It’s easy to gauge Ila Arun’s infectious energy and excitement across screens. That, she says, is because her labour of love, her theatre company, Surnai Theatre And Folk Arts Foundation, has turned 40.

“We performed for the first time on June 11, 40 years ago, at Prithvi Theatre in Bombay [now Mumbai]. It poured heavily that evening. Our show was called A Musical Sandstorm. There were barely seven to eight members in the audience who made it to the venue. There was an outage at Prithvi, and I approached Jennifer [Kapoor] for a solution. She said it’s an evening dedicated to folk artistes who can perform even without electricity, so the show continued in candlelight. There was no looking back,” recalls Arun.