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Today, it's theatre that's pulling in the crowds
Sudhish Kamath
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Youth looking for live entertainment, says drama producer The stage is attracting a lot of new people who haven't been to plays before
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on stage: A scene from `Evam Indrajit,' an English play. — Photo: M. Karunakaran
CHENNAI:
It could have been just another living room.
Only out here there are a bunch of young enthusiasts sitting around, reading chunks of text from their copy of the script. Ten minutes into the room, you see these guys turn characters.
Soon, they start exhibiting symptoms of multiple-personality disorder as the guy sitting in the centre shuffles their roles around, every ten minutes.
The readings continue. For about an hour.
At the end of it, the guy in the centre, Michael Muthu of Boardwalkers has a smile on his face as he says: "I think we have a cast."
Soon, they are discussing who's available and who's not, for Evam's co-production `Biloxi Blues,' a play Mike had helmed for Loyola Theatre Society about a decade ago. The play was a runaway success during the two consecutive years it was staged.
On Sunday afternoon, during another `Evam Indrajit,' producer Karthik Kumar tells the crowd about more productions in the pipeline and Evam's tours to other cities.
Did we say crowd? Yes. Theatre today not just attracts crowds, it has also changed the profile of its audience.
The audience has become younger.
"We are not just a theatre group. We are an entertainment company," says Sunil Vishnu K, who runs Evam with his old-mate Karthik from Mudra Institute of Communication, Ahmedabad. Incidentally, `Indrajit' was the first play they staged together, five years ago, at MICA.
Target group
"Today, we are attracting a lot of new people who haven't been to plays before. Our target group is 18-35 and the proposition we have for them is not theatre but entertainment. We drew 1,500 people for the five shows of our first production. On our last play, we did ten shows and reached 5,000 people. The numbers are increasing. Chennai has at least 15,000 to 20,000 people who want live English entertainment," says Sunil.
Multiple teams
To cater to this increasing need for live entertainment, Evam has multiple teams today working on different productions.
"Next month, we will have three things on our hands. `Evam Indrajit' will go to Prithvi, Mumbai and Rangashankara, Bangalore. `Barefoot in the Park' is going to Hyderabad, Pune and Colombo. In the same month, we will be rehearsing for Biloxi Blues, which will premiere at the Madras Theatre Festival, which we are managing," says the actor.
The marketing acumen, thanks to their upbringing at MICA, is just a bonus.
"We are not competing with any other theatre group. I sell myself not as a event management company but as a medium. I have 5000 people and we reach them six times a year. We do activities in Landmark, we have an email database of our audience. So it's easy to convince a sponsor to be associated with us."
Their popularity has also ensured that young theatre enthusiasts head towards Evam for grooming their skills further. "Though we have a floating population of actors, the core people have continued to be with us. The good thing is there is enough number of people who want to work and be trained."
The bunch of actors interested get together informally on a weekend. And, it all starts all over again.
With that simple reading exercise in the living room.
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Life
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
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