“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.”
While young Indian playwrights earn international acclaim, they aren’t finding the right platform and the support to showcase this talent in India.
In today’s world of playing parts, one wonders who dons the role of writing them, as we read out aloud this dialogue by William Shakespeare. After Vijay Tendulkar, Girish Karnad and Mahesh Dattani, of how many young playwrights do you hear, nowadays? Is talent on the wane or the stage is failing to attract the scribe in the spotlight, anymore?
Theatre critic Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre opines, quoting Tendulkar (who also wrote for the Marathi newspaper, Loksatta that, playwrights manage to touch the subject but find it difficult to grasp the complexity of real life. She stresses, “It is more difficult for today’s generation as city life has grown fourfold in complexity. There are a few good plays that one can speak of. Writing about such experiences is not easy.”
Writers Bloc is one of the few writing programmes that invite talent from across the country.
The tadpole repertory.
This New Delhi-based group does a great job of writing and directing experimental stories that are entertaining, yes, but the repertory is also gaining a reputation for pushing the envelope on where you can stage a play and how.
Coming to the point of Indian universities’ syllabus most remain unchanged, failing to get campus theatre to pick contemporary pieces of writing. With names like Paresh Mokashi, Sachin Kundalkar, and Vikram Kapadia stuck between screenplay and playwriting, it is time the young dramaturgist gets its due.
This is just one of the many theatre artists in India, though they are given as much importance as compared to Bollywood their talent is tremendous. And surely if given the right opportunity they can do the best. There are very few young Indians who come forward in today’s world for the theatre because there is no much importance given to it and we feel it should change.