Sailing through with a little help from social media

Theatre artistes talk about how they’re grappling with the current lockdown

As the world grapples with the mysterious coronavirus, people from all walks of life are trying to sustain themselves and their respective avenues. So, what could an artiste do in such a scenario? Theatre artistes have taken it upon themselves to put up live performances from their homes through their individual social media accounts. We speak to them to find out more.

Denzil Smith, Actor-producer

I think bringing the whole live experience through social media to people is wonderful. Of course, it’s not going to be the same experience like sitting in a theatre. I read out letters, journal entries and a short story by three authors, Dom Moraes, James Joyce and Sherwood Anderson, for my performance. Most of it revolved around love and lust, and I picked the subjects and the stories myself. I picked them for their lyrical honesty and it was a dramatised reading. So, some are doing performances, some like me are doing solo readings. I guess that is what we can do in these times. For now, until the norms are relaxed, it makes sense.

Sheena Khalid, writer-director

It’s not like we are trying to replace the stage by going live on social media. We are just using the medium to experiment. We have a bunch of characters from our show The Gentleman’s Club. When we were developing it, there were some that didn’t make it to the final show. So, we are just going to put those characters on an Instagram live and have them interact with the audiences. Personally, I think, because we are all stuck in our houses, this is just another avenue to generate content.

Rasika Agashe, director-performer

Me and my husband, Zeeshan (Ayub Khan; actor) were doing little video sketches and putting them up on YouTube, as we were sitting idle at home due to the lockdown. However, I had never gone live before so when my performance happened, I was freaking out. I was tensed about the connections. These things don’t really occur to you when you are performing on stage. But it went well. Going live online is fun but i don’t think it is a medium through which money could be generated. For my performance, I read poems of women writers such as Amrita Pritam, Fahmida Riaz and Quratulain Haider.