Mumbai’s The Company Theatre finds innovative ways to navigate theatre digitally

A girl haunted by insomnia, a djinn and a hallucinatory thoughts throughout the COVID-19 lockdown; a failed social media influencer’s journey down the rabbit gap of infinite scrolling; a 2020 model of The Mahabharata’s “warrior princess-turned-mute doll”, Chitrangada. Starting from Marathi to Hindi and English, these are simply among the many tales being advised at The Firm Theatre’s TheatreFILMTheatre — A Competition of Shorts.

The competition, presently underway, was conceptualised as a communion of up-and-coming filmmakers taking a look at theatre by means of a renewed kind — by lending play scripts a cinematic outlook. And that’s not all.

With the intermittent COVID-19 lockdowns, forcing theatres to shut doorways for an extended time than anticipated, Mumbai-based The Firm Theatre needed to catch on top of things.

“When the lockdown began, all of us thought we might use this time to get again to studying, introspecting and ideating, however it simply went on and on,” remembers inventive director Atul Kumar, with over 30 years of expertise within the subject of theatre. Performers have been understandably beginning to really feel demotivated. It was at the moment that filmed theatre started gaining recognition — full with multi-camera setups and shoots. “We discovered that very boring,” says Atul.

Attempting to have interaction everybody and encourage any type of artistic expression, The Firm Theatre resorted to 2 initiatives. For the primary, “We received filmmakers to make movies on theatre scripts in order that the connection stays. For this, we despatched out a feeler to theatre actors round India and greater than 600 actors utilized. We related them with these administrators.” The script and actors’ background have been the one conditions for TheatreFILMTheatre: inventive freedom was the filmmakers’ personal. Whereas this initiative marked the cinematic facet, there was extra to experiment with.

With the second initiative, “We wished to discover the third dimension of this medium: an expertise we may give the viewers which is neither cinema or theatre, however derives from each. This threw us into the world of latest media — gaming, synthetic intelligence and web sites,” Atul continues.

For the final three months, the workforce had been engaged on two initiatives which is able to roll out on-line, within the type of interactive interfaces. Audiences will enter a digital room or museum which is interactive; generally stay and at others, with a video part. “One other factor we try to do is to make use of media like WhatsApp and Fb to create theatre.”

Atul provides an instance: Mumbai’s famed society WhatsApp teams are theatres in itself. “They’re stuffed with feelings and really dramatic — there are fights and on the similar time individuals who get well from COVID-19 and return, are welcomed with a lot cheer and applause,” says Atul.

Impressed by this, Atul is planning a ticketed, 24-hour-long present on WhatsApp — with movies, memes, sound bytes. “So, the WhatsApp group turns into a stage. Equally, on Fb, actors might create accounts as characters in a play,” provides Atul.

When open air theatres have been allowed to operate in Mumbai, The Firm Theatre didn’t miss the chance. At their artists’ residency in Kamshet on September 21, they carried out a promenade piece the place the viewers moved together with the motion. “It was a giant excessive. We had an viewers, lastly!” says Atul, concluding, “I believe, in the end, the instances do push you in new instructions.”

Discover TheatreFilm Theatre at www.youtube.com/person/TheGuildenstern until Saturday, October 3.