Group theatres on a makeover mode

Kolkata-based pioneering Bengali group theatres have started moving out of popular auditoriums, including the Academy of Fine Arts, and other government-owned hall including Madhusudan Mancha, Girish Mancha, Minarva to private auditoriums like Sujata Sadan as a strategic and economically feasible move towards building a brand for itself.

Kaushik Sen, director, Swapna Sandhani, informed that the production cost required for a show is around Rs 12,000 to Rs 15,000 out of which a major portion goes for auditorium rent and media advertisement whereas at most only 10 city based groups are able to recover the cost from ticket sales.

Moreover, there is severe irregularity involved in auditorium allotment which grossly hampers regular performance.

"We along with few other leading groups have decided to move out of conventional halls and organise our shows in some private auditoriums where not only the rent is significantly lower but also there is assurance of hall allotment every week which will help us to build our brand," said Sen.

There is a "mafia raj" prevailing in the theatre segment in the state pertaining to serious issue like grant allocation, auditorium allocation, noted Monish Mitra, director, Arghya.

"Nearly all the state based theatre groups, leaving a few major, are grossly uninformed of the grant available from the union government' human resource and development ministry. Grants are allocated at the discretion of committee without reasonable justification," he added.

The scenario is similar in allotment state government owned auditorium, he noted.

Popularity of 'jatra', another form of act, was a major factor that kept the rural audience coming to see theatre.

"Rural audience could see glamorous film actors at their door step in jatra and gradually their willingness to come and see group theatre was on a decline," noted Sen.

Meanwhile, the advertisement cost for a minimum size space in a leading vernacular media is as high as Rs 6,000 which is beyond financial strength of several groups,he noted.

"Not only we are changing performance venue, some groups have also decided to switch to some other vernacular daily despite knowing that it might not attract sufficient number of audience," said Sen.

In addition, the group are depending much on mouth publicity, leaflets, postcards, university campus visits.

"We are working together for an entire restructuring of the theatre groups. We are thinking of alternative ways to popularise the Bengali group theatre amongst people," added Mitra.

Despite of several efforts, Bengali group theatre is going to take at least another twenty years to get a form of an structured 'industry', lamented Sen.