The stage is set in Hyderabad

In the not too distant past, the theatre scene in Hyderabad was like the lone swallow in summer. Theatre groups were few, comprising largely of students or ad professionals banding together informally and staging one play a year at Ravindra Bharati, the one auditorium there used to be with a decent proscenium. The productions had a DIY quality with costumes put together ad lib, friends pressganged as ushers and the wife or girlfriend playing the lead.

Theatre in Hyderabad has come a long way since then, with a mushrooming of groups staging plays and festivals almost every month, and playing at a variety of auditoria ranging from alfresco platforms to plush restaurant venues. Samahaara, Kartaal, Nishumbita, Little Theatre, Rangadhara, Suthradhar, the Qadir Ali Baig Theatre Foundation and Torn Curtain are a motley mix of old and new groups that have kept metropolitan theatre alive in Hyderabad.

Theatre veteran Vijay Marur of Torn Curtain says production groups and audiences alike have evolved to meet each other in recent years. The plays used to be too esoteric for an audience unfamiliar with the texts performed. “We used to have a largely confused audience,” says the 55-year-old ad professional who has been in the theatre scene since his college days. “Hyderabadis weren’t entirely sure earlier as to how to react to a play if it wasn’t a slapstick comedy, but now thought-provoking plays are not lost on the crowd.”

Last month, Samahaara, a six-year-old theatre group, staged Dominic Wesley, a self-written absurd play about the conflict of reason and emotion, to largely appreciative audiences. Samahaara’s founder Ratna Shekhar Reddy, a product of the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, is chuffed about how it went down. “If we had done an absurd experimental play back then, forget about people understanding it, they would not even have turned up. Hyderabadi audiences are more well read now,” he says.

Theatre in Hyderabad is no longer about enacting received literary texts or mythological plays. Where once they used to produce a Neil Simon work verbatim, theatre groups now have become bolder and self-assured, doing adaptations and original scripts. For Dominic Wesley, the Samahaara crew bunged in installation art, a multimedia interlude, and even a PowerPoint presentation. Says playwright Anjali Parvati Koda, a former corporate careerist who switched full-time to theatre: “Not only are audiences now ready and receptive, they come back to us and debate about the play.”

Similarly, the Qadir Ali Baig Theatre Foundation, which has risen to prominence by importing NSD glitterati to attract eyeballs, has produced several native plays. Founder Mohammed Ali Baig, a former ad film maker, says, “It’s a matter of pride for us that we also do scripts that are not adapted from a text. Our plays are written, produced and played by our own cast and tailored to the specific taste of this city.”

All said and done, theatre in Hyderabad is not exactly Broadway or even Prithvi. The budgets aren’t big and the productions small-scale, tailored to the limitations of the auditoria and audiences. It’s still a task to lure audiences to a play. Only the real aficionados would resist the temptation to go to an air-conditioned multiplex to catch a movie and go over to an auditorium with no popcorn vending machines. Hyderabad still does not have a theatre-specific auditorium. Vinay Verma of Sutradhar says, “We still lack a theatre venue like a Mumbai’s Prithvi or Bangalore’s Ranga Shankara.”

Sure enough, there are more than a dozen venues, big and small, but to a theatre lover, they are not up to scratch. “There isn’t one place that is specifically designed for theatre. The acoustics are not friendly and the light just spills all over the place,” opines Vaishali Bisht, a children’s theatre specialist.

Theatre is still not big-ticket entertainment in Hyderabad. Groups like Samahaara and Nishumbita raise their small budgets on their own; others like Kartaal and Qadir Ali Baig Foundation have turned to corporate collaborations. To bring A Streetcar Named Desire to Hyderabad last year, Kartaal’s Seema Azharuddin tied up with about 18 sponsors including Andhra Pradesh Tourism. Given her experience in the corporate world, she has entered into a five-year contract with her sponsors to produce two productions every year.

Most theatre professionals also realise that their task is not only to satisfy their own artistic sensibilities, but also to widen the audience itself. Most of them are active participants in the school theatre scene, conducting workshops and helping schools produce their own plays. Already a number of high-end schools in the city enlist the help of professionals to put up their annual plays. Says veteran Marur, “The amount of exposure children are getting to theatre today will set the stage for the next 20 years. I can already see the change.’’