD).

Late last year a five-member committee was formed to select the next director of the National School of Drama (NSD). At the time this was considered a sufficient period in which to identify a new director to take over from Anuradha Kapoor who retired in April 2013. The NSD is India’s premier theatre performance and education institution and one of the leading “autonomous” cultural bodies functioning under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture since 1975 though it has existed since 1959. With a total annual grant of Rs 38.50 crore (2011-2012), a high-profile annual festival – the Bharat Rang Mahotsav — running for the last 15 years and its Ebrahim Alkazi legacy from the 1960s when the legendary theatre director moved from Mumbai to Delhi and shaped the school in its early years, the NSD is a major institution of Indian cultural life. Among the actors to have graduated from it are Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Manohar Singh, Surekha Sikri, and Pankaj Kapoor, followed by Seema Biswas, Mita Vasisht, and most recently, Irfan Khan.

Late last year, after spending six months on numerous drafts and rewrites, Girish Karnad’s new play in Kannada, Benda Kalu on Toast, was ready. The title is a reference to the founding myth of Bangalore, in which an 11th century king was saved by an old woman who offered him boiled beans. The grateful king offered to name the spot Bendakalooru or the place of boiled beans, which, over time, became Bangalore. Alongside this fact, in the preface, Karnad gives us a sense of the sprightly humour we can expect to find in the play. He tells us: “Toast is a strictly western import into Indian cuisine.”

NINASAM's campus in Heggodu, deep in Karnataka's Shimoga District, with its red earth, tall trees and a set of vibrant theatre spaces is a reminder that despite rapid urbanisation, a few viable cultural alternatives do exist in rural India. The national seminar, “Spaces of Theatre, Spaces for Theatre” organised by the India Theatre Forum (ITF) attended by almost 200 theatre practitioners, architects and critics, was recently held here.