Behind the curtains with director and artist Roysten Abel

A former student of National School of Drama, Roysten Abel's theatre musical show 'The Mangaiyar Seduction' will be performed for the first time in Mumbai next week.

Since the past two decades, Roysten has been one of the popular name in Indian theatre. According to Roysten, one of the turning point in his life was when he discovered the joy of creating theatre in collboration with musicians. He made two major productions, "The Manganiyar Seduction" and "A Hundred Charmers" which has been travelling the world.

Speaking about 'The Manganiyar Seduction' Roysten said, "Music is a tough profession. These folk musicians from Manganiyar community are from Jaisalmer. This platform was made not to promote them, but because their quality of music is so good that it encouraged me to join hands with them and come up with a theatre musical show. We have been getting good response and standing ovation from the public. The people are coming back to folk music."

The artists who are performing are 25 to 70 years of age.

Roysten returned to India in 1995 and started the Indian Shakespeare Company. He later started working with out-of-work street performers, like magicians, jugglers, snake charmers and more. This attracted attention from Italy and he was invited to create and direct a play on the Italian Film maker Federico Fellini in Rimini, Fellini's hometown in Italy.

He recently premiered "The Manganiyar Classroom" in which he worked with children of the Manganiyars. Speaking about the new generation Manganiyars, Roysten said, "The parents are encouraging them to study and get into different professions, but the children are enjoying Manganiyar music and they want to be part of this tradition."