It is remarkable that today we live in a world where no one can predict what professions will be available for our children in the next 10-15 years. Gone is the age of securing your life’s profession from decisions made (very often by parents) during school or college. Very often these decisions are made regardless of your true interests or passions. On one hand this new phenomenon can lead to insecurity, the mystery of it unsettling for some. On the other, it forces us to embrace the uncertain and unpredictable, allowing for the arts to creep in with greater force into this new way of being.

Why the arts? Because, suddenly, in this risk-taking age of start-ups and innovation, we no longer fear the unknown, and the unfamiliar becomes acceptable. The arts, too, fall into the category of the unknown and unfamiliar. I celebrate this world! And I believe this is one of the reasons we have an increasing number of youngsters today who are looking to make a life in theatre in India. It is no longer something you are passionate about and do after hours, after office, late into the night, leading a life of sleep deprivation and fatigue. Instead it is a profession that you immerse yourself in, and know you have to be entrepreneurial to earn a living through it. I see this happening in our major metros across India. And it is only a matter of time before this trickles down to other urban centres.

Other factors too have aided this emancipation of the theatre dream. The growing number of reputable theatre awards and festivals over the past five to 10 years have immensely enhanced the value of theatre in public perception. This is important, especially given the shrinking space in media for any serious coverage of the arts.

Privately set up awards like the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Award and the Vinod Doshi Fellowship impact theatre practice across the country in very different ways. Among the festivals, the government-run Bharangam in Delhi has grown considerably in stature and influence over the past few years, as has the younger International Theatre Festival of Kerala (ITFoK) in Thrissur.

Other young festivals run privately have made a great impact too, including the Jairangam in Jaipur, the Rang Vinayak Rangmandal in Bareilly and the more recent Birla Group festival, Aadyam. These initiatives strive to nurture theatre in several ways — from awarding excellence in all aspects of creating a play, to recognising promising young individuals, to creating new works and bringing works from across the country and the world to local audiences. They serve as platforms to showcase talent, as also develop a keen audience. More and more young theatre practitioners and lay audiences are flocking to these festivals as an annual retreat.

Stopovers for the arts

Today we have far more opportunities in India to immerse ourselves in other art forms too, such as the annual Ishara Puppet festival, Assitej’s festival of theatre for young people — TIFLI, Gati Dance Festival, Jaipur Literature Festival and the Kochi Biennale. All of them celebrate theatre and the performing arts from across India and the world. But to impact urban India in a lasting way, they will have to multiply manifold.

Luckily, we come from a tradition of pilgrimage, so these festivals can become part of a pilgrimage route for arts lovers. It is ironic and sad that most of these festivals are private endeavours, rather than public or government-funded. I do hope this changes, and the government realises that it needs to play a part as supporter, partner, part-funder and promoter to regions beyond the Tier-I cities.

Another interesting development is the growing opportunity for theatre practitioners to train at high-quality international schools or even national workshops. I have seen struggling actors save up pennies and literally beg, borrow and not-quite-steal to get to a coveted workshop. It was not so 20 years ago. The younger generation in theatre seems to have an admirable desire to develop skills and learn the tools of the trade.

Even the less-glamorous and more mundane aspects of theatre, such as theatre management, have takers. India’s very first theatre management training programme, the four-month SMART: Strategic Management in the Art of Theatre course, has attracted a wonderful array of young theatre groups that are hungry to learn how they can function better and realise their dreams. There is exciting work taking place amongst younger theatre groups and performers, marked by a readiness to take more risks with content and form. The very language of theatre is being challenged and rediscovered. From The Tadpole Repertory in Delhi, to Jyoti Dogra and her one-woman pieces, to Patchwork Theatre in Mumbai, to the Natak Company in Pune, to Badungduppa Kalakendra in Assam and so many more...

A new culture is brewing of late within the theatre community, and that is one of collaboration — exciting connections of sharing and creating newer work. Spearheaded by the younger generation, this movement is throwing up exciting possibilities for new work and forms of theatre.

My own organisation, Junoon, which I co-founded four years ago, is finding great strength from collaborating with likeminded organisations to design, curate and run programmes. This includes names such as Tamasha Theatre, India Theatre Forum and India Foundation for the Arts, Gillo Theatre Repertory, QTP, and even individuals such as Ratnabali Bhattacharjee and Timira Gupta. Each organisation or individual brings their unique strengths to bear, to craft very special encounters with the performing arts. There have been collaborations between theatre groups and individuals from Delhi and their counterparts in Bengaluru, or between Pune and Jaipur. Performance tours have been arranged between theatre groups across cities, enabling true sharing of resources and manpower, as also deepening learning and a sense of being part of a larger whole.

Satyadev Dubey once said, “Theatre will never die because there will always be need from the audience to immerse themselves in performance.” I do believe this strongly. And interestingly, in urban India the audiences are across all ages. We also have an audience that is ready and able to afford an evening at the theatre. The challenge is to capture audiences’ attention and make them feel equally responsible for keeping theatre alive. They are the true patrons.

A month ago I was fortunate to experience a marvellous rural theatre practice called Jhaadi Pati in the Vidharbha region of Maharashtra. I was in Navegaon for the premier of a new production by the Venkatesh Mandali when my host, Sadanand Borkar, took me also to the Jhaadi Pati playing in the next village. That very evening, he explained, within a radius of 12 km, a dozen performances were taking place simultaneously, watched by more than 24,000 people. All of them would have purchased a ticket each, priced from ₹30 to ₹300, resulting in a turnover of ₹18 lakh from just this small corner of rural Vidharbha on a single night! And the Jhaadi Pati season lasts five months. What is more astonishing is the quality of the audience, which prides itself in buying tickets and knowing its theatre.

This 150-year-old theatre practice gets zero support from the government. Its performers, writers and producers are farmers (sadly fewer and fewer now, as the more commercial TV actors from Pune and Mumbai make their way into this lucrative world). The themes, when not bawdy comedies, range from farmer suicides to superstition and women’s empowerment. The audience knows the plays well and demands its money’s worth of quality entertainment. It is truly fascinating.

However, the greatest challenge facing most urban theatre workers is the lack of spaces to create work in and to perform in. Spaces that are not just auditoria for hire, but ones that actively nurture their work and develop a discerning audience. Seeing the government’s indifference towards this dire need, more and more theatre people are creating their own spaces to create and perform in. In the process, they are turning what could otherwise be seen as prime real estate into little oases of creativity and sharing — Studio Safdar in Delhi, Sitara Studio in Mumbai, Lamakaan in Hyderabad, Walden in Irinjalakuda, Avikal Studio in Dehradun, Lok Kala Manch Mullanpur Theatre in Ludhiana, and Rang Vinayak Rangmandal in Bareilly among others. And I am not mentioning the older and more established Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai, Ranga Shankara in Bengaluru, Ninasam in Heggodu, Adishakti in Puducherry, or Seagull Theatre in Guwahati, as they continue to play a very important role in our theatre development, but have much more experience on the ground. What is exciting is how younger theatre people are creating newer spaces and are managing to find ways to pull their resources together and survive. Thankfully, the number of independent theatre spaces cropping up across the country is growing. But at what cost? Why can the government not chip in with resources and assistance? In fact, most of the time, the government makes it prohibitively difficult to run these spaces, owing to rules and laws that are blind to the needs of a developing theatre-going culture. This must change.

Interestingly, in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru there seems to be a spurt in the emergence of non-traditional theatre spaces. Theatre people or even theatre lovers are turning available spaces into performing spaces — basements, old studios, terraces, bookshops, cafes, gymnasiums and drawing rooms included. But sustainability is the issue; unless the government wakes up to the need to create safety nets for such endeavours, as it does for innovation and start-ups, we are going to continue to struggle, and simply survive rather than thrive.

Now is the time, more than ever before, for theatre to claim its space in our lives. Given the dynamic nature of the younger generation in theatre, I believe this will happen. As the anonymous quote in Manifesto of the Arts says, “Culture, of which the arts are the highest expression, is but a collective means of making meaning, of telling stories, of imagining and then believing what is real, who we are, what we are doing here and why. Our culture reflects us; how we see the world and how the world sees us.”

Sanjna Kapoor is a theatre practitioner and the co-founder of Junoon

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