Dharmakirti Sumant, Manaswini Lata Ravindra, Nipun Dharmadhikari, Aalok Rajwade, Ameya Wagh, these are some of the names that represent the ‘now' generation in Marathi theatre. By Marathi theatre I do not mean the mainstream professional theatre, but the amateur parallel stream where meaningful theatre happens.
Some 60 years ago Vijay Tendulkar, Vijaya Mehta and Dr. Shreeram Lagoo broke the conservative moulds of mainstream theatre and established this parallel stream. Mahesh Elkunchwar, Satish Alekar, G.P. Deshpande and Arvind and Sulabha Deshpande followed. Then came the generation of the mid-80s — playwrights Rajeev Naik, Makarand Sathe, Shafaat Khan, Chandrashekhar Phansalkar, and directors Waman Kendre, Atul Pethe and Chetan Datar.
By the 1990s, the economy was liberalised and the market took hold of culture. For a while theatre became listless. In 1992, Satyadev Dubey woke it up with an eye-opening workshop for actors in Pune. It inspired Sandesh Kulkarni to start a new theatre group, Samanvay, which has gone on to produce some of the most interesting plays of the last 14 years.
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The next shot in the arm for parallel theatre came from the Lalit Kala Kendra of Pune University. The department had been somnolent till Satish Alekar took over as Director in 1996, and kick-started it into life. Some of its alumni are writing and directing the most significant plays of today. Manaswini Lata Ravindra, whom Vijay Tendulkar called “one of our most important playwrights”, has written four plays to date. Her husband Satish Manwar, also an alumnus of LKK, directed the first three. He then changed tracks and made the much-travelled, much-awarded film “Gabhricha Paus” (The Damned Rain). So Manaswini herself directed her fourth play “Ekmekat” (Between the two), and proved she was as accomplished a director as writer. The protagonist of this play is an outspoken, principled young woman who finds dealing with friends and relatives problematic because they keep adjusting their values to prevailing circumstances.
Exploring conflicts
In his first major play “Pani” (Water), Dharmakirti Sumant has explored the eternal conflict between thinkers and activists. Two friends argue about the Narmada Andolan, an issue that concerns both deeply. At the end, because Sumant represents both viewpoints so even-handedly, we are forced to conclude that there can be no rapprochement between the friends.
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His second play expresses the anger of a 20-something youth with his entire inheritance, social, political and theatrical. The young man's revolt expresses itself in the very formlessness of the play. A colleague says at the end that the audience is weary of him. He replies, “I don't care! Tell them they are not here to see theatre craft and fine performances, but to listen to the profound pain of a young life.” The play, directed by Aalok Rajwade, has been selected for two Italian festivals.
Aalok Rajwade is also a fine actor. He and Ameya Wagh took the audience by storm in “Dalan” (The Grinding Wheel) when it was performed in the Xth edition of the Thespo festival in Mumbai. Directed by young Nipun Dharmadhikari, this adaptation of a humorous short story by D.M. Mirasdar, swept the board with four awards.
A group that has been doing consistently interesting work for the last six years is Pune's Aasakta. Headed by Mohit Takalkar, presently at Essex University on a Charles Wallace scholarship, their productions benefit enormously by the sheer energy of the group and Takalkar's eye for set design. Their most significant productions have been Makarand Sathe's “Charshe Koti Visarbhole” (Four Million Forgetfuls), Mahesh Elkunchwar's “Garbo” and Ashutosh Potdar's “Ananbhog Mall”, which examines a young couple's relationship and aspirations against the background of caste identities and the globalised world.
Sachin Kundalkar was Aasakta's first playwright. His “Chhotyasha Suttit” (Brief Holdiay) made critics and audience sit up. Kundalkar's latest play “Dreams of Taleem”, a tribute to the memory of the late Chetan Datar, has been directed by Sunil Shanbag.
There are other young and not-so-young writers, directors and actors, whose work is keeping Marathi theatre vibrantly alive. Aniruddha Khutwad, Girish Joshi (directors), Padmanabh Bhind, Mukta Barve (actors), Rasika Oak, Milind Phatak (writers-directors-actors) are some of them. But there is also the Maharashtra Cultural Centre's well-equipped, affordable, auditorium Su-darshan Rangmanch in Pune, which has contributed immensely to its life. In the last seven years, this 150-seater has become as much of a home for parallel theatre groups from all over Maharashtra as the legendary Chhabildas school hall was in the 1970s.
Doing serious theatre has always been a tough challenge. But that has never stopped young people from jumping in and keeping the tradition going.