Proscenium, a Mumbai-based youth theatre group, formed in 2004, has started rehearsals for its third production. Director Chandan Roy Sanyal says his group consists of college students, trained actors and writers but that he can’t hire professionals because he cannot pay them.

“Everybody wants to do theatre but there is no money. So we are rehearsing on a terrace in Bombay because there is not much space around. There are hardly any theatres, there is no place to rehearse, there is no money. It is very difficult to do a play, at least in this city.”

Brecht’s influence

The 29-year-old Chandan recently travelled the world with the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing Lysander in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Now he is back in Mumbai, directing “The Rise and Fall of the city of Mahagonny”, a political-satirical opera with lyrics by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, and music by Kurt Weill. The Doors made the music world-famous with their cover version of the “Alabama Song”.

Bertolt Brecht is far from unfamiliar to the Indian theatre scene, says Rolf Rohmer, a professor of theatre at Leipzig University:

“Brecht has played an important role in the shaping of contemporary theatre in India since the 1960s. But there have been different approaches to his reception. For instance, there have been adaptations of specific Indian stories with reference to problems in India. Here, we see the strong influence of the German director, Fritz Bennewitz."

Diverse theatre

Although in India, theatre is still widely understood as a medium of social change, Rohmer says that there is a lot of diversity.

“It ranges from highly encoded traditional Sanskrit drama to the diverse forms of folk theatre among India’s different ethnic groups. Despite all these differences, they all have one thing in common: they are close to their audiences in terms of themes as well as in their performance and communication.”

In this tradition, the young theatre group of Proscenium aims to make Brecht’s “Mahagonny” opera accessible to an Indian audience. Director Chandan Roy Sanyal has rewritten the script in “Hinglish”, a colloquial mix of Hindi and English.

Although the play itself is very political, the director’s vision is mainly to provide entertainment with a modern musical adaptation that will include spectacular light and sound effects.

Preferring theatre to film

As an actor, Chandan recently entered the world of Bollywood where he has met considerable success. But he prefers the theatre, except for the unfavourable financial conditions. The newly-designed poster for his play reads: “Inventing a drug called theatre”.

“And I enjoy the idea of being on stage", Chandan says. "Directing, costumes, lights. The film experience is also good but theatre is something which I’m really connected with well and which I am attached with thus I don’t want to leave theatre.”

The premiere of Proscenium’s “Mahagonny” is set for July this year in Mumbai.

Author: Fritzi Titzmann
Editor: Anne Thomas