The season for theatre has begun. Look out for some original scriptsIn the haphazard world of Delhi theatre, very little original work has emerged over the years. The few plays staged are usually based on works by the greats, Shakespeare, Brecht and Premchand. However, this year the season kicks off with some fresh scripts and new voices. Lokesh Jain’s Hamay Naaz Hai, his second original proscenium production in a career spanning 25 years, will be staged on October 31. First City Theatre Foundation will stage A Brief History of Pantomimes on November 14, while Hungry Heart Foundation’s Mahim Junction will have its India premiere in December, six years after it was staged at the Edinburgh Festival. And Traitors, which was tested with a small show a few months ago, will travel to Pakistan before a major opening in January.This is welcome news to theatre lovers, most of whom wonder when they last came across a good, original play. Neel Chaudhuri of the First City Theatre Foundation can’t remember. “Few and far between,” says Sohaila Kapur of the Hungry Heart Festival, adding that the drama company “made a policy decision a year ago to produce original scripts in order to encourage creative Indian writing.” “The reason people just pick up scripts like bedroom farces and comedy is simply convenience,” says Chaudhari. It’s a long, painstaking process to produce an original play. NSD faculty member Tripurari Sharma spent a year writing Traitors, before holding a public reading of the play to get feedback. “Based on tips from the listeners, the period script was pruned to make it more effective,” says Sharma. The process is far from over as Traitors undergoes further tightening. Kapur’s play Mahim Junction will open in India only now, largely because “the audience is more sophisticated and will accept a retro play about Bollywood.” Mahim Junction, a reworked version of Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan, takes the action to the slums of Bandra and packs in original music, 1960s costumes and a cast of “heroes, youngsters in love and call girls, all the joie de vivre of Hindi movies.” “Delhi is the right place for the play now,” she says.Lokesh Jain defiantly states that his new production is as grim as real life and he couldn’t care less that there are no corporate sponsors. But then, Jain, a veteran of several street plays, has always gone against the tide. “Hamay Naaz Hai is drawn from life, from a year of wandering around the streets of Old Delhi learning about the deprived and the homeless,” he says. A Brief History of Pantomimes is equally defiant, especially since Chaudhuri, the playwright, didn’t even have a concrete script when he auditioned actors. “Why should an actor give his time to an unknown playwright when he can work with an established script by a popular playwright? But, I was keen to create my own work,” he says. The play works on a novel concept —it is the fictional biography of a group of people who don’t speak out of choice. “They live their lives, attend social gatherings and raise families without uttering a single word,” he says. Chaudhuri adds “Only four-five actors turned up to audition for my earlier play Mouse. With A Brief History there were 40 hopefuls. Clearly, actors are now more open to original plays.” And so is the audience.
