City woes and dreams

The first of the two big theatre festivals that take place towards the end of the year the Prithvi Theatre Festival concluded on Sunday with the Carnival that has performers coming together for a celebratory adieu to the days of hectic activity plays fringe performances music and talks with theatrewalas mdash enveloping the cosy theatre with warmth and fellow feeling The second festival Centrestage starts later this monthOf the plays watched and it is not possible to catch all of them two new productions that showed potential once initial glitches are ironed out are Akash Khuranarsquos Bombay Dying and Lillete Dubeyrsquos GauharA still from Lillete Dubeyrsquos Gauhar which is the story of the singing star Gauhar Jaan who was possibly the first in India to lend her voice for recordsThe first written by Hussain Dalal and Khurana is in keeping with the grouprsquos Akvarious preference for contemporary urban stories that can easily be related to and studded with good performances It was good to see actors Kumud Mishra Ayesh Raza Mishra and Ira Dubey act in this play since they are not normally associated with Akvarious but then many of todayrsquos theatre groups believe in a healthy noncompetitive environment and sharing of resourcesThe play is set in the city and the three loosely connected stories have one thing in common mdash the old Bombay Dyeing mill in central Mumbai For a Mumbai resident either of a certain vintage or interested enough in the cityrsquos history this fact by itself gives the characters and stories an added dimension The background of the thriving mill district the destructive textile mill strike and the gradual transformation of the spaces where people worked and lived into a glittering hub of malls highend shopping swanky restaurants and pubs is a familiar story of heartless development The other event that touches the lives of the characters are the communal riots that wracked the city and altered its secular natureShakir Mishra is found dead by Mary Shriya Pilgaonkar mdash excellent the sweet lonely chambermaid of a seedy hotel the man who was one of the few who prospered with the mills locked him out with a handsome compensation but guilt about a past crime haunts him In contrast living in a highrise apartment built over the graveyard of the old mill are a yuppie couple Ira DubeyTariq Vasudeva who may not want for anything financially but the stress of urban living takes a toll on them Shakirrsquos Hindu employee Siddharth Menon is haunted by his own ghosts but does not allow tragedy to turn him into a vengeful animal And therersquos the strange flirty hotel guest Anand Tiwari who could be every womanrsquos nightmareFrom the everydayness of Mumbai living to the glories of the past in Lillete Dubeyrsquos Gauhar Vikram Sampathrsquos book on Gauhar Jaan provided the inspiration for Mahesh Dattanirsquos script the story of the singing star who was possibly the first to lend her voice for records in the early days of the technology when most singers imagined the gramophone machine would snatch their soulsDubeyrsquos coup lies in getting Zila Khan onto the stage to play Gauharrsquos mother Malka as well as the older Gauhar mdash and she is a marvelous singer Rajeshwari Sachdev resplendent in beautiful saris and jewellery makes for a glamorous Gauhar Jaan but lacks the requisite lung power in her singingThe story of a talented tawaif Malka and her daughter follows the trajectory of many women of that class in that age mdash their singing and dancing skills gave them some measure of financial independence but also left them vulnerable to exploitation by the men in their lives mdash fathers as well as husbands and in the case of Gauhar Jaan even her motherrsquos supposedly loyal servantThe structure of the play needs a bit of touching up and Gauhar Jaanrsquos achievements and life highlighted a bit more so that the portrait of the woman emerges with more clarity Purva Nareshrsquos plays Bai Se Bioscope Tak Aaj Rang Hai and Umrao capture the tawaifrsquos life with remarkable emotional nuanceApart from the plays showcased at the festival casual conversations with theatre practitioners underline the difficulties of groups who want to do artistic work not only is it difficult to raise funds some are trying out crowdfunding there are hardly any midsized and affordable theatres in Mumbai For the big producers there are the large auditoriums even to get dates in these is tough sponsors and audiences ready to pay high ticket rates But where do the small midsized and experimental theatre people go Alternative spaces are slowly opening up but itrsquos not the same as performing in a properly equipped theatre and a 200400 seater auditorium is ideal for offmainstream plays and more of these are badly needed in a culturedeprived cityDeepa Gahlot is an awardwinning film and theatre critic and an arts administrator She tweets at deepagahlot