Artistic hideout

Atul Kumar is sanguine, despite eight demoralising years of seeing his dream near-materialise several times. "The dreaming has paid off," he says, his voice suggesting immense relief. Director, actor and proprietor of The Company Theatre, Kumar can finally look forward to his theatre laboratory bubble over with experimentation. Two-and-a-half hours from Mumbai, nestled amid the Sahyadari range of hills, Evam, the research centre for theatre art, waits to take form.

The oddly named The Company Theatre has perfomed several successful productions of celebrated European and regional origin. Kumar, through his close associations with Sanjna Kapoor and Arundhati Nag, is an annual feature at the Mumbai Prithvi festival, and was asked to direct the kick-off theatre festival for Nag's Ranga Shankara in Bangalore, the uncrowned nerve centre for theatre in south India.

The Moliere enthusiast has even taken theatre to people homes through a kind of supper theatre format to seek out an audience that "cannot be bothered to go to the theatre". It is this unorthodox streak in Kumar's artistic ideology that has him moving towards a theatre form that is not word-centric, that is led by "reaction to space, colour, and experiences".

Mumbai's been a bit of a mixed bag for Atul Kumar. It has granted him the audiences he craved when he worked in Delhi. But on the flip side, he has struggled to hold on to a repertory of actors between plays. "The temptation is always to use theatre as a stepping stone to commercial ventures in television and movies; this is a scenario that's common to theatre all over the world."

Also, the premium on space in the city has meant that Kumar and his band of troupers have often had to make do with practising out of his suburban apartment. Evam was borne out of the personal need for an artistic refuge that frees artistes from a circumscribed urban space, to give them a workspace for "concentrated training that will generate unpredictable creative energy".

Last week, after years of ineffectual wooing of grant-making bodies and governments across the world, thanks to the magnanimity of 150 of India's hottest artists, 180 works were hawked to raise proceeds for Evam. "It was actually a friend's idea to tap into the generosity of my artist friends; it was an idea I didn't have much faith in at the time," laughs Kumar.

"We not only have money for the land and brick and mortar, but also for the first three years of running the residency," he says. Thereafter the fund-raising will have to be resumed. But now's not the time for Kumar to dwell on the what ifs.

Unlike its peers "" Ranga Shankara, Prithvi Theatre or Veenapani Chawla's Adishakti in Pondicherry "" that have been about creating the consummate viewing space, Evam hopes to explore the dynamics of what happens behind the stage; the process of creation will take place at the residency while the performances will be elsewhere.

"The idea is to start small and grow organically. In the beginning the process of interaction will primarily be restricted to The Company Theatre and invitee artistes," says Kumar. Small is focussed and therefore very well, but for self-sustenance thinking big will be key.

"Yes," agrees Kumar, "eventually we'll open up the residency to theatre groups who will rent it out. And who knows, in 10 years maybe we will have a festival of our own, join hands with stakeholders in the regional tourism industry, so everyone benefits."

Evam also hopes to extend its research activity to larger concerns. For one, pre-disposing children to theatre through education and training will form an important part of their activities. "You work with 30 children, and there 'll surely be one that will get hooked to theatre for life."

It's not easy being a visionary, as Kumar's contemporaries Kapoor and Nag will tell him. He will need an indefatigable spirit and the toughest guts to rebuff the knocks and bumps that the survival of theatre in India is now accustomed to. But sure, the dreaming must go on...