Vijaya Mehta (1934-2026): An actor and director whose ‘influence will echo forever’

Vijaya Mehta’s influence transcended language, region and genre. Mehta, who occupied a place in Indian theatre like few others and also made several well-regarded films, died on June 30 from age-related ailments in Mumbai. She was 91.

To patrons of the stage, Mehta was among architects of modern Indian theatre. To critics, she expanded the vocabulary of theatre. To actors, she remained the uncompromising director who demanded their very best because she believed they were capable of even more.

To generations of students, she was simply “Bai”. She was a mentor, teacher, critic, collaborator, confidante and, often, more family than family itself.

“This is like losing my mother,” the actor Nana Patekar said. “I am beyond shock. With Bai’s passing, it feels as though everything has come to an end.”

Theatre director and actor Lillete Dubey described Mehta as “the OG Theatre Queen”. Dubey told Scroll, “The moment she stormed onto the theatre scene, she set a benchmark that generations of practitioners have aspired to. Though we never worked together, I remember her passion, warmth and wit. Knowing her, she has probably already organised a workshop up there and has the angels rehearsing.”

Vijaya Mehta was born in Vadodara on November 4, 1934. Her parents, Dattatreya and Bhurabai Jaywant, were members of the Theosophical Society. With Nalini Jaywant and Shobhna Samarth as her aunts, Nutan and Tanuja as her cousins, and Durga Khote as her mother-in-law through her first marriage to Harin Khote, Vijaya Mehta could have easily pursued a career in mainstream cinema.

Instead, having trained under Ebrahim Alkazi, Mehta chose the far less glamorous (and often infinitely more demanding) world of theatre. In doing so, she altered its course in India forever.

For more than six decades, Mehta stood at the confluence of tradition and modernity, carrying the restless spirit of Marathi theatre into new territories. As the founder of the Rangayan theatre group, Mehta belonged to a remarkable generation that regarded theatre not merely as a profession but as a way of thinking, questioning and living.

Mehta moved away from the established conventions of musical theatre, where mythology and history frequently blurred, without allowing it to lose the scent of its own soil. Her landmark 1973 collaboration with Fritz Bennewitz on Ajab Nyay Vartulacha – CT Khanolkar’s adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle – introduced to Indian audiences to Brechtian theatrical idioms. She also staged Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist tragedy Chairs.

The actor Reema Lagoo once recalled at a workshop in Mumbai organised by Mehta. “If Europeans can proudly flaunt their accents while speaking English, why should a Maharashtrian character speak like a native Hindi speaker?” Mehta said.

Under Mehta, the stage became far more than a performance space. It was where literature found flesh, silence acquired meaning and ordinary lives attained extraordinary resonance. Few directors combined intellectual rigour with emotional generosity like she did, as she made theatre at once exacting and deeply humane.

“Whether interpreting Vijay Tendulkar, Mahesh Elkunchwar, Bertolt Brecht or Anton Chekhov, she sought not spectacle but truth,” actor-director Vijay Kenkre said. “Every production bore the unmistakable imprint of a restless mind and a compassionate heart. She could hold discipline and freedom in the same gesture, scholarship and spontaneity in the same rehearsal.”

For Kenkre, Mehta’s passing represents not merely the loss of a towering cultural figure but also of the person who shaped his artistic life. “This is a deeply personal loss – she was my guru in every sense of the word,” Kenkre said.

Jabbar Patel, who directed both acclaimed plays and films, testified to Mehta’s astute of the mechanics of theatre. Mehta was a “colossus in every sense”, whose “understanding of theatre and the stage revealed itself in everything she directed”, he said.

Rangayan was “more a movement than a theatre group”, Patel added.

“I still get goose bumps recalling her performance opposite Shreeram Lagoo in Vijay Tendulkar’s one-act play Maadi,” Patel said. “The passion, drive and commitment she brought to that role overwhelmed me. The credit for ushering in a new era of acting, direction and presentation rightfully belongs to her. She was an institution unlike any other.”

During her tenure as the chairperson of the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai, Vijaya Mehta forged international collaborations with such luminaries as Peter Brook, Eugenio Barba, Ariane Mnouchkine, Jerzy Grotowski and Richard Schechner. They not only staged their productions in Mumbai but also conducted workshops and training programmes, many of which Mehta herself attended.

Mehta’s insistence on such engagement firmly placed Indian theatre within a global conversation, the actor Sarija Joshi recalls .

“Aise hi woh sabki Vijayabai nahi bani,” Joshi said. Not for nothing was Mehta loved by all. As a director, Mehta neither intimidated nor indulged her actors. “She expected every actor to discover a deeper truth within themselves,” Joshi recalled.

Mehta didn’t just create loyal followers, she also nurtured independent minds, demanding honesty before technique and integrity before applause. She sought excellence not simply in performance, but in character.

What Mehta imparted went far beyond the mechanics of acting, Nana Patekar observed. “When you trained with Bai, you were not merely learning the nuts and bolts of acting as a craft,” he said. “She reshaped your entire perspective on life, and you ended up becoming a better human being.”

Those who worked with Mehta remember the standards she set more than the authority she wielded. That rigour extended to the films she directed, among them Rao Saheb (1985), about a reformist lawyer in a small town in Maharashtra in the nineteenth century, and Pestonjee (1988), which explores the relationships between three Parsi characters in 1950s Mumbai.

Anupam Kher, who played the lead role in Rao Saheb, said that Mehta nudged along actors to find what they needed to grow into their roles. “She believed in raising standards,” Kher said. “I don’t think filmmakers today have either the patience or the inclination to invest in actors the way she did.”

Shabana Azmi, who played Jeroo in Pestonjee, recalled that it was Rao Saheb, rather than one of Mehta’s celebrated stage productions, which convinced her to work with Vijaya Mehta. This “director’s actor” admits that she “pestered” Mehta every time they met to cast her in her next production.

“Several years later, when she finally offered me Pestonjee, I was apprehensive about convincingly portraying Jeroo and expected instructions,” Azmi recalled. Instead, Mehta invited her to a gathering of her Parsi friends so she could quietly observe their speech, mannerisms and rhythms.

Later, Mehta visited Azmi at home, helping her construct an emotional backstory for the character. Fweeks before the film shoot began, Azmi began to wear Jeroo’s costumes, created by Roshan Kalapesi, around the house.

“She encouraged me to collaborate with her instead of simply receiving instructions,” Azmi said. “That immediately put me at ease because that is the relationship with a director I find most comforting.”

Behind Mehta’s formidable reputation was a woman who delighted in puncturing her own aura. “Despite being such a wonderful actor, she was hopeless at telling jokes because she invariably ruined the punchline,” Azmi said. “Her son, Deven Khote, would watch in despair as she persisted, completely undeterred. And no one laughed louder at the failed joke than Vijaya Bai herself.”

For Azmi, that self-deprecating humour was no accident. “I think it was her way of ensuring that actors were never intimidated by her awe-inspiring image,” Azmi said. “Her legacy will inhabit every rehearsal room, every stage and the heart of every artist who dares to dream. She showed us that theatre is not merely entertainment, but a way of seeing the world. Her influence will echo forever.”