From Stage to Self

Niresh Kumar’s latest play Baanswada Company charts an actor’s artistic and personal journey

IT’S a production that actor, director, writer and filmmaker Niresh Kumar describes as a journey, one that made him look closely at his own relationship with theatre. From the agony and ecstasy, success and failure, to the many dilemmas, personal and professional, that theatre actors face, both on and off stage. “The play Baanswada Company is a journey similar to my own. It brings on stage the many issues a theatre group in a small city encounters, from financial constraints to its amateur talent. The witty characters may make the audience smile, but the play calls for deep introspection,” says Kumar, the graduate from the Department of Indian Theatre, Panjab University, Chandigarh, and National School of Drama. An active member of Alankar Theatre Group in Chandigarh over the last 10 years, Kumar opens his new play Baanswada Company, in Chandigarh this week.

Set in Rajasthan, Baanswada Company centers around Bhalchand, a director who dreams that Baanswada will be India’s top theatre company and wants to fulfil his father Khayali Ram’s dream of showcasing a Shakespearean play. Even after many years and aspirations, the company is unable to stage any show to perfection, as the artistes fail to take responsibility and lack integrity and work ethic. As a result, Bhalchand loses all hope and comes to believe that he will never be able to stage Shakespeare.

The story puts the spotlight on the character of senior actor Ghanshyam, who was once a nuanced and celebrated artiste but with time he has let his art and creativity fade. He is broken, frustrated, and disappointed. With the entry of Indrajeet, a hardworking, promising young actor, there is a ray of hope and assurance for Bhalchand. He grows confident of reliving his dream, as Ghanshyam too becomes optimistic.

The company’s long desire to have a woman actor is met, but her entry too is accompanied by some apprehension. “With the theme that the show must go on, Baanswada Company portrays all facades and intricacies of a theatre group without bias. With a promise to keep you laughing, Baanswada takes you on a roller-coaster ride, where the audience is met with the mental, economic, social and political complications of an actor. We come with a belief that an artist should be free from any social, religious and political prejudice and should remain untouched by social pressures. The play intricately explores these varied dimensions,” says Kumar, who has written several plays, short stories, films and adapted many of them for stage.

The thought of Baanswada, admits Kumar, initially plagued him. “In my journey, I have seen many brilliant people giving up their dream because of lack of a professional approach. Speaking of the process, while we were aiming to construct the play through improvisations, the weight of which was on the actors’ shoulders, we soon realised that most of the actors were unaware of stage basics as they were working mainly in films and television. To overcome this we organised a 15-day workshop where text, space and form were introduced to the actors. We knew from the very beginning that the play would take an interesting shape as it further comprised six plays, which were further edited,” says Kumar, who has written the script.

The play has live music by Sachin Bhatt, who uses traditional instruments to emote the dilemmas, pains, difficulties of an actor and life in theatre. “It has been fulfilling to see on stage a production that has been on my mind for more than six years now and is close to our hearts,” says Kumar.

The play will be staged on October 20 at Tagore Theatre, Chandigarh, at 6.30 pm

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