It’s that time of the year, when lists and summations with their click-bait appellations have clogged up our timelines. When it comes to the world of the performing arts, it must be said that theatre in Mumbai itself, let alone the whole country, is not monolithic, but extremely diverse. Scattered parallel cultures, with their own triumphs and ovations, their own languages and baggage, extend into a nebula that can never be adequately made sense of, and certainly shouldn’t be bundled up under any one umbrella. Prestige resides in a tiny microcosm of privilege, and beyond that, there is the large whirring machinery of journeymen and apprentices who remain eternally unheralded. Having said that, stocktaking and introspection, from whichever vantage, is an annual ritual that must be partaken of, especially in an arts ecosystem that has been placed in a state of perpetual life support for eons.
In recent years, funding for theatre, always an uncertain beast, has received a shot in the arm due to the diverting of CSR funds to cultural initiatives. For instance, last month, Abhilash Pillai’s Talatum — the Circus opened in Goa supported by the Credit Suisse Group. An experiment that attempted to marry the spectacular elements of circus entertainment with the narrative thrust of Shakespearean drama, it would certainly have remained in blueprint without corporate support. In Mumbai, at the Godrej Culture Lab, industrial largesse sits in some contrast to the spartan allure of an all-white assembly room showcasing subaltern fare curated with care. It is a well-intentioned space with its own residual charm and promise.
The elephant in the room is undoubtedly Aadyam, the double-edged theatre initiative from the Aditya Birla Group, spearheaded by Divya Bhatia. Its big hoardings and splashy premieres of plays have attempted to give a nascent industry some gumption and a spine. Actors and technicians certainly attract better pay-days in Aadyam ventures. Minimalism in production design has given way to a certain confidence of presentation. Yet, being flush with funds, and even with the right pedigree of theatre-makers lined up, the venture appears not to have yielded enterprises of any great calibre. Striving for crowd appeal appears to have taken away from the independence of spirit that results in works of greater rigour. Only two years old, Aadyam is finding its feet and cultivating a new breed of audience, but must realise that a languishing theatre ethos can only be truly benefited with excellence rather than box-office receipts as the bottom line.
Yet, there are those theatre-makers who broke ground in 2016 with works of rare honesty and fearlessness. Rather than target disposable incomes, they appeal to the discerning sensibilities of an admittedly niche viewership. With accurately pitched marketing, some of these works could have crossed over to larger audiences. They remain underground beacons. For instance, Arghya Lahiri’s quietly moving Wildtrack is an elegiac tribute to the shifting sands of memory. Rehaan Engineer, returning to stage after a hiatus, elected to work with playwright Caryl Churchill’s unsettling Far Away , an intrepid choice that earned its own dividends. It was hosted at Sitara Studio, a venue that takes its culture-consciousness very seriously. Its star, the diligent Kalki Koechlin in a display of genuine multi-facetedness, has been particularly prolific on stage this year, wearing the hats of actor, writer, director and producer, over multiple projects.
Elsewhere, maverick Jyoti Dogra gathered a scratch team of talented actors from Chandigarh and chipped away at Girish Karnad’s The Fire and the Rain , to bring us the frisson-laden Toye . Mallika Taneja’s Thoda Dhyan Se was a ‘performance provocation’ that has created conversations across India, with its succinct politics that went against the grain of patriarchy. Similarly, Mandeep Raikhy placed two men on a charpoy in Queen-Size and presented a luminous evocation of same-sex desire as a triumph of the human spirit. None of it is really very radical, but these works are certainly welcome departures from the stifling mediocrity that besets the mainstream.
There have been bijou theatre spaces, too innumerable to list, that have mushroomed across the city to accommodate smaller, intimate works. Bandra’s Cuckoo Club has not let the relocation of its parent venue, The Hive, affect it much, with curator Akarsh Khurana streamlining its functioning to a great extent. The Mumbai Assembly, also in Bandra, and Mahalaxmi’s G5A made a dent this year on the arts scene, while Theatre on the Rocks, an outfit that facilitates performances in breweries and lounge bars, finished its slate with 30-odd shows.
While there was space for the miniature, the year also showed an appetite for mega productions. Deepan Sivaraman’s Khasakkinte Ithihasam (The Legends of Khasak) , based on the novel by O.V. Vijayan, emerged as a seminal work mounted on a unprecedented scale. In a specially created open-air venue, it creates an immersive experience that brings us unnervingly close to the goings-on in a sleepy Kerala village, whose denizens undergo a spiritual awakening of sorts. The production finally arrives in Mumbai later this month. More conventionally, the homegrown Mughal-e-Azam kept nostalgia-seekers happy by remaining faithful to its classic origins.
A surfeit of high-calibre international productions also toured India for never-before extended runs. These included Familie Flöz’s melancholic farce Hotel Paradiso ; international musical sensation Stomp , with its inventive array of ‘found objects’ doubling up as pieces in a percussion orchestra; and the cerebral comedy, Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense , lapped by a hidden tribe of Indian Wodehouse-lovers. These productions were popular and accessible, without compromising on art or stagecraft, if a tad heavy on the wallet. They can be expected to keep city theatre-makers on their toes, as audiences wake up to the bigger possibilities of the stage.
The writer is a playwright and stage critic.
