The Red Curtain, a Kolkata-based theatre group, believes online technology has created a whole new genre of theatre which they refer to as the@ter. The Good The@ter Festival & Aw@rds began as a way to celebrate this new genre and to bring attention to artistes in India who were unable to make ends meet. Sumit Lai Roy, Festival Co-director and founder member, The Red Curtain International talks to Metrolife about the festival and the challenges they faced.
Could you explain the concept behind the festival?
In April 2020, we discovered the enormous reach online plays gave us. We did three productions in three months. And because the audience now came from around the world we found that we raised more money in three months than we had performing in Kolkata for the last three years.
We also found that the generous donations were really coming from first world countries. Several of the founder members of The Red Curtain were now in the USA and we were able to create an international entity and registered ourselves as a not-for-profit in Georgia, USA, all done online.
While we knew that others like us, around the world, had found ways to keep theatre alive, in our own country theatre artists were reduced to penury with no access to technology or a social support system.
We resolved to save the lives of at least 50 such artisans and discovered that would cost $15,000.
That’s when we came up with the idea of The Good The@ter Festival and Awards. Now nine theatre groups from around the world will help raise that money.
How were participants selected? What was the process of selecting the finalists?
Originally we thought people would apply to participate. But we found it difficult to get the word out. Then we divided the world up into three time zones and set up a team of people researching each zone. Google came to our rescue. With trial and error, we found that the most focused listings came by simply searching for Zoom Plays, by country.
We then started attending the plays that were performing online from July to October. At least three members of the Selection Jury (performance members of The Red Curtain) gave each production a rating out of 5 stars. We were looking for shows that averaged four stars or more. In October, we reviewed the shortlisted plays and arrived at the right mix so that each of those three time zones was represented in the Festival.
What were the challenges associated with this project?
Finding an International Jury was one. Fortunately, one of our initial members, Rustom Bharucha, is a dramaturg, and he was able to put us in touch with other dramaturgs and theatre thought leaders around the world. Having been in theatre for 50 years, we had made friends with theatre impresarios who had visited Kolkata. We got in touch with them and created what we fondly call the ‘United Colors of Theater’ Jury.
The other challenge was to ensure that all the finalists were performing on a level playing field. Two of the productions are not in English. But fortunately, Zoom allows closed captioning that can be done real-time.
The biggest challenge perhaps was the bias of theatre traditionalists to what they consider a ‘passing phase’. We believe that both theatre and the@tre can co-exist.
Do you hope to continue with such a global festival post the pandemic?
Yes. We’ve learned that geography has become history. One of the Finalists in this year’s Festival has performers from nine countries performing in real-time.
Online the@tre gives creative scope to set designers, costume designers, props designers, sound designers and elevates lighting designers and production designers to the level of Technical Directors. The oft-neglected Stage Manager gets elevated to the status of an Assistant Director.
The use of online technology in the@tre isn’t going to fade away. All the world has truly become the stage.The festival will run from November 21 to 29. For more details and to book tickets, visit www.theredcurtaininternational.org/festival