It’s a weekend-long affair in Rangashankara as Akarsh Khurana’s Akvarious Productions brings their latest edition of the Akvarious Microfest to namma uru. Admittedly, their favourite destination outside their home ground, Mumbai — Bengaluru, gears up to witness a variety of live, on-stage performances and interactive sessions about the performing arts that are both entertaining and enriching. Known for his contributions to both Bollywood projects and theatre alike, writer-director Akarsh Khurana sits down for a chat with us about two new Bengaluru premieres, the evolution of theatre in India, love for the artform and lots more.
What makes this edition of the Akvarious Microfest a standout one? What can we expect this year?
This is our 25th year as a production company. One of the things that we wanted to do was to have a seven-day festival in Mumbai, which is at the Prithvi Theatre during December. But before that, we wanted to do this concept called Microfest. We’re bringing three plays down to your city. Two of them are Bengaluru premieres (Tiki Taka and External Affairs). The F Word has been staged in Bengaluru twice already and has done quite well. Additionally, we have a music jam session and a voice workshop and this thing called backstage chats, which will basically have 30-minute conversations with four people who are chosen from different fields like acting, directing, producing and writing.
Can you set up the two new Bengaluru premieres for us?
Tiki Taka is actually a play set in the world of Indian football. My brother, who has directed the play, is actually a very big football fan. He’s always wanted to do a play that was based on the world of sport and the state of Indian football is not the best. So, he wanted to do a play which was more about the politics and the interpersonal relationships between people who play the sport and egos and money begin to come in the way of the love for the sport. Somewhere, the purity of the game that you once loved is beginning to come into question. External Affairs is a popular play that’s just a comedy about dating in the modern world. It’s about how dating has become much more about other things; it has become so much more transactional. It’s affected by social media and the world. Thematically, it’s also about something which is losing its purity.
Are there any essential prerequisites to make it work in theatre?
I think, the good thing is that there are no rules, formulas or prerequisites that you need to have, because theatre is such a dynamic medium. You could have done 150 shows, but you’re still learning. But having said that, I have come to learn over the last 25 years that there are two essential things that people need to do if they want to be a part of theatre. One is that you have to watch the theatre. You should be watching every possible play that you can get tickets to. You might not enjoy all of them. But, at least that way, you’ll realise what you don’t want to do. The second thing is, you’ve got to be in love with the form and do it out of pure passion. Unfortunately, the theatre industry in India is not a very lucrative one. It’s not paying you as well as other work. So, at the end of the day, it has to be driven by passion. And you can only love the form if you consume that form.
After 25 years of being in the industry, how do you feel the theatre scene in India has evolved?
To start with, we’ve found that Bengaluru is among our favourite audiences in the country, they are very evolved. And our history has shown that a lot of our plays have actually had their longest runs in Bengaluru. You can kind of keep running stuff in Mumbai, but going back outstation again and again and managing to get audiences — Bengaluru is one of the rare places where we can actually do that. We are now cultivating Pune and Delhi too. But, I think, that in the larger picture in the theatre — two things have happened: One is that audiences have grown. Theatre, once upon a time, used to be looked upon as very intellectual and highbrow. I think, that now, theatre is a lot more accessible to everyone. Secondly, I think a lot of younger audiences have started coming to watch plays.