A different kind of Home Theatre System:
“If you won’t go to a play,
Then we’ll bring it to you!”
This was the concept behind Atul Kumar’s “Theatre-at-Home” experiment. A few years ago, people would offer their houses for performances. It was a novel concept that fought two important battles — building new audiences, and finding new performance spaces. I was witness to a sterling and energetic production of The Typist, made even more exciting because of the proximity to the actors; as fifty of us crowded into the dining room of a Carmichael Road bungalow.
In fact I was so impressed with the experience, that when Atul asked us to join him for one of these “experiments” in Thane, we were only too willing. The performance was a unique gesture on part of a new home-owner who wanted to do something for his soon-to-be neighbours. He pre-empted the squeeze of audience by hosting the play before his furniture moved in. So quite literally we had an “empty space” to perform in. My Norm & Ahmed, about two men taking shelter from the rain at a bus-stop, performed in the balcony. Atul’s piece, Voices, was a series of interspersed monologues performed amongst the audience itself. The staging was made more exciting because the viewers were handed torches and so could choose which of the characters they wanted to light and when.
These initial experiments have slowly been on the wane. Atul has now set up his own space outside Bombay, which till date has been used for many rehearsals but not performances, yet. But the real reason for the dip in this kind of activity is the nature of shows being created today, and also the access of more off-beat performance spaces, such as art galleries and cafés. But in a way they don’t share the warmth and intimacy of performing in someone’s home.
Recently, however, we performed our one-woman Khatijabai of Karmali Terrace for the women’s group INDUS, in the most idyllic of settings — Kilachand House. The play tells the story of an old woman and the house which she holds on to as her children move away. She describes, with great affection, the stained-glass windows, the terraces, the marble flooring, the ornate furniture and all the other intricacies that go with large palatial mansions. In normal conventional venues, the audience has had to make the requisite “suspension of disbelief” and use their imagination to conjure up the images that she describes. Not this time.
We performed in the drawing room of the posh Napean Sea Road mansion, which seemed to have been constructed out of the afore-mentioned descriptions of Karmali Terrace. The organisers expected about fifty people, but when over a hundred showed up, we wondered where they would all fit. We needn’t have worried. They comfortably crowded around Jayati Bhatia’s Khatija as she told them the story of her life. Being a morning performance, the light streamed through the stained-glass windows and brought all her words to even greater life.
It was an incredibly generous gesture on the part of the Kilachands, and an example that hopefully many others will follow. In a city of Bombay where there is a paucity of performance spaces; and where the arts are heavily supported by the efforts of individuals; it might just be time for a new slogan:
“Have space,Will host.”