It’s time for all play and no work Deepa Gahlot takes a close look at the annual Prithvi Theatre Festival

The annual Prithvi Theatre Festival is an event to look forward to in any case, but when it also coincides with the 25th anniversary of the theatre, there is a dash of extra excitement to the celebrations.

Twenty-five years ago, on November 5, 1978, Prithvi Theatre had been inaugurated with a minimum of fuss and hardly any media racket with a performance of G P Deshpande’s Uddhwasta Dharmashala by the Mumbai group Majma, started by a group of National School of Drama graduates, including Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah. (Shah’s production of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet will be the closing show of this festival, if it is ready by then.)

Now supporters like Orange and ICICI bank help Sanjna Kapoor (who said tongue-in-cheek that they have a Faustian tendency of taking away the souls of the people who associate with them) and her band of dedicated volunteers put together a festival (November 1-12) that gives Mumbai audiences a glimpse of the Theatre of India. As Divya Bhatia, who has been co-director or many a past festival says, if anyone can manage to watch all the plays, it will give them an idea of what Indian theatre is about.

Planning for this festival started almost three years ago, when Divya and others travelled all over the country to select “quality theatre.” Groups from several states, plays in many languages and styles and other venues — school halls, the Carter Road Promenade, Horniman Circle Garden and even a Juhu disco Razzberry Rhinoceros selected to spread the excitement all around.


Besides the regular plays – some old favorites (like Macchindra Kambli’s Vastraharan and Manoj Shah’s Master Phoolmani, some reworked for the festival (like Veenapani Chawla’s Brhannala and Maya Rao’s A Deeper Fried Jam), there will be platform performances, street theatre, workshops, discussions and interactive sessions with theatre practitioners.

Twenty-five years is a long time for a theatre to survive without compromising on its original aim of promoting good theatre in the city.

Today, if it is impossible to imagine Mumbai’s cultural scene without Prithvi Theatre, we have Shashi and Jennifer Kapoor to thank, who built this little gem of a theatre to fulfill the dream of Prithviraj Kapoor and Geoffrey Kendal, who gave their lives to theatre.