A Theatre Building Boom in India is Imminent

December 16, 2003

[An Indian theatre building boom is about to start, reports Theatre Projects Consultants' Director, Iain Mackintosh. Fresh back from Mumbai where he gave the keynote address to open the conference, Making Spaces for Theatre, held at the Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai.]

India has no shortage of actors and playrights working in English as well as in many of the languages of the sub-continent. There are too many grandiose auditoriums, some built for the Tagore Centenary in 1961, others more recently by universities and state governments who believe that big is beautiful. What they lack are the vital playhouses.

Iain Mackintosh at the Mumbai National Theatre site

The new generation of Indian theatres will be quite unlike the palaces of China and the Gulf where star architects are hired to celebrate the arrival of a city or country on the world's stage. India needs more simple playhouses which also work for dance and which hold no more than 300 to 500: proscenium arch theatres, thrust stages and one space theatres. A few excellent theatres, including those of B.S. Bhooshan in the southern state of Karnataka and in Mumbai itself, have signposted the way.

The conference, which was well attended by architects, directors and academics, was held at the 300-seat Prithvi Theatre at the close of its annual November Festival of new work. The Prithvi was celebrating its 25th birthday. The late Jennifer Kendal, elder sister of actress, Felicity Kendal, and daughter of Shakespeare Wallah actor/manager Geoffrey Kendal, took architect Ved Segan to Britain where the recently-opened Young Vic proved an inspiration. This pedigree has been a factor in the enduring success of what is India's best-loved playhouse.

India's new generation of theatres will be designed for Indian directors by Indian architects, perhaps with help from engineers, theatre consultants and acousticians who can contribute their experience of theatre building. Britain can also help by showing its new theatres to young architects, including Himanshu Burte who, with actor/director Atul Kumar, organised the conference so efficiently. For most of India a 'modern' theatre is single tier, fan shaped auditorium or a characterless 'black box'. This is ironic since for twenty five years Britain has turned away from such souless cinema-like theatres, where the audience is passive, to courtyard theatres and to studios with carefully calculated architectual character which raise the awareness in the audience.

There are also plans to create an all-Indian association which links architects, stage designers, directors and academics and which will be modelled loosely on Britain's Association of British Theatre Technicians and America's United States Institute for Theater Technology. This will allow India to join the Organisation International of Scenographers, Technicians and Architects and to participate in 2007 in the Prague Quadrennial of Scenography and Theatre Archiecture.

Another agenda that arose from the conference is an international initiative on the restoration and use of historic theatres. In India there are two distinct groups. First, there are the Kuttampalams, temple theatres in the southern state of Kerala, where the 2000 year old tradition of Kathakali dance drama is very much alive, with new works being constantly added to the repertoire. Second are the Raj Theatres from 1880 to 1920, many of which have been converted into Bollywood cinemas, but some of which survive magnificently, such as the Gaiety, Simla which is being restored and the wonderful listed Royal Opera House of Mumbai of 1909 which stands tantalisingly empty on a good site.