As a country we are obsessed with ‘New’. We always have been. Virtually every few weeks some boring product or the other is being reinvented with a “new formula” or “new packaging”, be it tyres or shampoo. Our media is similarly inclined as well. If it’s not “New”, it’s not “News”. Therefore, a news story is not seen to its conclusion because something ‘new’ has happened, and distracted everybody.
The arts, find themselves at odds with this obsession of the ‘new’. The performing arts actually gain strength and credibility in the repetition of an exercise. In the West, a play runs for a week of previews, before it officially opens. It is almost ‘old’ by that time; and therefore a much stronger opening night.
Bombay’s fast paced consume-and-dispose culture is slowly affecting the arts as well. The prolific AKvarious is a great barometer of this trend. They have done over 50 different productions in their fifteen years. While that is an incredible statistic in itself, they were not very prolific for their first five years. This means that they have opened virtually 4 brand new plays a year in the last 10 years. A stupendous achievement, but one also bound by the arts managers demanding something new.
Today Bombay has two major theatre festivals dedicated to new work. Centrestage by the NCPA has Bombay premiere’s as part of their mandate. Prithvi’s annual festival, of late, has lent towards demanding newer work. Both festivals (held three weeks apart) do refresh the theatre scene at the end of each calendar year. Over the years these venues have built up a great deal of curiosity and audience interest for these shows. Opening a new show in Bombay almost guarantees good attendance figures. Premieres often get full houses since the dedicated fan base of the group are always most keen to catch Opening Night. From the venue’s perspective programming new work only makes both economic and artistic sense.
2015 saw the emergence of Aadyam, another initiative looking at brand new productions exclusively. In today’s harsh financial climate for the arts, groups need to find alternate sources of funding to make their plays happen. Opening a new play is always the most expensive part of any production. The set and costume construction, rehearsals and designs are all put in place in the lead up to Opening Night. The guaranteed performance fee offered by the festivals, allow troupes a sense of security. The Prithvi Festival, for example, also provides rehearsal space and further dates. Aadyam go even further: they commission the work, and help amplify it in a way that a group on their own would never be able to achieve or afford.
Remarkably AKvarious, managed to open a new play at each of the three opportunities.
2016, however is also a Writer’s Bloc year. Writer’s Bloc is the culmination of a two year long playwriting programme. The festival aims at staging new writing and encourages audiences and groups to work with and appreciate new texts. This year marks the fourth instalment, after incredibly successful editions in 2004, 2007 and 2011. With each passing festival, it has grown stronger in terms of content and quality of productions mounted. What has been most interesting, however, is their ability to whet the appetite of the audience for new, home grown stories. In 2003, of the twenty odd plays that opened in Bombay across the year, only four or five were newly written. Last year of the forty odd plays that opened, only ten or so were adaptations; all the rest were newly written pieces.
While there is this burst of new productions, often the casualty are the older productions; ones that haven’t fully exhausted their audience reach. The city has only a few venues and even fewer opportunities to perform. It desperately needs newer spaces to keep up with the rising number of productions being created; and to ensure that they have an extended run of shows.
The longer a production runs, the stronger it becomes, the more opportunities there are for word of mouth to spread. Therefore the greater ability to attract newer audiences to the theatre. By becoming a culture of only ‘new work’, there is the possibility that theatre might go the way of the city’s Western Classical music scene. Three brilliant performances of every concert, and every performance packed to the rafters by exactly the same people.
