Curtains down: 2023 was the year of new writing, varied languages, and continued political discourse

What we do in the world of theatre as playwrights, directors, actors, scenographers, poets, musicians, choreographers, and technicians, all of us without exception, is an act of creating a life that did not exist before we got on stage. – Egyptian playwright Samiha Ayoub, in her World Theatre Day Message 2023.

The lifeblood of theatre – the act of coming together – remained compromised for the larger part of 2021 and 2022. While theatre-makers around the country and the world grappled with form at the time; online, offline, or hybrid, they also asked several questions about the viewing experience when plays were being made available in recorded form, during and after the pandemic. 

But all this came to an end, as 2023, brought with it, stability and a glorious return to the theatres. 

The year of the spectacle

It began with the unveiling of the Aadyam Season 6 in January, close on the heels of the Kala Ghoda Festival in the same month in Mumbai. It was a return of the spectacle, with big-budget productions such as Neelam Man Singh’s Hayavadana, Atul Kumar’s Baaghi Albele, Anahita Uberoi’s As Bees in Honey Drown, and Akarsh Khurana’s The F Word. They featured large casts, and elaborate sets, and played to full houses. This time, people were truly back at the theatres.

On the other hand, the DSM Alumni Production Grant 2022-23, bore fruit in the form of five plays held across experimental venues in the city. Some, like Vaishnavi RP’s Baap Re! and Shimli Basu’s All Night Longg were adaptations of texts like Brinda Shankar’s story, and Badal Sircar’s play Sararattir, respectively. Others like Mallika Shah’s I Killed My Mother, It Wasn’t My Fault, was a display of brave new writing.

Theatre in the city of Mumbai began regaining its delicate balance between large proscenium productions, and experimental ones in numerous Aram Nagar venues. Come February, critic Vikram Phukan’s Postcards from Colaba, took theatre out of these confines, and onto the streets. Tracing Bombay’s gay history through the south Bombay neighbourhood, he used a combination of real and imagined stories, to create living imagery with the city as its backdrop.

In the same month, with the NCPA production Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, director Bruce Guthrie reimagined elements of the classic Tom Stoppard play through production design. An orchestra in a political prisoner’s mind took shape in the form of a contingent of the Symphony Orchestra of India (SOI) on stage. The spectacle was well and truly becoming the favoured form for a post-pandemic return to theatre.

It continued with Rehaan Engineer’s return to the Mumbai stage after 2019. With Don Juan Comes Back from the War, Engineer brought together a formidable cast of over 30 women and one man with live music. The play, divided into three parts with two intervals, was part of G5A Warehouse’s In Residence program. The play, a well-coordinated ensemble piece despite its long runtime, felt like a celebration of the medium and its possibilities. It captured the enigma of the infamous lover with post-war vignettes while also delving into his dilemma. Its production design, with wisps of snow sweeping up the stage and parts of the audience, made it all the more magical. 

Akvarious Productions’ successful play Dekh Behen crossed the 100-show mark in February, and a sequel Dekh Behen 2 premiered in August. 

The month of March also saw the opening of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre which houses three theatres; The Cube, The Studio, and the Grand Theatre. Feroz Abbas Khan’s The Great Indian Musical at the 2,000-seater Grand Theatre was a historical medley of music and dance, with ample use of multimedia. The same theatre in the following months had Broadway productions descend on the city, The Sound of Music to begin with, followed by West Side Story. The year at Grand Theatre is set to end with a production of Mamma Mia, the ABBA musical. The Cube and The Studio continue to host experimental and smaller-scale performances with year-round curation.

Of new writing

The year 2023 has been significant for new writing on the Mumbai stage, especially by young makers, who have also gone on to produce their shows. One such in March, was Bhagyashree Tarke’s Salma Deewani, a heartwarming tale of a Hyderabadi woman who is set to meet her hero, Salman Khan. Tarke’s warmth and conviction on stage made a slice-of-life story come alive with exceeding nuance at Veda Factory’s intimate stage. 

Mallika Shah’s, I Killed My Mother, It Wasn’t My Fault which also opened in March, was a refreshing peek into the lives of Gen Z, told with the ease of a seasoned writer. It spoke of their world and values, peppered with references from popular culture. 

Another such feat in June came with Aditya Rawal’s Siachen, a survival drama directed by Makarand Deshpande. The play was set in the testing terrain of the world’s highest battlefield and attempted to recreate the glacier through set design. Rawal also presented his maiden play, The Queen, as a rehearsed reading at the Prithvi Theatre Festival 2023. The Queen was masterful in its telling of the story of a woman losing significance in her own home as the king brings in a new bride. It explores her emotional turmoil as she’s desperate to make herself relevant, even hatching a plan to burn down the kingdom. 

In June this year, Manav Kaul’s flight of fantasy took shape in the form of Tumhaare Baare Mein which opened at Experimental Theatre, NCPA. It takes a leap from a conversation in Andheri to a fantastical realm where the woman is a bird, and the man a penguin. It questions gender norms, breaks the fourth wall with ease, and makes a grand inside joke about the writer’s male gaze. It featured great performances by Ghanshyam Lalsa and Sakhee Gokhale, among others. The play went on to tour Mumbai and other cities like Delhi, Pune, Bengaluru and more. 

This year, Chirag Khandelwal, a young playwright walked away with a META (Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Award) for Best Writing, one of seven that Mohit Takalkar’s successful play Hunkaro bagged. His next, Ek Adhpaka Sa Natak, emerged as a winner at Being Association’s Sanhita Manch Playwriting Competition and was directed by Rasika Agashe as part of the Being Association Festival in September. 

Of old productions

What happens when you revisit a play years after it was first performed? What happens to its characters with changing politics, and the collective experience of isolation? 

The answers to some of these questions came through the revival of old plays, in venues new and old. QTP’s A Peasant of El Salvador which opened in September 2013 at Prithvi Theatre, was revived and toured the city. Its biting political critique from Central America through the eyes of a farmer remained relevant in India amid the agrarian crisis. The actors took the stage at Studio Tamaasha’s Andheri space ahead of its closing, with renewed vigour. 

Another politically charged piece, Studio Tamaasha’s Words Have Been Uttered saw its revival post-pandemic on the Prithvi stage with a new cast and some text changes. Its theme of dissent, and curation of poetry, prose, and music, is as timely as it was when it opened. 

Rajat Kapoor’s Hamlet the Crown Prince and Nothing Like Lear, both successful experiments with clowning, also made a comeback at Prithvi Theatre after the pandemic. 

Every Brilliant Thing by QTP, a solo performance by Vivek Madan, returned, and this time, for a tour across far-flung corners of the country. It’s a beautiful take on mental health through the eyes of a child dealing with loss, and it witnessed a particularly magical show at the Agatsu Foundation. The lights went out following a power failure, and the audience lit up the stage with their mobile phones. Living up to the theatre adage, the show went on. 

Curtains down

While new work took centre stage on Mumbai’s theatre landscape, and old plays were being revived anew, it was time to bid farewell to others.

Significant among them, was the closing run of Piya Behrupiya, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, in July. Touring across cities, the runaway hit by Atul Kumar, had fans gather in droves. It was an emotional but fitting farewell to one of contemporary Indian theatre’s greatest successes after over 200 shows across Indian cities and the globe.

The Peasant of El Salvador also announced its closure after its set of Mumbai shows this year. 

The thing about language

Contemporary theatre in Mumbai is rarely limited to troupes based in the city. Festivals and traveling performances make up a substantial part of the cultural calendar. This year, for the first time since the pandemic, the performances returned and turned out to be a treat for Mumbai’s theatregoers.

It was also an opportunity to witness forms and crafts from beyond the metropolis in a variety of languages. Subtitling became commonplace in the theatre.

Among those who visited, Ujaagar Dramatic Association’s Hunkaro in Rajasthani broke barriers of style, language, and everything in between. In a simplistic baithak-like setup, five storytellers told three tales in Rajasthani, Hindi, and a smattering of other languages. They also took the audience on a journey of understanding that focused on the commonality of sounds and emotions across languages. While at it, they encouraged the audience to respond and react. It won big at META including in the Best Play and Best Direction categories. 

Daklakatha Devikavya by Lakshmana KP, founder-director of Bengaluru-based Jangama Collective, made it to the Mumbai stage in October as part of Tata Literature Live. The Kannada play used mythology, folklore, and music, to tell a searing story of caste discrimination. Lakshmana KP was also announced as the winner of the Shankar Nag Award this year. 

Sri Vamsi Matta’s one man-performance Come Eat With Me, made its journey from Bengaluru to Mumbai. Matta told stories both personal and political, while inviting the audience to share a meal he cooked, bringing attention back to caste and food. He used music, poetry, and prose, to talk about his Dalit identity and its modern representation. 

Tibet Theatre’s Pah-lak, a play in Tibetan, originally written by Abhishek Majumdar, returned to NCPA after it first played in the city at the Prithvi Theatre Festival 2022. The nuanced narrative steeped in the Tibetan struggle for freedom, witnessed a whole new dimension with Tibetan actors and haunting live folk music. 

Performances from other states and cities brought us a bouquet of lived experiences, spoken in different languages. But this was also the year when theatre makers in Mumbai presented productions outside the English-Hindi contemporary conduit. Atul Kumar’s Baaghi Albele in Punjabi and Mohit Takalkar’s latest Ghanta Ghanta Ghanta Ghanta Ghanta are a few such examples. 

A political preoccupation

Despite a range of themes and stories, the theatre community is deeply embedded in the politics of the country, and of the world. Their works speak their politics loud and clear while staying true to their creative pursuits. 

Mohit Takalkar directed his most political work yet with Ghanta Ghanta Ghanta Ghanta Ghanta, a story of a couple in an authoritarian state where words are being rationed. An adaptation of Sam Steiner’s Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons, the time and space remain largely ambiguous, but Takalkar draws parallels with present-day India and delves deep into the political personal. The setting is all too familiar, as are the conversations that lead up to a deafening silence brought about by a draconian law. Takalkar’s work is the future foretold, unfolding on the stage with the finesse of his craft. 

Danish Husain’s Hoshruba Repertory continues to engage with political themes through personal and historical narratives, even updating its Urdu Ki Aakhri Kitab, to set in Ibn-e-Insha’s legendary work in today’s times. 

Atul Kumar’s Baaghi Albele, quite like his earlier works, speaks of censorship in the arts, albeit in a new setting. An anarchist government has banned all art forms and artists as a theatre troupe in Ludhiana struggles to keep afloat. The result was a hilarious performance wrapped in profound commentary on the art and the artist under a fascist regime.  

As the year draws to a close and the siege of Gaza is on our minds, Yuki Ellias’ devised performance The Far Post, which opened at G5A Warehouse in November, uses masks for a tale of war and peace through magic realism.

In response to a call by Palestine’s Ashtar Theatre to perform The Gaza Monologues on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, The Company Theatre, at short notice, put together an event across six venues in Aram Nagar. At each venue, over 150 actors read these monologues written by thirty-three young people from Gaza in 2010. The theatre community showed up in large numbers, reading, sharing plates of watermelon (a symbol of Palestinian resistance), and expressing solidarity for victims of the siege. Like a tributary aiding Palestine’s freedom struggle from the river to the sea, Mumbai’s theatre community made their art and presence count.  

Looking ahead

The Prithvi Festival 2023 with its line-up of performances, in the theatre and fringe, came to a close. Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak Shah’s Old World, an adaptation of Aleksei Arbuzov’s original, marked their return on stage together, just the two of them, for the first time since Dear Liar. It told a charming tale of a doctor and a patient at a medical retreat who develop an unlikely bond. There was humour, song and dance, and tender moments that spoke of ageing and past lives. 

Actor Sumeet Vyas directed his first solo full-length play, Puraane Chawal with Kumud Mishra and Shubhrajyoti Barat in the cast. The play is a comedy based on Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys, and it tells the story of a yesteryear actor who has lost relevance. It is both nostalgic and brimming with sharp observations about the lives of ageing stars grappling with lost stardom. 

Makarand Deshpande experimented with clowning in his new play, Manushya. Adishakti’s Urmila spoke through lights, sound, and music, as much as it did with performance, about a woman’s loss of agency over her own body, in this case, sleep.

Besides performance, capacity-building initiatives were the wind beneath the wings for theatre makers. Manch by Bhasha Centre, a platform to enhance producorial capacity in theatre, lent its support to three productions to run the plays profitably for a minimum of three shows. Manch has now partnered with seven more productions. As part of their Brecht@2023 program, Bhasha Centre commissioned two modern interpretations of Bertolt Brecht that are now available to read on The Drama Library. 

NCPA’s The Art of the Possible commissioned a first-of-its-kind research-led report on transversal and technical skills in the live entertainment industry. The scope of the research includes both professionals from the industry and stakeholders in the arts. It identified gaps in upskilling and barriers to entry into the field. Launched online, the report was then subject to discussion by experts, and its findings were taken forward to address the specific needs. 

As the year comes to a close, the G5A Should Art Festival has begun and is set to bring to town performances like Henry Naylor’s Afghanistan is Not Funny, and Daklakatha Devikavya once again. 

The stage is also set for Thespo, in its 25th year, and as the joke goes, too old for itself.