The Company Theatre completes two decades this year. All these years have amounted to something..to creating, to living and dreaming and moving on from one milestone to another. To a body of work and a repertoire that speaks of reinvention of not just theatre and entrenched ideas but of self. It could not have been easy to have come this far. But that a dream not just survived but is still living itself is incredibly inspiring. Atul Kumar.. actor, director and prime mover of The Company Theatre answers a few questions..as always without any loud bluster and with a sense of purpose and warm humility that we have come to associate with him.
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What has kept this dream going for 20 years..what have you learnt and unlearnt?
Frankly, it’s the only thing I know how to do. Or trying to do at least. I think when you have given yourself to artistic pursuits, the path itself is the dream , there are no real goals, there are just landmarks as you go along, the journey never ends, it should never end.
One must re-invent oneself again and again.
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How important it is to work with like minded people?
Not at all- I really believe in working with people with different minds, different ideas, different viewpoints. I think it is boring to work with like minded people again and again all your life. It’s only out of constructive arguments, fights and disagreements that new things evolve, it’s only out of variety and diversity that magic in the arts is created.
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Theatre in India is still looked at as an impossible success story..what made yours financially viable and creatively fulfilling and uncompromised at the same time?
Did it? Ha? We are still hand to mouth. We have no public or private grant. We have no corpus. We have no benefactors. Our bank account is zero every month end. The only thing is that now we don’t pump in our own money-the shows take care of themselves. We pay our artists handsomely. We still cannot survive just doing theatre. But I am sure it will change. Theatre has
survived every threat over time in history or arts and it will.. come what may.
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Share some challenges, milestones and the future map…
We we need financial support for building our project further (phase 2 and 3) at Kamshet where we want to create a flourishing theatre residency. Other than that creatively we believe in never charting out a programme, we just go with the flow- a spark may trigger off a new show, or we may do nothing for the whole of the rest of the year and just keep running shows. But yes, the journey, never ends.
Join The Company Theatre on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thecompanytheatre/..for more updates.
Join the celebrations and watch The Company Theatre‘s production of Piya Behrupiya, the uproarious interpretation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at Bangalore’s Ranga Shankara
4th & 5th Oct, Fri-Sat at 7:30 pm
6th Oct, Sun at 3:30pm and 7:30 pm
Tickets- www.bookmyshow.com
Tele-Bookings- 09820192778