Young playwrights call the shots

Playwright Ram Ganesh Kamatham remembers exactly when inspiration hit for his 2010 play, ‘Creeper’, an urban re-telling of the mythic story of Vikram and Betal. “It was October of last year,” recalls the Bangalore native. “I was on my way to rehearsal and got caught up in traffic. Then I realised it was caused by a fight that had broken out on Castle Street…a couple of south Indian guys were slugging it out with a couple of north Indian boys, and the only cop present had turned his back to them to diligently divert traffic.” The visual is one that would be instantly recognisable to any urban dweller, as would be Kamatham’s reaction: “I took the typical apathetic middle-class route — got the hell out of there,” says Kamatham.

Kamatham believes that this incident describes accurately what Bangalore is going through right now. “I tried to respond to this situation with the play, by placing a nostalgic 1980s Bangalorean voice against a rabid 21st century one.” The playwright hoped that this play would explore the futility of both positions, both of “retrogressive propaganda” and of glowing “development propaganda”.

Beyond adaptations
Kamatham is one of a growing breed of young playwrights around the country who are setting aside the time-honoured theatrical initiation of adapting established scripts, and instead, responding to their urban realities with original work. These young playwrights are nurtured by opportunities such as the Ranga Shankara festival in Bangalore, Prithvi theatre in Mumbai, and rented basements for readings and rehearsals in Delhi. They tackle topics such as road rage, widow remarriage, premarital sex and homosexuality. With increased opportunities and new scripts creating a stir in the theatre world, it is perhaps easier than ever before for budding writers to ‘break into’ the stage.

The winner of the recently concluded Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META) gave this development credence, when the coveted Best Play award went to ‘The Interview’, staged by the Mumbai-based Akvarious theatre group. The play, about a rookie’s job interview, dealt with what is perhaps the most primal urban instinct today — finding a good job, and what you’re willing to give up for it.

Mumbai-based playwright, Sidharth Kumar, got started in theatre by directing Damages by Steve Thompson and The Shape of Things by Neil LaBute. ‘The Interview’ was his first script, and the play has been running successfully in Mumbai theatres since December. Delhi-based playwright Neel Choudhuri, on the other hand, admits that getting funding and venues is a perennial difficulty. Courtesy of a grant from Max Meuller Bhavan, he is working on a new play, ‘Ich Bin Fassbinder’, about an Indian playwright who is obsessed with the German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder. “I am not interested in doing scripts which have no context or meaning in my world,” says Choudhuri. “Scripts on immigration and city life grab me like no Neil Simon play can.”
Renowned thespian Arundhati Nag was a jury member at the META ceremonies in Delhi last week. She noted that the scripts, while showing originality, were often “fragmented and episodic.” According to her, the younger playwrights don’t go in for conventional form anymore.

Responding to changing ethos
Rahul da Cunha, adman and theatre-person, is in agreement with Nag, and cites his latest play, ‘One On One’, a series of monologues, each of which has a different theme. “The monologue form is the theatrical equivalent of flipping channels,” says da Cunha. “The audience enjoys a different topic with each new monologue, and all of theme together talk about issues that the modern Indian will be concerned about.” Another Delhi-based playwright, Abhishek Majumdar’s monologue, ‘An Arrangement Of Shoes’, for instance, was described by critics as “rich visual interpretation”, and that it “does not come to us in the secure packaging of a conventional play.”

Even in the case of adaptations, the playwrights keep in mind the changing ethos of their audience. Majumdar began his career with an adaptation of Pratidwandi, a Bangla novel which explores the choices of a young man in Calcutta in the late 1960s, who resists the peer pressure to join the Naxalite movement. “The book focused on the political movement and the ideology, which I didn’t have access to. I changed it to a more personal narrative, into the story of a man who doesn’t want to follow popular trends.” Kamatham is also experienced with adaptations — his play ‘Snakes and Ladders’ was an adaptation of Doctor Faustus. “With adaptations, I try to focus on how the story can be in dialogue with the today’s realities. I reset the story of selling your soul as a tale of drug abuse — the devil was a drug pusher at a party selling ecstasy,” he says.

While venues like Ranga Shankara in Bangalore — where plays can be staged for a paltry sum of Rs3,500 a night — and Prithvi theatre in Mumbai, which offers subsidised rental rates of Rs5,000, encourage new talent, other problems have cropped up. “In Delhi, the National School of Drama (NSD) dominates the public imagination,” says Choudhuri.

Another issue is the informal nature of payment — theatre doesn’t exist in India as a formalised industry. As a result, there is no standardised payment for playwrights or directors. But some, like Majumdar, see the bright side to the organised chaos. “In the West, you have to go to an agent. Here, all you have to do is find friends who believe in you, make the play happen, and stage it. Alternative spaces, especially in Delhi where rental rates go upwards of Rs30,000, are a good option,” he says.

“I do think we should get adequate payment, but we can’t adopt the European system, which is culturally too different. In the developed West, theatre is an established institution; here it is more fluid, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. The creation of great plays is not something a society can take responsibility for. All we can do is make the stage available.”