Long-distance theatre

Audiences in Mumbai are getting to watch plays while they are being staged in the UK.

There is thunderous applause as Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller take a bow. The audience is delighted. Amidst the claps and the praises, the screen goes blank. Welcome to new-age theatre, where plays are staged on screen.

The National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai, has just renewed its contract with the UK’s National Theatre for another season of National Theatre Live, or NT Live. This is the concept of showing live or delayed screening of plays being performed currently on the UK stage.

NT Live, which launched in 2009 with a production of Jean Racine’s Phèdre, now broadcasts to 21 countries including Europe, USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

“There have been previous examples of transmitting live performances to large, outdoor screens or television, but what excited us about this concept was the recreation of the live, shared experience and the theatricality of the big screen,” says David Sabel, head of Digital Media and producer of NT Live. “Advances in camera technology, especially the appearance of HD (high definition), have vastly improved the ability to capture live performance,” he adds.

NCPA started NT Live broadcasts in June with Danny Boyle’s production of Mary Shelley’s gothic tale, Frankenstein. All four shows of the play, which had Cumberbatch and Miller swapping roles to play Frankenstein and the creature, saw 100 per cent occupancy. July’s screening of Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard, directed by Howard Davies, received the same response with the audience booking tickets — priced at Rs 300 each — days in advance.

“Each of these productions is spectacularly shot and edited,” says NCPA Chairman Khushroo N Suntook. “The history of filmed live performance is not very good — recordings of theatre are usually quite deadening to the art form. They feel static or overacted and are generally filmed from fixed positions in areas of the auditorium where they will not disturb the audience but which are not desirable positions for capturing the production,” Suntook points out, adding, “We were attracted to the concept of National Theatre Live because it recreated the live, shared experience. Audiences watched with the theatre audience and reacted like one — whilst it could never be the exact same experience, it shared something of the DNA and electricity of live theatre.”

NCPA and National Theatre have a 50-50 revenue sharing model for the deal which allows them to show 10 shows in 10 months. In September, National Theatre Live will start the season with One Man, Two Guvnors, a new play by Richard Bean, adapted loosely from Carlo Goldoni’s 18th-century classic Italian comedy, The Servant of Two Masters — currently a five-star sell-out hit in London. That will be followed by Arnold Wesker’s The Kitchen, John Hodge’s (screenwriter for Trainspotting) Collaborators and a new production of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors with the British comedian, Lenny Henry.

NCPA, to make the viewing more comfortable and theatre-like, has had to upgrade to better luminescent projectors and world-class sound systems. “We are also trying to take [the concept] to other cities, but there are restrictions from NT Live’s side due to the contracts they sign with the actors,” says Deepa Gahlot, the head of programming (theatre and film). NCPA is now in the final phase of talks with New York’s Metropolitan Opera for a similar tie-up.