Flying Theatre

When Namrata Goyal began working for Jet Airways in July 2010,she says she saw “barriers between the various levels of management.” This hierarchy discouraged employees of different departments from speaking to each other and that left her thoughtful. Taking her mother’s advice,she began experimenting with voice modulation classes for the employees of the airline in an effort to improve their communication skills,and very soon these classes turned into full-fledged theatre.

The 21-year-old’s theatre venture with Jet Airways began with the staging of Six Season’s of Love,an adaptation of the play Tumhari Amrita ,and was performed solely by employees of the airline. The production was noticed by a lot of people including Shabana Azmi,who is incidentally also Goyal’s godmother,and led to the CEO of the company encouraging her to,as she says,“take over India.” Thus was born Black Comedy. Like with the introduction of the voice modulation classes,Goyal’s aim with this play continued to be to bring the employees of the company closer. Doing the play with them “stopped them from seeing me as the daughter of Naresh (founder chairperson of the airline) and Anita Goyal,and they then saw me as a friend instead,” she says.

Black Comedy,staged last evening at the Rangsharda auditorium in Bandra,is based on a one-act play of the same name by British dramatist Peter Shaffer. The title of this post-war farcical comedy is a pun,because all action takes place in a flat in London during an electrical blackout. The use of reverse lighting,however,means that while the actors are experiencing an electrical blackout,we,as the audience,can see a perfectly well lit up stage. Similarly,at the beginning of the play the stage is darkened to the audience,but not to the actors. The young director explains that this unique lighting method was one of the reasons she chose this play to work with. The play has eight characters,each of who portrays a different emotion,so to speak. This way,“everyone in the audience is likely to identify with someone”,explains Goyal.

Judging from the reception of her adaptation of Black Comedy in not just Mumbai,but also Delhi,Pune,Bangalore and Chennai,it seems this budding director,who believes “art is a great way to social change”,will fly.