All the world’s a stage for them. And when they took the stage at Lit for Life 2015 — at a talk on Tamil theatre — they spoke their heart out.
Theatre personalities Gnani, Pralayan and Vidya explained how theatre has grown over the years. The scene has, obviously, changed a lot since they came into the field. “Tamil theatre has no auditoriums now. Those who pay Rs. 150 for an English play hesitate to pay Rs. 50 for a Tamil play,” thundered Gnani, who recently completed 50 years in the field. With the help of old pictures, the theatre veteran went down memory lane, talking about how theatre flourished a few decades ago, and on the need to create a strong environment for it to prosper in current times. Pralayan of Chennai Kalai Kuzhu spoke about the charm of street theatre and how it still strikes a chord with audiences. He recalled staging a play called Pown Kunju in which even things like curriculum and schools are enacted by a character on stage. “Every place in Chennai has seen such plays, but now, there are no open spaces for us,” he says, “As theatre artists, we should not complain about change but look at ways of tackling it.”
Some of the solutions, they explained, were fostering campus theatre, promoting street theatre and taking Tamil theatre to the masses through the media. The session also saw Living Smile Vidya stagei a skit and talk about how transgenders can be part of the Tamil theatre movement.
