Stage is set

Quasar Padamsee’s passion for theatre keeps him going.

It takes persistence to make a career in theatre in India. And loads of love of the craft. Thankfully, QuasarPadamsee has both in good measure.

The 33-year-old actor and director started out in college, with the dramatics society at the St Xavier’s college, Mumbai. That was 12 years ago. Today, Padamsee is one of the foremost of a band of young theatre-persons who are leading a revival of interest in English language theatre in the metros. His company, Q Theatre Productions, formed with friends and college mates Arghya Lahiri, Toral Shah and Nadir Khan, continues to thrive, its calendar taken up with theatre workshops; Thespo, the youth theatre festival in Mumbai that it has been organising for 10 years now; live events for corporates (this is what brings in the moolah, says Padamsee); and, of course, with mounting plays that not just entertain, but also hold up a mirror to society, confronting audiences with their often stultified thoughts and beliefs. As good theatre anywhere does.

Take Project S.T.R.I.P, directed by Padamsee which will be staged at the NCPA in Mumbai today. Corporate politics is the subject of this rather unlikely ‘comic’ play which traces the events that follow after a company discovers minerals on a remote island somewhere in the Bay of Bengal, and decides to mine it. “It’s an irreverent take on the corporate world’s penchant for mission statements, and to abbreviate — for instance, one of the executives in the play talks about the 3 ‘i’s, which stand for ‘ideate, innovate and irritate’.”

While the money in theatre “continues to be c*#p”, says Padamsee, and theatre-persons need to supplement their income with other jobs, he is happy that with platforms such as the NCPA, Prithvi, Ranga Shankara and the Metro Theatre fest in Chennai, life has become a little easier.

Project S.T.R.I.P
Where:NCPA Experimental Theatre, Nariman Point
When: August 22 at 6.30 pm