Natakbazi, but at what cost? Theatre aspirants in Mumbai dive into the stage ka struggle

Representation pic

Someone on the Internet once said, "I don't need a screen. I need a world where we value a single live performance as much as we value a billion digital streams." While more and more people treat theatre like a CV upgrade into the film world, there are a significant number of people who live and breathe for the stage.

For an aspiring actor in Mumbai, the word "struggle" usually conjures images of casting calls, crowded auditions, and years spent waiting for a Bollywood break. But there is another kind of struggler - the ones who are navigating the city's artistic ecosystem. They are theatre practitioners trying to build a career without knowing where the next job or pay cheque will come from.

Pehel is a four-day workshop for theatre newcomers, held at Andheri West

A space run by Tamaasha Theatre - for intimate theatre, music, and contemporary dance - Studio Tamaasha enters its second year with their workshop Pehel. It is a programme aimed towards helping newcomers in the city to understand the theatre scene of Mumbai. "It takes you at least a year to figure out how to manoeuvre through this art space in the city, which can be quite daunting," says Sarthak Chaskar.

Juggling multiple jobs, the 23-year-old is entering a burnt out phase. Theatre is not something he does alongside another profession. It is his profession. Having started performing in school, Chaskar has spent the last four to five years working professionally in Hindi theatre as a writer, actor, director, and backstage practitioner. He also works with children, teaching and writing plays for them, and is associated with Studio Tamaasha. He says he does not work in any other medium and survives entirely through theatre.

Neelam Singh

But surviving and sustaining a theatre practice, he points out, are two different things. "I have been in theatre for seven-eight years professionally, so I know and have a few jobs here and there," he says, "Some of the jobs I take up are simply for survival. There is no other motivation."

The work is not necessarily well-paid, nor is there a predictable income to plan around. Saving, he says, is difficult. While Chaskar is fortunate enough to be a Mumbai native and does not have to worry about rent, many of his peers who have migrated to the city face an additional burden. Theatre's geography itself can become expensive, "Areas such as Andheri and Versova, where much of the theatre activity is concentrated, are increasingly difficult to live in. And expensive," he says.

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The exhaustion that takes a toll on one's mind and body is quite less spoken about. It is the common practice of any hustling in the city after all. Chaskar travels from Vikhroli to Chembur and Andheri for work, taking on multiple gigs to keep himself afloat. The more work he accepts to survive, however, the less time he has to create.

"I get burnt out quickly doing so many gigs," he says. He has been trying to write a play for the past two to three months, but finds himself without the mental or emotional space to do it. "I feel like giving up on jobs but then surviving without these jobs becomes quite difficult."

Neelam Singh's story captures the loneliness that can sit beneath the idea of "making it" in theatre. Three years ago, Singh decided to pursue acting and moved from Assam to Mumbai to follow her heart. "Where I am from, it is quite difficult to choose an unconventional career."

Juggling multiple jobs, actor-director Sarthak Chaskar lives and breathes theatre, but feels burnt out from the constant hustle. PIC/SATEJ SHINDE

For two years, she tried to find her way into Mumbai's theatre scene alone. "It was quite overwhelming for me and impacted my mental health gradually," she says. Workshops costing '30,000 or '50,000 for 10 days were beyond her means, while the absence of guidance left her constantly questioning herself. "I was looking for guidance as I had started everything from scratch here and it was not accessible for me."

Then came Pehel in 2025. She became part of its community, eventually moving into production alongside acting. She becomes emotional recalling what that support meant. "I felt like I had mentors in this line. I had no one." Having never had the privilege of attending a drama school, she says, "You can truly appreciate something when you have felt its absence." After years of navigating the city alone, she finally had people she could turn to. And she is not alone in her experience. There are still people in Mumbai who feel lost, if not terrified, of the constant hustle that haunts theatre.

Rs 30k
Cost of many acting or theatre workshops in Mumbai

‘Theatre is my home'

Actor-director Dilip Pandey points out the confusion a newbie faces when they are introduced to Mumbai's theatre scene

The struggles in this art space is a reality that will never go away," says Dilip Pandey. The 35-year-old actor-director, who moved to Mumbai from Uttar Pradesh in 2004 to pursue theatre, says the city can be particularly difficult for newcomers to navigate. The struggle starts with figuring out where to even begin from. "It is very difficult to figure out where to start from. Especially in a new city. You don't have the facilities or community to know where to start from."

Pandey has since established himself as a theatre artiste and is currently playing lead roles in three productions. But even with that stability, he believes making a living exclusively through theatre remains difficult. He teaches acting to celebrity children, conducts workshops, and has recently turned to social media as an additional source of income. "If you expect yourself to sustain yourself via only theatre then that is difficult," he says.

"If you have to start your own group, it is quite important to be established already," he says. Funding can also mean negotiating creative choices, while the venue itself can determine whether a production gets noticed. "There is a lot of theatre politics in Mumbai," he says, adding that these struggles persist because there is no structured system guiding practitioners through them.

Yet Pandey remains committed to the form. "Theatre is an actor's medium," he says, "I love being on the stage. It feels like home, as if I am playing in my own backyard." For him, "every man is an actor. Theatre just brings it out."

‘Newcomers have no community'

Sunil Shanbag, co-founder of Studio Tamaasha, explains why workshops like Pehel are necessary to foster theatre talent

The absence of a formal entry point is one of the biggest hurdles for newcomers, says Sunil Shanbag, co-founder of Studio Tamaasha. "You get messages or you get calls from young theatre actors asking ‘how does one get into the theatre scene'?" he says. The question is hard one to answer. "There is no system in place. You don't know where to go, how to meet somebody. What do you do, how do you get in, where do things happen?"

Sunil Shanbag

Unlike film and television, where "auditions happen on a regular basis" and casting directors provide a more organised route, theatre has no equivalent structure. "There are casting directors. There's training for a more organised system in that sense. But it's not there in the theatre at all," Shanbag says. For those arriving in Mumbai, the lack of an existing network can make the struggle even more isolating.

"Often young people when they come to the city have no community at all to fall back on." Then comes survival. "It is very hard to make a living unless you get involved in a commercial production," he says, "It depends on what kind of theatre you do. But having said that, generally making a living from theatre is precarious as far as I see."

Shanbag also points to the difficulty of finding affordable housing, particularly for working- and middle-class newcomers. "The money that you have to spend to just get a space, a roof over your head cannot be earned just by theatre unfortunately. There are informal workshops everywhere but no formal, structured guidance." Strengthening support system is crucial if the next generation is expected to stay.

"We have to address the challenges of living and working in the theatre in Mumbai and Pehel addresses that," Shanbag ends. Pehel will be held from September 21 to 24 this year.

‘Theatre runs on unpaid labour and passion'

Theatre artiste Teena Khanal, who has worked on big productions, says artistes often maintain a dual existence, managing more than one job at a time

Teena Khanal, who has worked on productions including Bade Sheher Ke Log and Ramayana, says sustaining a serious theatre career requires artistes to live between passion and practicality. "Financially, theatre alone does not pay bills," she says.

Teena Khanal

Artistes often maintain "a dual existence" - taking on screen auditions and other creative and production work to support their stage careers. "We do commercial work to afford the luxury of doing serious theatre," she adds. While the community can offer support, Khanal believes the institutional gaps are stark. "The harsh truth is that the entire industry runs on the unpaid labour and passion of its artistes."

And that passion, she warns, cannot indefinitely override basic survival. "Passion has an expiration date when basic survival becomes too heavy. When we are constantly stressed about rent, groceries, and medical emergencies, the mental bandwidth for our craft and creative vulnerability just fades away. I have watched gifted actors and technicians quietly walk away. It breaks our heart because they didn't lose their talent."

‘Theatre has no union for it'

Co-founder of Harkat Studios, Karan Talwar explains how big institutions, that are quite exclusive, should take a stance for theatre artistes and technicians

Karan Talwar, co-founder of Harkat Studios, sees the problem less as a complete absence of theatre workshops and more as a lack of structure and collective support around them.

"There are a lot of theatre workshops, acting workshops that are announced every day," he says. But the gaps become clearer beyond acting. "If you're talking about technical works, [they are] completely negligible," he says, contributing to "a constant crisis in theatre of finding experienced technicians." Harkat Studios is a film production company that is also Mumbai's go-to space for alternative theatre, poetry, and even open mic nights.

Karan Talwar

What Mumbai's theatre scene lacks, Talwar argues, is a community-led body that can establish basic working conditions. "Theatre somehow just operates in these very small, quiet silos, which makes it more difficult for young people to access people, resources, and all of that." Unlike acting, "theatre does not have a proper association." There is also "no minimum wage set for lighting, production, etc." Harkat conducts some workshops informally, he says, but "we are not able to institutionalise them because they are not sustainable."

The problem extends to institutional spaces. "These are all closed-door spaces. It is very hard to get into those networks," Talwar says. A stronger community body that could bring practitioners together and set basic working conditions, he believes, could "open out a lot for the world of theatre."