The lockdown has brought many businesses and events to a standstill. The performing arts, especially theatre, have suffered hugely.
Many of them have chalked out plans about how to approach the situation after the Covid-19 virus scare.
Looking forward
Abhishek Iyengar, director of WeMove Theatre, hosted live sessions on Instagram and other social media pages since the lockdown started with artistes from different genres like Vinay Dhruvakumar, Sindhu Hegde, Sneha Prasad, Varshini Vijay, Shanshank Giri. It went on for two weeks.
“From Yakshagana to improvised storytelling, we covered several facets in these sessions. Soon the concept spread and led to collaborations,” he says.
‘WeMove’ wanted to explore something different, so Abhishek shifted his attention towards children. “Parents were looking for things to keep their wards occupied. We started a week-long theatre workshop on Zoom, with children from 6 to 15 years old. Creative writing, storytelling and basics of theatre were concepts explored. We gave a script to the children who would work on it and the workshop ended with a performance held on Zoom itself,” he says.
Now parents are asking for advanced sessions. “We have children from Australia and the UK too, who attended sessions according to their timings. This is when we realised the power of theatre, whatever the medium is.”
The lockdown has inspired many theatre artistes to go beyond the four walls of an auditorium. “Convincing people to come back to theatre will be difficult. We might be looking at intimate performances with social distancing, meaning a space which can seat around 100 would only have 30 to 40 people attending shows. We also want to explore paid performances, where artistes would come to the WeMove studio and perform live,” he says.
YouAndMe Theatre was contemplating going online for a while. Dr Rajashree S R, co-founder and artistic director, says “the lockdown was destiny asking our group to consider the online space”.
She says, “We started looking at stories from Indian mythology and turned them into YouTube videos, using drama and puppetry. The entire team was sitting at their respective homes and the different bits were shot separately and brought together. We got applauded and everyone thought the videos were relevant.”
Live storytelling sessions were explored on Instagram, before moving to Zoom. There were many challenges. “With all the uncertainty ahead, the group is working in two directions, performances, workshops and classes that will continue, and applied theatre, where theatre-based tools are used to bring required outcomes in specific groups like corporates, teachers, entrepreneurs. It would be live and recorded material,” she adds.
With planned seating arrangements, small teams with 2 to 3 actors performing and other safety precautions, YouAndMe hopes to resume performances at the Vyoma ArtSpace & Studio Theatre.
Archana Shyam, actor, director and theatre practitioner with Team Antharanga, did pre-production activities like script analysis, characterisation work and also design of a play.
She says, “To enrich our knowledge of different plays and authors, we started reading plays by international and Indian authors. For play reading of different authors, about 10 different actors from different theatre teams collaborated.”
After the lockdown, Antharanga is considering performing terrace theatre concept shows.
“We will talk to a small community, get their permission to use their apartment terrace and perform shows there with a minimal performance fee, while ensuring that sanitisation measures and social distancing are followed,” he says. Along with terrace theatre, they plan to start public shows at intimate theatre spaces and gradually perform at larger spaces.
Uncertain waters
P D Sathish Chandra, founder of Pradarshana Kalaa Samsthe, recollects how some of their plays got cancelled in March. “We weren’t sure about what to do, but we got on to a Zoom call, read our lines, made YouTube videos and circulated it around,” he says.
He held #Harate sessions with celebrities like Mandya Ramesh, B Suresh and Sihi Kahi Chandru. “We spoke about things they were known for, the sessions will continue.”
‘Home Theatre’, a “concept of taking theatre from our homes to your homes”, was soon explored.
“Everybody was doing play and poetry readings, so we wanted to explore something unique. We got a book about different thoughts, ‘Life is Beautiful’, written by Jogi. Fifty friends of mine and I read different chapters (the book has 51 chapters), recorded it and it is being put together as a work to be released soon.”
Rishab Shetty, Pramod Shetty, T N Seetharam, Bhavana, Suman Nagarkar, Rishi, Radhika Narayan, Vasishta N Simha, Harshika Poonacha, Samyuktha Horanad, Sanchari Vijay, Sujay Shastry, Chaitanya K, among others were some of the participants. The video was edited by filmmaker Karan Ananth.
Soon enough, other friends who couldn’t be a part of the project insisted on working on something with Sathish. “Achyuth Kumar, Raj B Shetty, among other 61 artistes, wanted to be a part of a work. The second book, ‘Angada Dhare’ by Keshava Malagi was explored.”
Sathish does not wish to go out and do something that is not expected in the tough times, such as congregating people. “We don’t think it will be safe for people to come out in large numbers even after the lockdown is lifted. I will wait to bring out any shows till safety is ensured. Apart from theatre workshops, I hope to continue the videos,” he says.
The secretary of the 31-year old theatre group Sanchaya, Keerthi Bhanu, has been part of different activities like ‘Manayinda Manage’ (home to home), an online format conducted by Ranga Shankara, which presented the play ‘Taladenda’ by Girish Karnad. Six artistes came on board and read out the play.
“As Sanchaya, we were part of a webinar conducted by VASP Bangalore, including a talk by me and other members, about pursuing theatre the amatuer way and history of amateur theatre,” he says.
Of the many concerns he believes that “art is something that citizens might like to do down the lane, as for him the priorities now are ensuring essentials.”
“When things get normal, he might think of watching a film or play. We are concerned about getting people back into the theatre as social distancing will be a huge challenge to work with,” he says. The economics of how a play can be self-sustaining and breaking even will be a challenge, he adds.
The indication that the lockdown will be slowly phased out suggests many challenges. “We are preparing ourselves for a lesser turnover at shows initially, which will hopefully pickup over time,” he sums up.
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