Even as celebrations are in order for IPTA Mumbai's time-honoured youth theatre competition, what with Bollywood hero Aamir Khan doubling the cash prize for winners at the completion, and an additional Rs 25,000 by theatre and film personality, Shabana Azmi for the best script, it still boils down to a rather poor show. More troubling is the crumbling festival, which appears to be clearly lacking in spirit and in vision.

Take any of the plays performed. Be it the backdrop of a venerable Brahmin, with diacritical notations, training a crow for the fullfilment of his friend's pind daan in Ruparel's KHWAAB SHISHE KE or in Dahanukar college's play, ICU, in which the protagonist is rummaging for stories and hope in his moribund life in the 'final waiting room' or even so Patkar college's KAGAZ KI KASHTI which highlights the contours of a little girl's conception of death.

Nearly all the acts succumbed to melodrama, loud acting, hackneyed plots and dated appearances with stale production values. Mihir Rajda who won the cash award for the best script and the additional cash award of Rs 25,000, makes one wonder - have we really no originality left? Is this really going to be the future of Mumbai's theatre? Scary. RISHTA WAHI SOCH NAI by Mithibai College was an out and out rip-off two popular on-going Gujarati plays by Ahmedabad-based playwright Saumya Joshi, who has become the new poster boy of the Gujarati commercial stage in Mumbai.

Are we so lacking in ideas that re-hash is our best option? Or is it a quick fix option that 'smart' theatre producers encourage and need? The closing acts of the finale were N M college's DAYEE-BAYEE and Nagindas Khandwala's SPEED LIMIT ZERO. Like the others, it sailed in the boat of homogeneity.

On the face of it, it may all seem to be an affair by bright and enthusiastic young people who must be encouraged. But scratch the surface, and there are very clear signs of numbness. Or perhaps it is all just a reflection of the conundrum that these young people have to struggle with. Especially in an India that has changed and is always so unpredictable. The microcosmic worlds that these young people have created on stage are actually far removed from their reality as it may be but yet in the hyper reality that they assume on stage, they ironically write (or act) the paradoxes that they come to live with.

The other thing that crushed any reasoning or creative juice in these plays was hyper-melodrama. While melodrama and a predilection for the sentimental are very familiar in our theatre, it is bizzare to counter them in these plays. Here is another instance of the hyper reality v/s the reality of these young people. The paradox burns brighter. Caught between identity of self and a larger collective identity (including the identity of theatre as espoused by an older generation that is both in denial and caught in a time capsule), these young people are doing the obvious and the gimmicky. But in their case especially, it all badly jars because you know that this just isn't their world.

'Social Messages', yet another of our bugbears but the one that we are most passionate about, and one for which we routinely turn self-righteous, do not do much for these plays either. In worse cases like the re-fried RISHTA WAHI SOCH NAI, the 'social message' takes the form of a caricatured statement, tuned to strike an emotional chord and to elicit the orchestrated claps.

The situation is exacerbated by the overriding influence of Bollywood and Primetime television dramas, not to mention the job industry that television has created. It seems to set the agenda. And not the other way around when theatre was a fodder for mass entertainment, not too long ago.

College competitions such as IPTA Mumbai's Inter-Collegiate Drama Competition (also referred to as ICDC) have a rich legacy. In the context of theatre in Mumbai, the ICDC and other inter-collegiate drama competitions have had a very important role to play by providing the initial platform that young theatre enthusiasts need. Many established and well-known actors, directors and writers in Mumbai can trace their beginnings to competitions such as, INT, Copwud, ICDC.

But today the ICDC is plodding along even as producers turn up to scout for talent. What was once fodder for originality and invention is now simply 'wannabe' with rumours of how one director has 'ghost-directed' most of the six plays in the finals this year. Certainly not a new phenomenon on the inter-collegiate drama circuit but it's no longer fresh and the capitulation is complete. There is a need (or, is there?) for re-imagining and re-visioning, if a possibility at all still exists for that. For it might as well be that the plot itself is lost.


*Akansha Krishnani has studied History of Art and Spanish Language and Literature from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. As part of her A Levels at Cambridge, she has also taken courses in Psychology, Sociology, and in English Language and Literature. She recently interned as an art dealer at The Guild Art Gallery in Colaba, Mumbai and enjoys writing about art and the theatre.