Assam’s mobile theatre face bleak future

The majority of the 30 mobile theatre teams in Assam could discover it tough to stage a comeback after virtually two years of closure on account of two phases of COVID-19 lockdown preceded by unrest related to the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests.

The Krishna Kanta Handique State Open University on July 9 organised a digital assembly of Bhramyoman (travelling theatre) producers, administrators and cultural financial system specialists, to discover a manner ahead for the mobile theatre teams crippled by months of inactivity.

The assembly coincided with the birthday of Achyut Lahkar who began the mobile theatre revolution by forming the Nataraj Theatre group in 1963.

“The Bhramyoman season from July to April suffered a bit towards the end of 2019-2020 before COVID-19 struck to keep those associated with the industry virtually unemployed. The situation does not look like improving soon, and because the investment is huge for a theatre group, 99% may not survive this phase,” actor and head of Awahan theatre group Prastuti Parashar stated.

“Given the popularity of mobile theatres across Assam’s rural landscape and the demand, we have to think of ways to stage plays while coexisting with COVID-19. Maybe we can cut down the audience size of 1,500-2,000 during normal times to 700-800 and increase the number of shows per day,” playwright-director Abhijit Bhattacharya, who has been related to the Bhramyoman for 25 years, stated.

Suresh Ranjan Goduka, a mass communication design researcher on the Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati, stated the annual turnover of the mobile theatre teams was ₹25 crore.

“Mobile theatre owners said materials such as bamboo, iron poles and fittings, timber and tarpaulin have been damaged or are unusable because of almost two years of inactivity. They will need to pump in ₹40 lakh-₹45 lakh more to be back on the road. It will be difficult unless there is some kind of assistance,” he stated.

Revenue sharing mannequin

Mobile theatres have had a singular mannequin of revenue-sharing with native committees of a village or a bunch of villages that host them for a substantial time period. Some committees pay the theatres upfront they usually get 40% of the revenue earned via tickets and related actions.

The hardest problem for the mobile theatre teams is to search out the technicians who deal with a variety of actions from organising the stage and makeshift theatre halls to cooking for the unit and transporting them from place to put.

“Each theatre group involves 120-150 people who get paid daily on the condition of no-work-no-pay. The challenge for the theatre groups is that many workers have either moved out in search of jobs or are selling perishables for a living,” Jayanta Kumar Sarma, professor of the college’s Mass Communication division, stated.

“Mobile theatres have withstood challenges from other forms of entertainment and gone from strength to strength. But COVID-19 may have dealt them a blow difficult to recover from,” the college’s Vice-Chancellor Kandarpa Das stated.