More enthusiasm please

ON STAGE

" ... and the list goes on. Yes, I am talking about London and Leicester Road, the centre of West End theatre.

These are grand shows, such great spectacles that their scale and impact leaves you open-mouthed. It is another matter that if you have watched one, you know what they are all about and don't particularly want to see another.

But that these shows are there all round the year, every day of the week, for anyone who is visiting even for a day! You find the tickets prohibitive? Well, you get off at the Leicester Road tube station and large signs greet you at every alternate shop in the area: "Discounted theatre tickets available here."

And never mind the ticket prices, the houses are always packed, almost all the time. One always wants to soak in the excitement of this scene "" partly due to happiness that theatre is so popular here, and partly also with jealousy: why is theatre so popular here?! Why can't we have theatre like this in India?

Maybe, maybe if the corporate world starts thinking that theatre can be good business, we might have grand spectacles that attract both the common man and the tourist.

London, for a visitor with some interest in theatre, is paradise. Other than the West End theatre, which is the commercial theatre of Britain, there is a vast range of performances by what is called Off West End Theatre and smaller companies comprising the Fringe Theatre, which is into serious theatre and also experimenting in different ways.

It is hard to imagine the excitement of an audience member who, watching a play in a theatre, gets to sit with the actors during the interval and hear them discuss their performance, or even gossip at very close quarters. One would think that such proximity would break the magic of the make-belief of performance.

But I think it works the other way. Being so close to the performers you like gives you a different high and the experience stays with you much longer. You see that they are ordinary humans like us but paradoxically the close encounter makes you wonder at their transformation!

Why don't we have similar spaces or the convention of actors and audiences meeting casually over drinks or dinner during or after performances? Maybe if we plan such interactions as an essential part of the performance, there will be greater attraction for the audience. If the media helped in building profiles of actors, the audience would be more keen to get an opportunity to see them, like they are to see other celebrities.

There would be more than 25 quality drama schools in a small country like Britain, training actors for theatre, film and television. In a vast country like India there is only one professional drama school, and the graduates of this school too are not able to pursue theatre as a profession because theatre does not exist as a profession.

This in itself speaks of the state of theatre in the country. Why, in a country so rich in its theatrical traditions, does theatre not hold attraction any longer? Why, even in London, do Asians as a community not really patronise theatre?

Maybe, when we adopted European theatre as a model for the urban audience, we were cutting ourselves from our roots. Maybe we need to be more rooted!