Ever since the pandemic rendered most theatre persons out of work, various groups are turning to the digital medium to keep theatre alive.
Dimmed lights in an auditorium, the resounding hum of the music, and most importantly, the immersive emotions the audience experiences when an actor is performing at their peak, are some of the most striking aspects of theatre. With the COVID-19 pandemic demanding physical distancing, however, theatre persons in the country are now adapting to changing times. An industry, which stands to lose its essence, theatre persons are displaying resilience in rolling out innovative ways to keep the audience engaged. Rewind to '80s radio dramas Dr Anitha Balachander, a theatre actor in Chennai, who is a part of TheaterMania, recounts how the group took inspiration from radio dramas of the 1980s and started their own online version of it. “TheaterMarina has gone into audio plays. These are short plays with a duration of 10-15 minutes. It is uploaded on YouTube. These are similar to radio dramas of the 1980s which were called Oli Nadagam in Tamil Nadu. We have done many audio plays in the last two months,” Dr Anitha says. TheaterMania uploads its audio plays every Wednesday at 6 pm on YouTube and have been doing so since June this year. One of the challenges, Anitha says, is the “disconnected connect” through the video calls. Rehearsals are more challenging than they used to be before the pandemic. “The challenge is that people are in different locations and we don’t get to see them. In theatre, during rehearsals, you wait for the cue from another person. There is no body language to judge on a Zoom call and that is quite challenging,” she adds. Ram Ganesh Kamatham, an award-winning playwright with Actors Ensemble India Forum, with over 25 years of experience in the industry, says that the audio plays are about listening more than the visual. Ram Ganesh’s hit comedies include Square Root of Minus in 2002, Dancing on Glass in 2004, S.T.R.I.P in 2008 and Ultimate Kurukshetra in 2011, which won him the Sultan Padamsee Award. “If you watch a play, you are experiencing it and listening to it. This is different from a movie on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. The difference is in the writing. If people are watching a play online, they will be diametrically opposed to binge-watch plays. This is because plays are written for audiences that are listening than for those that are watching. This is the challenge we are working with. We are overly bombarded with the visual. We experience the theatre despite the fact that it is now a visual medium,” Ram Ganesh Kamatham adds. Video streaming plays “The loss of presence, the loss of audience, is something theatre persons are grappling with across generations. But we are not letting it get in our way. Some theatre groups are willing to stream their content online,” Ram Ganesh says. The theatre group he works for has started production for a play he wrote in 2017 and they are planning to stream it online soon. “We were touring with a show in Singapore last year and that was to continue this year but it was pushed due to the pandemic. We have got new productions in the pipeline. The play is called The Echo Chamber/Antigone and it will be streamed online,” he adds. Actors are rehearsing via Zoom calls. Reading material is mailed to every member of the team and they hold multiple readings. “The scripts are written for the online format, the rehearsals happen without the presence of people on the set. Although it is challenging, the theatre community is adapting to changing times,” he says. Online theatre workshops and training Krishna Raj, a 31-year-old actor with the Bengaluru-based theatre group Yours Truly, has started theatre workshops online since the last two months. Soon after the lockdown, members of his theatre group, just like several others in the country, were suddenly out of work. Krishna and his colleague Akshay Alok decided to start the series of workshops titled 'Art Liberates' in order to keep the training going. “What is the alternative to theatre? This was a question asked a lot by a lot of people. A lot of people wanted to train under us. So we started converting all exercises and rehearsals into online format. We had to change the approach to theatre. We came together and rewrote the entire syllabus, and ways of teaching,” Krishna says. Krishna and Akshay decided to finetune their training methods. There are different theatre training games which are taught to students and these, Krishna says, are best done in person. “We have exercises which will help an audience believe that the actor has lived that experience. Ideally, we meet the person and show them how it is done. But now if there is a monologue that requires a person to show grief, we ask them to think of situations they were in which brought that out. We ask the students to talk to each other about their experiences in life, so they can observe the emotions on each others’ faces. The challenge is doing it online. Hence, we ask them to think about how they felt grief or anger or sadness or even joy,” he adds. Yours Truly conducts online theatre workshops at two levels. A seven-day course for beginners spanning 14 hours in total and an advanced course. This advanced workshop continues for 10 more days and an additional eight days on weekends. Just like Krishna, Ram Ganesh’s theatre group also conducts online workshops. He says that the online medium has expanded the scope of the concept of “audience” in the theatre sphere. “We have people from Germany, the US and other countries enrolling for workshops. We have had workshops almost every month and free workshops for the public every Sunday. Where we are is a phenomenal space and the audience is everywhere and not restricted to one place. Resilience of the theatre in such hard times is admirable,” Ram Ganesh says.
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