Shreyas Talpade: Every theatre actor wishes to pay back

Shreyas Talpade

A few months into the lockdown last year, the idea for a dedicated platform for showcasing theatre started taking shape in actor Shreyas Talpade's mind. Conversations with theatre friends brought attention to the urgent need of helping the community through an initiative that would be concrete and long-lasting. At the same time, he felt the form's image itself needed a transformation. "Theatre has been unnecessarily intellectualised," says Talpade. "Theatre is, in fact, everything. Today, I feel web [shows] on OTTs are a great mix of theatre and film because we have the freedom to experiment and people are accepting these experiments," observes the actor, who felt that theatre needed to reach every household, so that more people could be exposed to its magic.

Talpade's own connection with theatre goes back to his school days when he performed regularly in various one-act and street plays and participated in competitions. He went on later, to have a long involvement with professional theatre, which continued till 2005, the year his film Iqbal got made. He has been a part of more than 3,000-odd stage shows in Marathi, Hindi and English, and remembers fondly the performances outside Prithvi Theatre, which functioned almost as rites of passage for young actors. "Whatever I am today is all thanks to theatre," he admits. "At some point, every theatre actor wishes to do something in return."

A still from Gujarati play Pause, available to watch on Nine Rasa

But, there was some early resistance from members of the Marathi theatre industry who, adamant in their belief that a theatre performance had to be a live, in-person event, opposed the pre-shot, recorded element that this format would necessarily involve. Talpade accepts that the immediacy of the live experience cannot be replicated, but also cites the example of cricket where a game is supposed to be enjoyed in the stadium with thousands of cheering fans, but is now watched on a large screen for a closer look even when one ends up going to the stadium. The game would not have enjoyed the status it does in our country, he remarks, if it hadn't been televised so widely. With theatre too, he believes, there is significant interest among people in the form. It is the compulsions in terms of time and place that have resulted in smaller audiences. "It's not that people don't want to watch plays. It's [that] people are not able to go and see them in auditoriums at that point in time," he notes. And this inadequate exposure has in turn created flawed perceptions about the form. It is precisely these limitations that Nine Rasa seeks to address with the help of technology. "Online theatre is the need of the hour," says the actor. "There is this whole new generation of millennials who should see what theatre is all about and if this is happening through their mobile screens, then so be it. It's about time theatre gets its due."

There were, of course, logistical challenges for Talpade and his team, who tried to get the project off the ground in the midst of restrictions last year, reading and shortlisting plays and then, October onwards, shooting in auditoriums with small crews and with necessary permissions and safety protocols. Communications with the platform's tech team, based in Israel, took place entirely over video calls, informs the actor, whose approach along with that of his associates was to take one day at a time. "That has been one of my driving philosophies in life," he says.

Nine Rasa, which was officially launched on April 9, has over 100 hours of original content and offers a variety of material to cater to different tastes - there are commercial and experimental full-length plays with known and fresh faces and in different languages, and also one-act plays, stand-up comedy routines, dance performances, and poetry and story readings. The platform (available at R59/month and R599/year) also plans to launch a "merchandising" feature in a few months that will make objects like handicrafts and paintings available on the platform. The idea behind this component was born out of the need to promote the arts, and especially the work of artisans and craftsmen who suffered great economic hardships in the past year.

Nine Rasa will also have a live feature where plays and interactions with performers will be livestreamed for audiences. Talpade speaks of the green room culture of theatre where people meet the actors after a performance. "This is so that they don't miss out on that novelty," he says.