![]() “This is what I dreamed of when I was younger,” she says. One and a half years later, Nandi is now active in the Mumbai theatre scene. “It scared me a bit because I wasn’t sure if I could match up to them physically.” It took Nandi a few days to gel with the class. “They were brimming with so much energy,” she says. Most of them were fresh college graduates and Nandi, then 31, was surprised by their enthusiasm. Her batch mates were much younger than her. On day one of the course, Nandi had a funny feeling in her stomach. Her husband, Devashish Nandi, and seven-year-old son Eishaan encouraged her to give it a try. However, an advertisement in the newspaper inviting applications to The Drama School got her thinking. Though she was always interested in theatre, Nandi chose to stick to the conventional path. Like him, Archana Patel Nandi, too, doesn’t regret leaving her corporate job. “The idea is to preserve the live experience and make the productions engaging,” says Maskara. Although he is quick to say that he will “never go back to the corporate sector”, Maskara admits that his background helped him vastly while setting up CinePlay. It is a special “made-for-screen” version with completely different lighting and sound. And, thus, CinePlay was born.ĬinePlay offers not just a recorded version of the live performance. “This got me thinking of doing a specially filmed version of the play so that it could be shared with a wider audience,” says Maskara. In the meantime, Between The Lines, in which Maskara ended up playing the lead with Das, began getting rave reviews and the couple received performance requests which were way beyond their ambit as a small production house. “The economics of theatre struck me hard and I had this urge to do something to help the form be sustainable.” “It was only after many conversations with those in the theatre circles that I began to get a grasp of the kind of struggles that the form goes through,” says Maskara. During this time, he rediscovered his love for the form and attended acting workshops by theatre giants like Mahesh Dattani and Waman Kendre. Initially, Maskara used to help with the rehearsals. Once he stops, he has no clue about doing anything else.”Then Das came up with the idea of doing their first production, Between The Lines, a relationship drama about a lawyer couple. “I was like a horse who only knew how to run a race. So, Maskara quit his job and, with Das, co-founded CinePlay, a venture that archives theatre productions by filming it. “It was the birth of our son, Vihaan.” What seemed like a perfect job left him with no time to spend with his family, and after 10 to 15 years of constantly being on his toes, Maskara was exhausted. Was it marriage to actor-filmmaker-activist Nandita Das that reintroduced him to theatre? “Not really,” says Maskara. Maskara founded an industrial production company called Polygenta Technologies Limited, which worked in the recycling sector and produced T-shirts for multinationals like Nike and Adidas. The next 38 years went by without any creative pursuit. ![]() “I was a regular fixture at the rehearsals and I would learn all the dialogues, which is why I was given the job,” says Maskara, 44. His father’s brother, theatre director Pawan Maskara, recruited him as a prompter for the play he was directing. Subodh Maskara’s love affair with theatre started when he was just six. So far, they have produced six plays in Hindi and English dealing with contemporary themes. Now, I travel, collaborate, learn and train in theatre,” says Majumdar, who is the artistic director of The Indian Ensemble, a theatre company he started in 2009 with friend Sandeep Shikar. I got a scholarship to study theatre abroad. At some point, I realised I needed to do it full time. “When I came to Bangalore to work as a software professional, I did plays with many theatre groups. After dabbling with the art form for many years, Majumdar, 34, took the plunge in 2005, when he got a scholarship to study theatre in England. While some have bid adieu to the corporate life to embrace theatre full-time, many are keeping their day jobs out of compulsion, entertained by the thought that some day they would take the plunge.īengaluru-based techie-turned-playwright Abhishek Majumdar fell in love with theatre during his school days. Theatre entrepreneurship is the new buzzword that is luring the new-age professionals out of their cubicles and boardrooms. ![]()
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