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Ashwin Gidwani talks on corporatising theatre, without diluting its essence
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In focus Ashwin Gidwani does not feel money is an issue with theatre
Later this year, a theatre production based on Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist” and a dark musical based on Suketu Mehta’s “Maximum City” will tour India.At the helm of the affairs, identifying and buying rights of n
ational and international productions, is Ashwin Gidwani. “We’ve taken Mahesh Dattani’s comedy ‘Mad About Money’ and its Hindi version ‘Arre! Mad About Money’ to several cities in India and other countries. In Britain, we had seven shows in eight days,” he says. His productions like “Funny Thing Called Love”, “Funny Business” and the children theatre production “Punch-a-Tantra” have mixed theatre with commerce and speak of a success story.
Ashwin, unlike most of his contemporaries, does not cite money as an issue for theatre.
“We get all the funding and then we do the job. It doesn’t work the other way for us. Theatre, in general, lacks funds; so we created unique models for corporates to invest and use new ideologies to drive theatre across India. We aren’t talking of 17 cities in India but also 18 countries around the world,” he says. For example, ‘Punch-a-Tantra’ had 71 shows in 22 cities of England.
“Some of our English plays have been staged in Britain to a predominant British Asian audience. The process was back-breaking but wonderful,” he recalls.
He entered theatre by accident, he reminisces. “I was looking to pursue higher studies in the US before I started working with UTV. I worked with Ronnie Screwvala for his theatre division and handled the production of five plays apart from overseeing 3,000 events. I wasn’t enjoying events and focused on theatre.
Around 10 years of producing Bharat Dabolkar’s comedies helped me learn to balance theatre and commerce. After this, I started my production house.”
He feels the need for theatre to evolve like cinema did. “People want to see innovative entertainment,” he says. At the same time, he’s clear there is no room for dilution. “We don’t take actors from television and cinema who have no experience in theatre. Some of the forthcoming plays have actors like Sandhya Mridul, Mahesh Manjrekar, Tisca Chopra and Sudha Chandran among others, all of whom are experienced theatre artistes,” he asserts.
With 21 productions in the pipeline, he’s also in talks with NASSCOM to use theatre as a form of Corporate Social Responsibility.
If he’s brought the rights for “The Alchemist” in Hindi, Gujarati and Marati apart from English, he also wants to popularise dual-language theatre.
“For instance, ‘Double Deal’ with Sandhya and Mahesh will be staged both in Hindi and English in Hyderabad, tentatively in April,” he says.
SANGEETHA DEVI DUNDOO
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