Think inside the box! How the Black Box format is giving theatrewallas an opportunity to experiment and innovate

Imagine stepping into a theatre where you have no idea where you might be seated — in the middle or on the side or you may have to turn your chairs around to follow the performance. Performers could end up staging their act in the centre of the room, in the corners, or they may move around you — inviting you to enter their world on a more intimate level. The movable stage, seating arrangement, and flexible lights inside the confines of a black room, is what is known as Black Box and Mumbaikars are discovering what it means to have such an intimate experience with this format of theatre. 

The city’s brush with the Black Box format happened many years ago, when NCPA’s Experimental Theatre opened its doors to the public, encouraging people to get innovative with their acts. In January 2016, G5A opened in Mahalaxmi, a unique Black Box space, an open-air terrace, a study/workshop space and a cafe. Since then, they have had more than 300 programs ranging from film screenings and festivals, theatre, music concerts, dance performances, language arts and visual arts events and more. “The theatre fraternity has welcomed this space — firstly as a new space located in central Mumbai and then, of course, a space that encourages new and experimental thinking, unconstrained by the conventional format of a fixed stage and seating,” says Anuradha Parikh, Founder and Artistic Director, G5A. 

Unlike a proscenium stage, where the audience is seated in one section and the stage is on the other side, the Black Box format gives theatre-goers an experience that engages them in a more inclusive manner. Earlier this year, two of Aadyam’s plays, Danish Husain’s Guards At The Taj, and Mohit Takalkar’s Gajab Kahani, were made especially in this format. Tushar Dalvi, whose Darkroom 2.0 makes use of this format, says that with no fourth wall present, it’s a more immersive experience for the audience. “You adapt yourself to the venue and to the surroundings, by making use of innovations,” he says. 

GET INNOVATIVE

Mumbai-based architect and filmmaker, Anuradha, believes that given the kind of struggles and challenges that everyone in the marginalised spaces of art and culture practice face, including them at G5A — especially in the wake of an exponentially growing conservatism, and mainstream-dominated world, there must be platforms for new ideas, new conversations, and new communities to flourish and survive. “Only then can we confidently and truly talk about producing innovative and courageous work. For me, the Black Box symbolises this opportunity,” she adds. 

A similar thought is expressed by Sharin Bhatti, co-founder of The Cuckoo Club, who believes that we are in a really interesting phase of the Indian cultural cycle. “We have way more exposure to entertainment than our contemporaries. A large part of the sensibilities we have brought to The Cuckoo Club is not just discovering artistes, but also platforms where their work can be taken seriously. Having that amount of fluidity, yet with a certain amount of respect for the stage, the audience’s time and for the artistes’ expression, the Black Box works perfectly because it allows people to experiment but with the construct of wanting to make it better and to make it more sustainable,” she says. The Cuckoo Club opened in Bandra two years ago, and since then, they have hosted roughly 600 shows a year. 

CHALLENGING AND EXCITING

With no fixed structure, what a Black Box does is that it forces one to push the envelope — something that can be exciting as well as scary at the same time. Anuradha explains, “It’s just you and the emptiness and void - to make with it what you will. It strips you of the usual limitations and enables you to breathe and think differently. You stand alone at the edge of great possibility... One can make it a “light”, minimal or “no” set-world or it can become a “heavy” and fully-formed environment. It depends entirely on how the director and team, choose to interpret the narrative, and the form, tone, texture, scale and voice follow.”

Danish says that while the nature of the challenge — that of translating your imagination through meagre resources on to the stage — remain the same for any theatre format, what happens is that because it is a blank space, it also enables you in a way to stretch your imagination further. “In a proscenium theatre, the spatial arrangement is fixed,” he explains, “The audiences are sitting in one section and performance happens in another. That spatial rigidness is gone in a Black Box format. Not only can you play with the stage area, but with the audience’s seating as well. I think that makes it really interesting as not only are you looking at the setting of the play but you are choosing how, physically, you want the audience to enter into the play. A regular theatre, is in some sense, a two-dimensional vision, or at the most, a three-dimensional vision. It’s unifocal in that sense. Black Box makes it multi-focal. It creates an experience where your senses are being stretched and I think that’s great.”