Afew years ago, theatre director Atul Kumar received an unusual request. One of his audience regulars wanted to gift her husband a play for their anniversary. So a group of actors from his repertory performed a short Moliere skit at the couple’s home.
Theatre at home, a concept Kumar has championed since 2000, is now becoming a city-wide phenomenon as more theatre enthusiasts throw open their front doors.
Typically, hosts offer their home, furniture and refreshments for an evening of drama with a small audience of about 50 guests. Shrinking theatre spaces and the bureaucratic red tape over bookings have prompted a search for alternate venues, homes come out on top because of the intimate setting and low production costs- Rs 5,000 to 7,000 on an average.
“At the end of the play, we pass a hat around and that covers some expenses,” adds Kumar. The plays are usually shorter scripts, about 45 minutes each, and rarely involve more than three characters. Kumar has also reworked several of his successful stage productions for the home, like Anton Chekhov’s Lady with Lapdog and another, Smell.
Starting next week, Shivani Tibrewala who runs the theatre group, No License Yet, will stage an entire festival of seven plays in her Napeansea Road living room over one week. “Last year, I had a book reading for Tom Alter at my home and everyone loved the ambience. Then we did some play readings and went on to do shows,” says Tibrewala.
For some groups it’s a step forward from dry play readings that are already popular at-home events in Mumbai.
Vivek Narayan, whose new group Shoestring Theatre stole all the awards at the youth theatre festival Thespo last year, has just begun staging short scripts in friends’ homes: This month, it’s Eugene Ionesco’s The Lesson. “After a point it’s boring to just sit and read, so we decided to start enacting them,” says Narayan. Kumar is also grooming a new batch of artistes into his home theatre initiative through his Evam Youth Forum.
Home performances have their perks. Like with private screenings of controversial films, theatre at home is free from censorship. They also serve as a pilot-run for new scripts.
In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the homes of author Meher Pestonji and ad man Alyque Padamsee were breeding grounds for the artistes of today but the tradition gradually died out. “Lots of important artistes, like Vikram Kapadia, found their breaking ground in these homes when they couldn’t perform at NCPA and Prithvi,” says playwright Ramu Ramanathan, who was a regular at Pestonji’s.