The Dramatic Set

‘‘I loved it and we decided to work together,’’ she grins. It is her maiden project but she’s already getting offers to work with other directors. ‘‘If at all I take up another project it will be with someone who I have a good equation with. Rehaan let me have a free rein and that’s very important for me,” says this Maryland Institute College of Art alumna.

Deshpande brings with her an aesthetic sense that has increasingly become popular in contemporary theatre. That of a conceptual set.

‘‘Experimental sets in theatre have been around for almost seven years. However, earlier where there’d be one play with a different set, now there are 10,’’ says Atul Kumar of The Company Theatre. He puts it down to the information boom. ‘‘Our access to other creative fields has increased ten-fold, we’re exposed to new ideas every day,’’ enthuses the director whose recent play, Lady With Lap Dog, had an all white set.

The surreal white field against which shadows become more dramatic and actors appear larger than life was an idea that was sparked off while interacting with architect Malini Krishnankutty who had designed the sets for his earlier play Blue Mug.

Krishnankutty, 36, an alumna of the University of California, Berkeley, agrees that, ‘‘architects bring fresh ideas to the stage. Since most think of space on an abstract level, it does lend an edge.’’

She’d met Kumar at a workshop on theatre and architecture at Mumbai’s National Centre for the Performing Arts, and soon he approached her to work with him. ‘‘For Blue Mug, we discussed how best to represent memory and its layering. We decided not to use objects but to create a plastic cube to signify the unpeeling of memory,’’ recalls Krishnankutty, who is all for interaction with new media.

The work on Blue Mug led to Lady With Lap Dog. Here it was an art work she saw at Guggenheim Bilbao that inspired the idea. ‘‘Dough Wheelers’ installation ‘No Horizon’ really caught my attention. When I was working on Blue Mug I played with the idea a bit, but it wasn’t until the second play that it really took off,’’ says Krishnankutty.

Artist Nalini Malani has also been working on and off with theatre persons like Delhi-based Anuradha Kapoor and Alaknanda Samarth since the ’90s. ‘‘I’ve always enjoyed working with actors and sets—most of my work involves performance art. But funding is hard to come by,” says the artist who got heads turning with her first set in 1990 for Samarth’s Six Nights, performed by Ritu Talwar. ‘‘I’d created a fairground in a concentric circle and when the protagonist came among the people an announcement told them to sit down and watch,’’ recalls Malani whose last project was Kapoor’s version of Bertolt Brecht’s The Job.

Eight black and red abstractions of vaginas are Geneva-based Apnavi Thacker’s contribution to The Vagina Monologues. Mahabanoo Modi-Kotwal had staged the play a year back and one of Thacker’s paintings was to be projected on stage. “I decided to keep the sets minimal and not have the projection. However, one of her paintings was sold at an auction after the play,’’ she recalls. This time round when Kotwal stages the play with Jane Fonda and Eve Ensler in Mumbai tomorrow, Thacker’s paintings will again be featured.

“Of course, I’ve been painting vaginas way before Avantika Akerkar (a cast member) and I got talking about a collaboration,’’ says the painter-cum-DJ, “I’m excited about working on more plays and considering doing a tie-up with a New York film-maker.’’

While MF Husain once designed free sets for the likes of A Alkazi in 1954 for his play Mother in the Cathedral, he also found it more feasible to put his own work before the camera for his Gajagamini and Meenaxi. ‘‘I know there are many set designers and art directors, but I prefer my own. I wouldn’t want the kitschy grandeur of a Devdas,’’ he jibes. ‘‘As for my work with theatre people, I still do it for the love of the medium.’’