(From top) Quasar Padamsee at the Indira Gandhi National Centre For The Arts (IGNCA); Ahlam Khan; a scene from the Hindi play, Modd written and directed by Khan

It has been a more challenging task than anything that Quasar Padamsee has ever undertaken before. Working frenetically as assistant director to Tim Supple on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream has pushed him to draw out the best from everyone on the sets. With a cast culled from across the subcontinent and spewing dialogues in seven regional languages ? that’s Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam, Bengali, Sinhalese and English ? Padamsee says the play is as experimental as experimental can get. Before performing to packed crowds in the Capital, cast and crew camped in Pondicherry for seven weeks and rehearsed for hours on end. “It’s an epic project and putting up such an unconventional production has been a daunting task,” says Quasar. In June, the team will travel to the Bard’s hometown, Stratford-upon-Avon, where the play will feature in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s year-long festival.

Quasar is not alone in treading uncharted territory in English theatre. Pushan Kripalani, actor, director and now cinematographer who formed the Industrial Theatre Company with theatre directors Rehaan Engineer, Nadir Khan and Karan Makhija, is all for thinking out-of-the-box. The group’s USP lies in popularising alternative spaces for theatre and taking minimal sets outside the confines of an auditorium. “It can be in a garden, a pub or even a bookstore,” explains Pushan. When the group staged The Maids in Calcutta, it was in a house with parquet flooring. Since lighting posed problems, Pushan pressed a series of desk-lamps into service. These were placed strategically around the house at various heights.

Quasar and Pushan aren’t the only ones determined to breathe fresh vitality into English theatre. And the sheer thrill of something new brewing on the English stage is luring new talent to the arc lights. There are others like actors Ahlam Khan, Digvijay Sawant and director Vikranth Pawar who are using the medium to communicate with audiences that are swelling with each play that is staged. “English theatre is no longer seen as elitist, as more and more productions are being made in English,” says Quasar.

Quasar Thakore Padamsee’s credentials are impeccable. Son of veteran stage personalities Dolly Thakore and Alyque Padamsee, theatre was his obvious calling. “But I realised early that theatre wasn’t just about fun ? it was a challenging profession,” he says. From directing plays like All My Sons, Inherit the Wind and The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail during his student days in St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, he set up Quasar Theatre Productions. The highpoint of the group’s activities is Thespo, its annual theatre festival aimed at promoting young guns.

(From top) Stage actor Digvijay Sawant strikes a pose;Dilnaz Irani, Sawant, Vinay Jain and Tanaaz Currim in a publicity shot from the play, Two to Tango; Vikranth Pawar; Mandira Bedi and Samir Soni in a publicity still from Anything But Love, a play directed by Pawar

Pushan Kripalani, who’s armed with an MA degree in cinematography from the University of Bristol, UK, has a cache of productions under his belt including Becket, The Maids and Hayavadana and Fireface. He firmly believes that theatre is the best way to connect with the audience.

Experimentation is the name of the game for these new kids on the block. Actor Digvijay Sawant who has acted in plays like Time To Tell A Tale by Ramu Ramanathan, Your Place Or Mine by Darshan Jariwalla, Jaimini Pathak’s Combat and Vikranth Pawar’s Two To Tango, is passionate about theatre. Last year, he travelled to England with a children’s play, Punch-A-Tantra, directed by Karla Singh and produced by Ashvin Gidvani. If performing before a foreign audience gave him a high, the play’s theme stood convention on its head.

Explains Sawant, “It’s an English musical inspired by the Panchatantra, Jataka tales, Aesop’s Fables and the Hitopadesha.” The 50 shows were sold out.

Sawant believes that his strength lies in his ability to engage with each of his characters and make them distinct. And there are other theatre buffs who are determined to go beyond Shakespeare. Actress Ahlam Khan, daughter of the late actor Amjad Khan, says it’s time to break free of the notion that English theatre begins and ends with Shakespeare. She’s looking for inspiration elsewhere. She says, “I love Shakespeare but I feel that his plays have been done to death. Therefore, I prefer to keep the sanctity of his plays intact and move on to doing by own experimental work.”

Khan, an ardent champion of post-modern plays did her MA in English literature from the University of Mumbai. She was passionate about the medium from her college days and in her second year of MA, she got the offer to play the lead in Me Grandad ‘Ad An Elephant, based on Vaikom Muhammad Basheer’s novel of the same name. This play was directed by Ramu Ramanathan and after the first show at the university, went on to do some 15 shows at sites in and around Mumbai. The success of this play inspired Khan to form a theatre group called Not Quite There. So what makes her stand out in the crowd? She smiles, “I am not an argumentative actor but go with the director’s vision. As for my style, I try to keep it as simple as it possible.”

In 2001, Khan co-directed and acted in Ramu Ramanathan’s Angst Angst Coonth Coonth Boom Bam Dhandhal Dhamaal Kaput produced by the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. This play dealt with the trials and tribulations of being a young person in modern India. “It was highly experimental in form and performance and during the course of rehearsals, I picked up new techniques of acting from Ramanathan,” she says. Her solo directorial debut came a year later when she wrote, directed and acted in Modd, a Hindi play that was a part of the 2002 Prithvi Theatre Festival. Based on Whitney Otto’s How to Make an American Quilt, the play reflected the female point of view and told the tales of eight women who are painstakingly filling a quilt with fine embroidery ? each of their patches telling their life stories. Afterwards, a whole lot of plays were staged like Pooja Asher’s Cast Party and Quasar Padamsee’s Kindertransport.

On the other hand, Vikranth Pawar, who has directed six successful productions, prefers to stay on the tried and tested populist path. Pawar has a clutch of commercially successful plays behind him including Laughing Wild, Two to Tango, Clogged Arteries, Anything But Love and Getting It Right. His USP lies in exploring human relationships. He says, “A lot of people complain about the lack of experimentation in today’s youth. But I believe that each generation has its own expressions, and this generation is dwelling deeply on the issue of relationships.”

But why have they chosen English theatre rather than regional language plays? Quasar explains, “English is a deliberate choice as it is now a global language.” Kripalani adds that a lot more plays are being written in English and that has given new impetus to the medium.

A scene from the play The Maids directed by Pushan Kripalani; (inset) Kripalani

Most agree though that there’s a divide between commercial and experimental theatre. Still, while their messages are different, the primary motive of both is to attract audiences. And if the producers want to make money and run to full houses, then the obvious answer is to go commercial. Pawar, who roped in actors Mandira Bedi and Samir Soni for Anything But Love and travelled with the play to Delhi, Calcutta and Chennai, says, “It’s all about how you connect to the audience with your story. It was a conscious decision to cast Mandira and to cash in on her runaway popularity. However, it also depends on the script and if a story requires a film star, then why not rope in a popular actor? It not only helps promote the play but also kindles audience interest.”

But even the lure of lucre won’t dislodge Quasar from his experimental path. His style lies in staging productions that highlight topical social issues. For instance, his memorable play Khatijabai of Karmali Terrace told the story of a woman married into a wealthy family. Some of his other offbeat productions include Lucky Ones and Lunch Girl. What’s more, Quasar’s Thespo is an annual theatre festival that gives talented youngsters below 25 a chance to perform on a professional stage. Quasar takes on all the technical elements like lights, sound, make-up and even brings in the sponsors.

So is it all smooth sailing for English theatre today? Quasar says ruefully, “English theatre perhaps fails to attract as wide an audience as regional theatre does. Perhaps we need a little more drive to make it more appealing to the masses.” Funding is also tough to come by. Bagging sponsors and finances for a huge production is difficult. Many plays never see the light of day owing to a lack of resources. Says Vikram Kapadia, director of Black With Equal, “Getting a sponsor for your play is a big headache every theatre person has experienced. The first thing a financier wants to know is what he will get out of financing the play. So somewhere down the line, a theatre person has to compromise in terms of the story or the structure of the play so that he can attract a financier.”

Given that this is not a big paying profession, many in the field bank on an alternative career to make sure of a steady stream of moolah. So while Sawant is doing an animation course, which he can put to use in his plays, Ahlam is a scriptwriter in Hindi cinema and Kripalani is a noted Bollywood cinematographer.

But on the bright side, there has been an explosion in terms of interest in theatre. The impetus for change has come in the form of theatre festivals being staged across the country. Added to this, corporate sponsorship is also starting to trickle into this money-starved medium. Now the players are hopeful that a sound infrastructure for theatre will be put in place soon ? along the lines of what happens in some Western countries.

“We need a solid fraternity to back our shows. We need a theatre association, which will take care of the funds and also to support staging small plays by new talent. Such efforts alone will help promote newer people,” says Khan.

So despite the uphill task, new faces and new concepts are keeping the flag flying for English theatre. Says Sawant, “There’s a future for the medium as the profession is throwing up more and more youngsters ready to experiment.”

Photograph of Quasar Padamsee by Jagan Negi
Photographs of Ahlam Khan, Digvijay Sawant and Vikranth Pawar by Gajanan Dudhalkar