16 November,2025 08:02 AM IST | Mumbai | Tanisha Banerjee
Mithyasur, co-directed by Ajeet Singh Pallawat and Ipshita Chakraborty-Singh, is a Marwari play under Jaipur-based theatre group’s Ujaagar. Pic/Nimesh Dave
In 2007, backstage at a small theatre in Mumbai, Vinod Ranganath watched his Malayalam play unfold before a crowd of mostly Malayalis. The familiar dialogue and cadence filled the hall like an echo of home. Yet he knew this would be a one-time show. "You can't expect them to come for the same play twice," he says. "And once the shows stop, the language stops being heard."
A theatre veteran and a Malayali born in Mumbai, Ranganath ventured into Malayalam theatre almost by accident, inspired by his father-in-law who had once been part of a thriving community of Malayali theatre lovers. "Most people here are not aware that there are Malayalam plays happening in Mumbai," he says. Finding fluent actors and steady audiences proved difficult. Rehearsal spaces were scattered and marketing limited to community groups.
Venues too were hesitant to host small linguistic productions that couldn't guarantee commercial returns. Without subtitles or crossover appeal, Malayalam plays rarely reached beyond their own community. "Only the Malayali will come see a Malayalam play," he says. "So after a point, it just felt futile." Then his voice softens, "Theatre is still where I feel most alive. Doing Malayalam theatre took me back to my roots."
From a language being overshadowed by geography to one obscured by stigma, Bhojpuri theatre in Mumbai drowns in a different kind of invisibility. Actor-director Dilip Pandey has been staging Bhojpuri plays for nearly two decades, determined to uplift a language long buried under its own caricature.
Owing to a lack of contemporary literary voices in the language, he says, "Bhojpuri plays are difficult to portray because even Bhojpuri-speaking people here are not well connected with their language." "We have been stereotyped with the pornographic images, music and films associated with us," he continues. "Bhojpuri's story has lost its weight because of its vulgar tonality and representation." In a city where Hindi, Marathi and English dominate, Bhojpuri is often dismissed as a "low" language, its richness obscured by pop media's loud mimicry.
Pandey recalls how even children from Bhojpuri-speaking families at a BMC school hesitate to use it. "They say it's a dirty language. That's why I teach theatre; so that they can understand and reconnect with their roots and take pride in their culture."
His 2023 production Romeo Ravidas aur Juliet Devi used the rhythm and spirit of Bhojpuri while blending Awadhi for accessibility. "The play had an Awadhi flavour so that more people understood it," he says, "but its soul was entirely Bhojpuri." Through such work, Pandey pushes back against decades of misrepresentation, using theatre as a space to restore dignity and self-worth. His question lingers long after if the theatre can repair what mass media distorts?
Where these communities struggle for foothold, Jaipur-based Ujaagar, founded by Ajeet Singh Pallawat and Ipshita Chakraborty-Singh, has brought Marwari theatre to Mumbai from a cultural insistence. "We make plays about different themes related to Jaipur. We try to create theatre, that has not been performed ever. We try to dig into new scripts, collaborate with new writers who have to say something to the world then infuse it with our culture, be it the music or the culture," he says. Though not strictly a Rajasthani theatre group, their work is anchored in its essence. "We do a lot of Marwari plays, whether story-based or adaptations." Their recent play Mithyasur is one such attempt to centre Rajasthani identity. Both NSD graduates, Pallawat and Chakraborty-Singh were shaped by mentors who saw theatre as a vessel for preserving what mainstream culture forgets. "Mumbai provided a good challenge for us, to try newer things and perform it in a language not akin to Mumbai," he says. But the struggle for visibility remains, "There are very limited Rajasthani theatre activities in the city. The struggle is mainly reaching audiences."
Unlike other regional theatres in Mumbai, Gujarati plays rarely struggle to fill seats. For actor-director Mehul Joshi, who has spent over two decades on stage, success is rooted in a cultural habit. "We have good quantities of audience where we do shows on weekends and contract shows," he says. "If a play goes well, then we get a platform to perform it 15-20 times a month which other regional language theatres don't get."
Gujarati theatre enjoys infrastructure and consistency. Auditoriums like Bhaidas in Vile Parle regularly host Gujarati productions, while commercial comedies and family dramas thrive across suburban venues. The audience's appetite for light entertainment keeps the ecosystem vibrant, if a bit conservative. "Our Gujarati audience mostly needs comedy," Joshi admits. "Lots of storytellers have tried to experiment with different stories. It's accepted, but we don't get a lot of audience for it."
Joshi and his collaborator Nilesh Patel, both Mumbai-born Gujaratis, have spent the past few years trying to modernise the form without alienating its base. Their challenge, however, is generational. "People who have been watching plays since they were 20 are now 40," he says. "If the youth today does not stay active in the theatre scene, soon there will be no new audience."
As of now, Gujarati theatre's strength lies in its networks and audience loyalty that have kept it alive where others fade. It's a foundation that reminds you how networks shape survival.
For director Mohit Agarwal, who has been making plays for over a decade, the language's poetic roots are inseparable from its soul. His Urdu play, Jo Dooba So Paar, co-directed with Ajitesh Gupta, wove Sufi philosophy and qawwalis into a trance-like narrative with a modern touch. "We had to contemporise the play, add jokes our generation relates to," he says. "I wouldn't attempt a play completely in Urdu, but we wanted to remind people of the beauty of the language while keeping it accessible."
Urdu theatre, once central to Mumbai's cultural rhythm, began to fade after the 1980s. Yet, it continues to breathe quietly through college circuits, intimate festivals, and venues like Prithvi that encourage experimentation. Agarwal acknowledges that audiences for non-Hindi plays are rare, and that "eventually it's loss-making." Still, the city's alternate spaces and small collectives offer room to try.
He credits "networking" and collaborations with seasoned figures like Manav Kaul for helping Urdu theatre stay visible. "Theatre works where there's a performer and an audience," he says. In a city of borrowed languages, every stage becomes an act of translation. One tongue keeping another alive.
Finally, the language that defines Mumbai's theatrical heartbeat - Marathi. Few know this pulse better than playwright and director Deepak Rajadhyaksha, who has helmed the experimental group Awishkar for over two decades. Founded in 1971, Awishkar has championed Marathi theatre's more daring side, staging plays that question, provoke, and reinvent.
Marathi theatre remains the city's backbone, sustained by an ecosystem of established venues, state awards, and a loyal audience base that fills auditoriums week after week. Yet, Rajadhyaksha points out that this strength is largely confined to commercial theatre. The experimental wing, though rich in ideas, runs on little to no funding. "No one gets paid. Not our actors, not our directors. We pay for ourselves," he says, explaining how smaller groups survive through workshops and passion alone.
Across Mumbai's theatres, the divide is clear. Marathi and Gujarati stages enjoy audiences, venues, and sponsors that keep them visible and relevant, while smaller linguistic troupes like Malayalam, Urdu, and Tamil struggle to survive on love rather than logistics. Their difficulties are not just artistic but infrastructural with no steady funding, limited advertising reach, and language barriers that make marketing near impossible.
Nevertheless, the city's culture continues to offer a bridge. Community-led festivals and consistent theatre lovers are helping these voices reach a space beyond linguistic walls. Pandey says he continues because "even if twenty people watch, and one feels something, it is worth it. That's theatre."
Quasar Thakore Padamsee, founder of Thespo, says the festival has always been language-agnostic, with only two rules - participants must be under 25, and plays must be at least 60 minutes long. Thespo has featured everything from Marathi, Kannada, Assamese, Sanskrit and even Korean. "The Indian experience is multilingual, so the plays reflect this," he says. While he has noticed a rise in regional-language entries possibly due to better outreach or young performers feeling more confident using their primary tongue, Mumbai's youth theatre still leans toward English, Hindi and Marathi.
At the NCPA, Bruce Guthrie, Head of Theatre & Films, echoes the sense of widening linguistic space. "This year alone, we've presented work in 11 languages, and attendance has risen across communities." Revived festivals like Pratibimb and Vasant have been "extremely well received," with subtitles helping productions cross linguistic boundaries. Yet challenges persist. "Many communities are used to lower ticket rates, so productions often need subsidies," he notes. Improved transport has eased earlier concerns about reaching the venue. For Guthrie, programming rests on one core principle, "Quality is paramount," and the NCPA now supports a growing slate of Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Assamese, Urdu and Tibetan work with targeted outreach.
