New India, New voices
Until recently, Indian theatre did little more than reuse the epics and restage the classics. No longer
Until 10 years ago, a new play was a rare beast. One reason was the lack of outlets. Unlike a novelist, who sees his name on a book, a playwright needs the words to be spoken aloud. An unperformed play is not a play at all.
Another reason was that “new play” used to mean a new production of a Mahabharata story, or an adaption of Arthur Miller or even a restaging of one of the Big Four (Girish Karnad, Vijay Tendulkar, Mohan Rakesh, Badal Sircar).
That has changed. Epics no longer do justice to the things India wants to talk about. There is a surge in playwriting, and playwrights tell deeply individual stories.
The change is not only in English-language theatre. Hindi theatre long suffered from the lack of a canon. Dharamvir Bharati and Mohan Rakesh were present but never prolific. In fact the most performed Hindi/Hindustani writer is Saadat Hasan Manto, who is not a playwright at all. His short stories are staged regularly across the country.
Into this barren landscape has stepped Manav Kaul. He is not yet 40, and his impressive body of work captures the frustrations of being an Indian in the Noughties. Shakkar Ke Paanch Daane is told by a village simpleton and harks back to a simpler life, Peele Scooter Waale Aadmi deals with the melancholia of urban life, and his latest, Laal Pencil, shows the importance of poetry in our world. Kaul’s work is so popular and in tune with the preoccupations of young India, that every year one or two of his plays are staged at the annual Delhi University competitions. In fact, barely does a new play of his open than some DU college phones him for permission to perform it.
Kaul, along with Trishla Patel, Purva Naresh, and even the older Makrand Deshpande, have breathed new life into Hindi theatre. They approach stories with new perspectives. Deshpande’s work finds the unusual in the mundane. In Miss Beautiful a man brings home a bride to please his dying parents. Sona Spa is about a spa where people sleep for you so you can maximise your day. Naresh’s forte is telling stories in a folk style. Her brilliant Afsaneh was about two live performers confronted with the advent of cinema. Her OK Tata Bye-Bye received rave reviews for capturing the crudity of brothels and still imbuing them with dignity.
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The real spurt, however, has been in English theatre. The new work is no longer about only Catholic or Parsi families. In it, English-speaking Indians can hear others talk like themselves. The Georges, Marthas and Jims have given way to Ramesh, Ritu and Kapil.
Bangalore used to be the centre of English playwriting, with Mahesh Dattani, Gautam Raja, Ajay Krishnan and Ram Ganesh Kamatham. But Mumbai, because it is more active, has taken over that mantle. The success of Anuvab Pal’s comedies, Ramu Ramathan’s social commentaries and Rahul da Cunha’s friendship trilogy has inspired new writers. Although English theatre is often “relationship-based” or set in living rooms and coffee shops, a clear shift is taking place. Siddharth Kumar’s Interview was one of the most popular plays of last year. Funny yet dark, it captures the absurdity of a corporate setup and the apprehensions of a young hopeful.
The new writers are not limited to one language. Abhishek Majumdar writes in Hindi, English and Bangla, Irawati Karnik in English and Marathi, Meherzad Patel in English, Hindi and Gujarati, Annie Zaidi in English and Hindi. India is not monolingual, why should its playwrights be?
International markets are taking note of the “new” Indian stories. Dharmakirti Sumant’s Marathi play Geli Ekvees Varsha, about a young man who seeks life advice from a TV personality, was well received in Italy. Indian plays are staged by foreign companies. Anuvab Pal’s Chaos Theory was staged in New York, two plays of Chennai-based Anupama Chandrasekhar (Free Outgoing, Disconnected) were staged at the Royal Court Theatre in London.
It used to be very difficult for writers to get their work staged. The late Partap Sharma, in the 1970s and 1980s, had to plead with directors to read his work. Nowadays, theatre groups look for interesting stories. Once a playwright is recognised, he/she may be commissioned to write a piece. This has resulted in a new dynamic: theatre groups are more writer-driven. An echo of Shakespeare’s time.
Kamatham, Majumdar, Kaul, Deshpande, Patel and even Shivani Tibrewala all head their own outfits. Although they direct and stage their own plays, they are primarily writers. Other groups have “first dibs” on certain writers’ work. Naatak Company picks up most things by Nipun Dharamadhikari, Dharmakirti Sumant and Abhay Mahajan; Sagar Deshmukh’s plays are first offered to Aasakta; Siddharth Kumar’s work is usually picked up by Mumbai-based Le Chayim or Akvarious, all of Delhi-based Neel Chaudhuri’s work is given life by his Tadpole Repertory. The security of the group also allows plays to be exercised before they are staged. Scenes can be improvised, tested and developed, making for an enriching working environment and a stronger relationship between wordsmith and performer.
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This flurry of activity is not the outcome of chance. Numerous programmes support new writing. The most successful and visible is Writer’s Bloc. Started in 2003, it is a series of workshops conducted by the Royal Court Theatre of London to develop fledgling writers into full-blown playwrights. Plays from the workshop are staged in a festival, and each edition has seen a marked improvement in the level of writing. Most of the playwrights mentioned above have been part of this system in some way.
Independent bodies now encourage writers. Theatre Group Bombay’s Sultan Padamsee Award and Padatik’s Shyam-anand Jalan Award both offer large cash prizes for new, unperformed plays. Thespo, an all-India youth festival, is dominated by newly written plays. Young people are far more passionate when telling their own stories, and this is now feeding into mainstream theatre as well.
Finally, new plays are being published. Seagull Books has done this for years, but others are waking up. Bookstores are slowly dedicating more than one shelf to Indian plays. Clearly there is a need and a market. Recently Arvind Sivakumaran self-published his Americano, and within a fortnight all 100 copies were sold. The book led to a production by one of the buyers.
Ramu Ramanathan, the most prolific Indian playwright in English of the last 10 years, has finally found a publisher for his collection. At the latest Writer’s Bloc, three plays were published as a collection: Da Cunha’s Pune Highway, Kamatham’s Crab and Farhad Sorabji’s Hard Places.
Unfortunately, like most things in theatre, playwriting is not lucrative. Da Cunha runs an advertising agency and Sorabji is a lawyer. Many playwrights do make their living writing — but in journalism, TV or film. Perhaps that is why they gravitate to Maximum City, for the best opportunity to live off the written word and support the “playwriting habit”. Jamshedpur-born Aakash Mohimen, for example, used to write for a food website. In three years of freelancing, he churned out five plays — two for children, one for Writer’s Bloc, one for a commercial show and one to be staged later this year.
The sudden bursting-out of a playwriting community is incredibly promising, not just for the number of writers but also the number of plays. At almost a play a year each, these playwrights are building a literary canon without much effort, and with little financial reward.
Whether these writers will be spoken of in the same breath as Elkunchwar, Tendulkar, Karnad or Sircar is yet to be seen. Until then, we should sit back and enjoy the new stories.