The festival which began on November 7 is titled ‘Theatres Of India’ and features acclaimed Indian theatre groups such as Adishakti from Pondicherry, Ninasam from Karnataka, and Nirman Kala Manch from Patna, and young upcoming groups such as Sridhar/Thayil, Ranan, Amitesh Grover, and Roots & Wing.
Prithviraj Kapoor, a pioneer in the Indian film fraternity, founded Prithvi Theatre in 1944. The theatre showcased more than 2,000 shows while it was active until 1960. Shashi Kapoor, Prithviraj’s youngest son, later revived the theatre in 1978 and has been hosting an annual festival since 1983.
Shashi’s daughter Sanjna Kapoor is currently continuing the family legacy as the director of Prithvi Theatre and the artistic director for the festival. “Young artists are the hopes of India’s theatre industry,” said Sanjna and added, “They’re a number of works by the younger generation and each one of them is trying to find a language of their own in the theatre scene.”
The houseful audience present at Sridhar/Thayil’s “The Flying Wallas: Opera Noir” is evident to the fact that the “show must go on”, as stated by Raj Kapoor, eldest son of Prithviraj. A lyrical conversation between a ghost and a soprano on God and relationships, their piece gives an interesting perspective on opera with its rhyming lyrics and the conversational style.
Sridhar/Thayil, the singer-songwriter-actor duo comprising Suman Sridhar and Jeet Thayil, has incorporated their musical aptitude on stage. “There’s a lot of storytelling and theatrical elements in our music,” said Sridhar, the 26-year-old singer.
The new groups showcasing their works at Prithvi Theatre are breaking with new experimentations. Amitesh Grover’s “The Hamlet Quartet” uses live multimedia; Ranan’s rendition of Peter Shaffer’s “Equus” combines dance with other artistic expressions such as design, film and music.
Music and theatre in India share an alliance since ancient ages.
The early theatres of India is said to have been born from of Natya Shastra, an ancient tradition of music and dance. Increasing influences from the Middle East and Central Asia, gave rise to the dramatic renaissance of Indian theatre.
The Parsees—the decedents of Zoroastrians—fled Persia and migrated to India due to Muslim invasions in the 8th century started their own theatre movement. Established in 1776, The Bombay Theatre represented the Indian version of London’s Drury Lane Theatre. In 1835 when a Parsee business house acquired The Bombay Theatre and added a mix of music, dance and action that influenced numerous regional plays in Marathi, Kannada and Bengali.
During the British Raj in India, and for almost a century, people used the theatre as a medium of expression to protest against colonialism. The British imposed the Dramatic Performance Act in 1876, which prohibited public performances of plays which were scandalous, defamatory, seditious or obscene in nature.
Nonetheless, in the post-colonial era, modern Indian theatre movement flourished in urban cities like Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai, paving a way for Oriya, Gujarati, Kannada, Urdu, Hindi, and English plays.
Mumbai has become an epicenter for arts, culture and entertainment today and has a repertoire for artists and artsy venues. However, contrary to the glitz of India’s thriving fashion industry and the glam of Bollywood, the city’s theatre scene is still in the process of weaving an artistic fabric for theatre lovers and artists.
“The electronic media has detached us from our senses of touch and from our emotions for other human beings,” asserted Sanjna, who believes that theatre is a necessity.
Sameera Iyengar, creative director of the festival, shares a similar thought and added that the electronic media can neither replace the experience of watching a live performance nor the interaction between performers and audience.
“In today’s age of digital media and the Internet, the younger generation in the theatre field should try to be at par with other media instead of competing with them,” said Vikram Iyengar, the co-founder of Ranan and director of “Equus”. “They have to find ways to connect with the younger audience,” he pointed out and furthered, “We at Ranan are trying to demystify the process of the performance to make it more enjoyable for the audience and to communicate with the youth.”
“Due lack of opportunities Indian theatre is likely to lose its talents to television and movies in the coming years,” informed Sanjna, stressing the need for more theatres for artists to be able to sustain a livelihood through their performances.
Regardless of the pessimism, the Prithvi neighborhood in Juhu is bustling with theatre enthusiasts and well-known faces. And the show is definitely on.
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