Needed: Temples for theatre

Actors fighting to survive: Zafar Karachiwala, Anu Menon, Shernaz Patel, Soharab Ardeshir. (Photo: Neville Sukhia)

At a recent rehearsal of The God of Carnage, I realised that the cast are among the MOST professional collection of actors we have on the English language stage. Shernaz Patel and Sohrab Ardeshir play the couple who are hosting Zafar Karachiwala and Anu Menon for tea.

By almost all criteria they are ‘professionals’: training, work ethic, diligence, preparation, experience, and even the amount of days a year that they spend on stage. However, in the one factor which defines ‘professional’, making a living, they don’t measure up. This is primarily because Indian theatre, particularly in English, cannot run one’s house. So every actor is subsidising their theatre roles with either day jobs or writing assignments or film and TV work.

About ten years ago, while casting for a huge production slated to tour internationally, I recruited actors on the basis of the fact that for a short span of life, you would be waking up each morning and going to work in the theatre and getting paid for it. It was an incredibly rare occurrence. The one thing theatre actors know more than anyone else is job instability. Over the last decade things have changed in little ways. Plenty of shows have been built in India and toured abroad: The Merchants of Bollywood, Taj Express, Bharati 1, Bharati 2, Miss Bollywood, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Nirbhaya, etc. For defined spans of time, these stage productions have provided full-time employment to actors and crew members, who have managed to live the ‘theatre life’.

Unfortunately, this scenario is only possible for the export market. Western cultures value the live performer more and have the critical mass of theatre-watchers that allows for a production to play six nights a week. The cheapest theatre ticket is often three times more expensive than a movie ticket; compared to India, where often the price of a movie ticket and theatre ticket is the same.

However the advent of large-scale ventures like Zangoora, Jhumroo and Beauty & the Beast have marked a change in the way theatre actors get work. These productions are governed by their financial numbers. They are commercial in nature. Therefore it is in the best interest of the production to have actors booked for the month, rather than per performance (as used to be the norm). Hence actors are finding stable employment, and the productions are able to run multiple shows a week because their ‘per show cost’ comes down. Beauty & the Beast, for example, had actors contracted for over six months, even though they only did twenty performances. This meant that for the first time in Indian theatre, an actor’s time was being valued even during the rehearsals. The results of this system are evident. The performances are stand-out, the singing superb, and the fitness of the performers is astounding.

In all likelihood, ventures like these will lead to more such theatre entertainment spectacles. Dubai Parks and Recreation are already casting for a large scale Hindi show to feature daily in their resort. Similarly, it is a good bet that Disney will roll out more Beauty & the Beast styled extravaganzas. It’s a good time to be a stage performer in India, particular if you can act, dance and sing.

However, in order to make a transition to Broadway/West End style regular performances, we do need a severe re-hauling of the infrastructure. Producers are reluctant to dream big because there are very few avenues to show the work. Bombay has barely 15-20 well-kitted proscenium theatres with a capacity of 700 or more. And these are shared between the productions of four language groups. The afore-mentioned The God of Carnage, for example, has a performance tomorrow at St. Andrew’s and then nothing for another six weeks.

We desperately need more places to make theatre in Bombay properly professional.

We need temples of theatre where people can go and do darshan of a particular play any day of the week.

Except in these temples, men and women are welcomed with open arms.