Film production houses make stage debut

Chillu certainly has the trappings of any big budget box office release the backing of a major production house, intriguing posters splattered around the city, posters released by Kamal Haasan, a “trailer“ released by actor
Vijay Sethupathi, and a red carpet release. Except it isn't running in a theatre near you, but at Narada Gana Sabha.
Tamil play `Chillu' (meaning computer chip), which “released“ on Thursday , and will run till Sunday, marks the stage “debut“ of movie production and distribution company Sri Thenandal Films, which has produced more than 75 films, including hit more than 75 films, including hits like `DeMonte Colony', `Muni', and `Kalpana'.
“For a while now we have wanted to do a major stage production and give Tamil theatre a bigger and wider audience,“ says Hema Rukmani, producer at Thenandal Films, and producer of the play .
“Even though it's a stage show, we have realized you still need cinema to lure in the crowds and create hype,“ says Rukmani.
After its staging in Chennai, the sci-fi drama, created on a budget of a “lot more“ than Rs 15 lakh ­ making it among the biggest budgeted Tamil stage productions ­ will travel to the US for a show in November.
The production house will be following up the `Chillu' release with another big budget musical set to hit the stage next week ­ `Pattanithal Bhootham', written and scored by composer Karthik Raaja, the son of composer Illayaraja. The production, inspired by the story of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, has film lyricist Pa Vijay working on the dialogues, and has Dolby sound, apparently a first for a live show in India.
In terms of budgets, the Thenandal productions may be the largest (most Tamil plays are produced on budgets of a couple of lakhs of rupees), but they are not the first production houses to get into theatre.
In 2013, a year before his death, director K Balachander produced two Tamil plays, which he called his “comeback“ to theatre, the medium with which he had started his career. His productions, `Pournami' and `Oru Koodai Paasam', were low-budget and belonged to his genre of filmmaking, which was all about emotions, says daughter Pushpa Kandaswamy .
In 2010, English theatre group Evam presented Alfred Hitchcock's `The 39 Steps' backed by television house Radaan Media.The play was staged across India, winning several awards for the group. “Having the backing of a large movie or TV group helps you dream bigger.You can scale up on every level ­ from production, to advertising and pro motion,“ says Evam's Sunil Vishnu K.
“Radaan wanted to get into the live enter tainment space at the time, and for us it meant we could better the production in many ways,“ he says.
“It is difficult to find sponsors for Tamil plays and even though Era Murugan, who wrote the dialogues for movies like Billa 2, wrote the script for Chillu I could not find people to back the production. That was when I approached Thenandal,“ says the play's director Dheepa Ramanujam, who has worked with theatre group Shraddha on the production. “For `Chillu', because of the bigger budget that the Thenandal back ing gave, we could rope in bigger names to work on the production. For instance, we have Selva Kumar, who did the sets for the Tamil film `Madrasapattinam', doing our sets,“ says Ramanujam. She adds that the play also has actors from `De Monte Colony'.