Now, watch the plays you like online at this new website

The CinePlay experience is now also available on Hotstar where a subscription allows you to access 11 plays currently The plan is to add 20 more titles by June In this still Joy Sengupta and Vijay Crishna enact a scene from Dance Like A ManHaving watched Tom Alter play the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar at Nariman Points YB Chavan auditorium in 2012 we have wanted once more to catch the veteran actor play as few can with Urdu So although his other acclaimed play by Sayeed Alam led Pierrots Troupe has come to Mumbai from Delhi it hasnt been possible Theatre and its enthusiasts often end up starcrossed lovers in the feud between time and locationThe digital age however does have both the ability and promise to bridge this gapA Delhibased startup with a tothepoint name playmyplaycom has brought theatre from the capital to your smartphonetablet for a subscription fee of Rs 399 per year allowing you to view productions from a bouquet of over 150 plays by 50 groups that have been recorded live across venues in DelhiA scene from Hamlet by Delhis Prism Theatre Society directed by Jatin SarnaDont miss my showHarkirat Sandhu 39 a digital media professional who has been a Dilliwala for 15 years says that the firm started recording plays in August 2016 by which time the website was ready Once while hanging out with friends from theatre community he was asked to attend a play I told them that I couldnt attend it that weekend Wed do it perhaps the next Thats when a friend said Babu its not a picture that you can catch it when you want Is week hai to hai otherwise you watch it when we stage it next he says over a telephonic interviewIt struck Sandhu that theatre groups practise for weeks together to stage one show in a month He thought it might be time to change the way theatre essentially a perishable commodity is consumed Sandhu whose office was near Mandi House allowing him the luxury of catching a play twice a month says the recording of any play begins with convincing the groups director that the enterprise will let them showcase their work to a larger audience In the last five months they have got 500 subscribers 20 per cent of this is from NRIs from New Zealand and Canada As far as economics go the idea says Sandhu remains to share the spoils with the theatre group While earlier the model was simple on a pay per view basis 50 per cent would go to the site and 50 to the theatre group the Netflixlike subscription model throws up a challenge After all dividing the spoils according to each play that a viewer may have watched might be a hairsplitting taskPlaymyplay founded by Harkirat Sandhu amp Padam Sandhu uses the threecamera set up where a camera is placed in the seating area on the right left and centre of the stage PicAjay Gautum A oneperson audienceSandhu says he was prodded to watch plays by friends who urged him to catch the raw energy of an actor on stage Theres a human element in theatre that cant be replaced Its perhaps why though its the oldest story telling medium it survives he addsYet ventures such as his argues Quasar Thakore Padamsee mumbaibased actor turned theatre director and son of Alyque Padamsee and Dolly Thakore take away the humanness from theatre Padamsee 39 points out to the seating of an auditorium with its chair backs not completely letting you sink in unlike whats offered at a cinema The human eye has an inbuilt zoom lens and we can focus on the actor or area we want to while watching a play Here in recorded theatre you have the camera doing that work for me limiting my experience he adds Then there could be other experiences lost He recalls the staging of So Many Socks written by Annie Zaidi which he directed in Ahmedabad Inspired by Tibetan activist Tenzin Tsundues collection of poems Kora Padamsee says the play was halfway at an outdoor venue when it started pouring The play on the Tibetan freedom movement had to be moved inside in this case but with the audience too engrossed to move the actors continued to stage it drenchedRajat Kapoor ActorDirectorBut one musnt confuse the two experiences says Mumbaibased entrepreneur Subodh Maskara Its the difference between watching a cricket match live in a stadium where you cant even see the ball and watching the match at home where every move is in closeup says MaskaraIn 2015 Maskara launched CinePlay meant to offer a cinematic version of theatre Unlike playmyplay which records the play while it is staged on screen CinePlay takes the play and shoots it over days in a studio but with the sets as they are meant to remain and the same script For instance Mahesh Dattanis Dance Like a Man directed by Lillete Dubeys Primetime Theatre Co for stage and directed by Ritesh Menon and Lillete Dubey for CinePlay has a scene involving actor Vijay Crishna playing the role of his own father As the lighting dims Crishna the son slips on a topi and Nehru jacket The scene is retained in the CinePlay version Dubey says while shooting which took about seven days there was an effort to ensure that the camera did zoom out to allow the viewer to not forget that what they were watching after all was a play Yet because the medium has changed a dialogue may not be needed where camerawork would suffice The CinePlay version is then shot like cinema Would it not work then to just record the play Maskara says matteroffactly I dont think the audience is ready for an inferior experienceTwo fullcamera rehearsals take place before each National Theatre Live recording with time inbetween for the stage director and camera director to work together to discuss how best to capture the productionKeep the theatre on screenPlaywright and theatre director Rahul da Cunha who runs Rage Productions along with actors Rajit Kapur and Shernaz Patel says taking the stage out of the theatrical experience misses the pointWhile CinePlay which he feels is more of a documentary version of what happens on stage falls short he says the National Theatre Live version in which Londons Royal National Theatre records its plays and screens them across the world with institutions it has tiedup with for instance the National Centre of Performing Arts in Mumbai offers the experience of watching a play albeit on a screen with an audienceExplaining the process of how a play is recorded Emma Keith Head of NT Live and Broadcast says over an email interview Two full camera rehearsals take place before each broadcast with time inbetween for the stage director and camera director to work together to discuss how best to capture the production Adjustments are made for lighting sound and makeup however this is all with the aim of preserving the integrity of the original designShe adds The approach to filming National Theatre Live broadcasts is to prioritise the audience in cinemas for that night The camera director is given flexibility in choosing camera positions so that the performance can be captured from the best seats in the house and with a sophisticated setup The audience in the National Theatre are aware that cameras will be present so the theatre is transformed into something of a live studioAsked about the concerns that they keep in mind while editing the footage she says National Theatre Live is not about turning a stage play into a film Rather the intent is to faithfully capture the live performance The use of high definition cameras and the scale of the big screen allow the aesthetic to remain theatrical and offer audiences a dynamic full stage picture This is matched with the intimacy the camera can offer taking the audience to the heart of the emotion and the nuances of the actors performances The broadcasts also feature live interviews usually with members of the creative team and sometimes a preshow film which offers a look behind the scenes or greater insight into the productionYet recording theatre performances is not very new at all says Deepa Gahlot Head Theatre and Films NCPA Marathi and Gujarati theatre groups have been doing it for ages she says Once a plays shows neared the end they would record it make DVDs and circulate them While NCPA does record its own productions these are not monetised and are available only as archival footageKunal Kapoor Trustee of Juhus Prithvi Theatre says NT Live is very different from what playmyplay or Cineplay is offering both in quality and availability The worry is that recorded plays should not become cheap TV seriesfilms which will damage the impression of what live performances are all aboutThe last actNo one not Sandhu not Maskara suggest you stream your play where you could watch a live one The former they want to make available for when you cannot watch a play say its being staged in another city or want to experience the same differently perhaps see an actors expression from a performance you watched on the last rowPadamsee and many within the community agree that the only time a play should be recorded is when its meant to be archived on the last show before the production ends It might be as Dubey says an important way of leaving behind the legacy of Indian plays To document what we did for posterity