A new stage for theatre

Theatrewallahs across the country work in particularly adverse conditions . There’s no money to be made in theatre, there’s barely any money to do theatre, there’s no space to rehearse, there are too few spaces to perform , there are few indigenous scriptwriters, actors are too busy doing TV... the list is as long as one of Hamlet’s soliloquies .
But an unexpectedly cheerful twist to this sorry script was written by the Indian government, which is often accused of doing little to help the performing arts.In January , the ministry of culture announced a grant for building studio theatres.
The scheme is meant for non-profit organisations and dedicated to the performing arts that want to either build a space for rehearsals or performance or improve existing ones. And the assistance offered is a generous sum of up to Rs 50 lakh. The secretary of culture Jawhar Sircar says that he was prompted to initiate the scheme by his own experiences of college theatre, a plea by Zohra Sehgal to support theatre at NSD’s Bharat Rang Mahotsav three years ago (“ She said, ‘Beta tu kuch kar’” ) and an adda with Kolkata’s theatrewallahs in 2009 at which they vented their complaints about the condition of drama in the country. Sircar hopes that the scheme will encourage clusters of groups to pool their resources to build a space. The idea, he says, is to build “intimate theatres in which the audience radiates energy and the actor radiates back” and to give dramatists economic independence . The ministry has also doubled grants for dramatists to Rs 6,000 a month.
Theatrewallahs are enthusiastic about the scheme. For Delhi’s Jana Natya Manch (Janam ), the scheme has come at an opportune moment. The group has been raising funds to build a space where theatre can be practised and community organisations can collaborate . Sudhanva Deshpande, one of Janam’s members, says the group plans to apply for the grant once it acquires a piece of land. “This is pretty much what we require,” he says.
One of the biggest obstacles theatre groups face is the shortage of rehearsal spaces. “The popular spaces today are a shed in a sports complex, where we share the sound space with grunts and loud music from an adjoining gym, or a grungy hall where wannabe actresses are ‘auditioned’ in a sleazy adjoining room, and the roof threatens to collapse any day,” says theatre director Sunil Shanbag. “Or it’s a firstfloor hall in a building in the midst of Veera Desai Road’s construction mayhem where the sound of trucks carrying building materials, and the dust from construction activity dominates your rehearsal experience. And none of these hell holes are cheap.”
It’s intuitive that having spaces dedicated to theatre will produce good work. Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai, for instance , is much more than a venue. It’s the axis of good theatre in the city. The same goes for Rangashankara in Bangalore and Su-Darshan in Pune. In the 1970s and ’80s Dadar’s Chabildas School was an incubator for experimental Marathi theatre. Recently, the auditorium of Sathaye College in Vile Parle has begun to be cultivated for non-commercial drama . Shanbag says he has been part of several attempts to carve a space for drama. As with almost all of the city’s afflictions , the obstacles boiled down to the city’s prohibitive real estate prices. “Space is at such a premium that it’s hard to compete with the kind of money businesses are willing to pay for the same space where you want to rehearse or perform ,” he says.
Atul Kumar’s The Company Theatre has, on the other hand, been working on creating a theatre residency in Kamshet for several years. The actor-director says he was funded by family, friends and a few theatre lovers. Formerly known as Evam, The Company Theatre Workspace should be largely ready by July. “I went all over Europe and US looking for support for this, including the state and central government but to no avail,” he says. “No one was willing to invest in land, construction etc. Everyone was only interested in the product, that is any theatre productions that might come out of this place. So hopefully now they will be interested.”
The culture ministry has, in fact, been visibly active this year. A cultural MOU with the UK yielded the Anish Kapoor shows in Mumbai and Delhi, a couple of travelling exhibitions from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and a number of other artistic initiatives across cities. Says Shanbag , “I don’t know if it will succeed , but for the first time we get the feeling that someone in the government is thinking about theatre, and theatre that is not necessarily spectacle or boutique stuff aimed at building images of India for the western gaze.”