As a child I remember old movie posters announcing the ‘Silver Jubilee’ of a film. This was when a movie reached 25 weeks of playing in a cinema. Nowadays due to the multiplexes, three weeks is considered an accomplishment.
When I began to work in theatre, I was told that our Silver Jubilee was a little more modest — 25 shows, the landmark for an English or Hindi play. In the non-commercial theatre world, venues are few and far between, and so shows are even fewer. But today, 25 is no longer the magic figure it was ten years ago. Fifty and even hundred is now quite common for an English play. High volumes of shows mean that clearly there is an audience coming to see them. This is an encouraging sign. This could be attributed to the fact that audiences are more accepting of English as a language that articulates our Indian-ness. No longer is it seen as only a way to convey Western sentiments. The theatre groups of the city have responded by banishing the Georges and Georginas from the stage and replacing them with Vimals and Vimlas. And the “proppah” received accents have been replaced by our own vernacular English. If we are expressing ourselves, then we should sound like ourselves.
The 25 show landmark has always been celebrated in different ways. Some throw large parties, some make a commemorative plaque, some a beautiful piece of sculpture and some print t-shirts. But no matter what your commemoration, there is always a cake. A Gujarati stage actor once told me how quaint he found the “cake-cutting” ritual when an English play he was in reached that figure. For him 25 was the number of performances he did of a Gujarati play in a month.
Personally though, ‘25’ has always had special meaning. None of the shows I have directed have ever reached there… that is, until next week. Not one but two of my plays are actually going to push past the not-so-magical number, and both in quite a contrasting fashion.
Khatijabai of Karmali Terrace is a one woman show that we have been performing on and off for 6 years; although we did take a break for a couple of years in between. So kicking and screaming we have dragged the play to the brink of the magic number. It’s a huge achievement for us. After our initial opening we only performed four or five times each year. But with each performance the play has been enriched. Partly due to the effort and partly due to the fact that the actress Jayati Bhatia, the lighting designer Arghya Lahiri and myself, have all grown as human beings along the way. We began work on the play when I was just over 25, and now the show is!
Our other play about to reach the magic number, by comparison, has taken the expressway route. Project S.T.R.I.P. is a comic satire on corporations and their appropriation of an island for its natural resources. The play is barely fourteen months old, and will be 25 next week. It all happened so fast we are a little unprepared… as in we forgot to organise the T-shirts!
A close friend of mine commented recently, “Q, the true proof that audiences in the city have grown over the last five years, is the fact that YOUR plays are reaching 25!”
There’s more truth in that statement than I’d like to admit. But for now, as two of our plays break through the magic barrier and one more (Some Girl(s)) gets close to it, I am going to be gorging on cake all of next week at Prithvi. Come on down… who knows, you might get a slice!