12,500th show & counting, record-breaking feat for Marathi theatre artist Prashant Damle

PUNE: On November 6, Prashant Damle (61) staged his 12,500th show in a career spanning 39 years but the veteran Marathi actor is not done yet.
Rather than rest on his laurels, Damle is keen to "sustain" his record-breaking performance and ensure that the audience gets their money's worth after paying to watch his plays.
Widely regarded as the superstar of Marathi theatre, Damle has come a long way since he started his career working backstage in the early 1980s.His name figures in the Limca Book of Records for staging the maximum number of theatre shows. Except for a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, Damle has staged his plays without any break since 1983.
The actor said that never for a single day did he feel demotivated because he turned his hobby of acting into a career. Despite getting decent offers, the lure of television or films never attracted him as the stage gave him an "opportunity to improve and learn from mistakes every single day". Not surprisingly, all his shows are booked till March 2023.
"It was never on my mind to stage the 12,500th show. It was about three months ago that I realised I was on the threshold of a landmark, so I decided to celebrate. But I never set any target. It just happened," he said.
Started with singing songs
Damle said that when he started working in dramas at the start of his career, his "role" was limited to singing songs for plays, so he thought he should instead work on his singing skills. Damle, at one point, sang 35 songs for Maharashtrachi Lokdhara, which, he said, further dented his chances as an actor. Then, he bagged the third lead in the highly popular drama, Moruchi Maushi, which set him on the path to glory.
"I was so prepared to treat theatre as a hobby that I had done all possible courses such as typing, accountancy etc. But some roles in films with great directors of that time came my way. Slowly, I got to choose what I wanted to play. I had some good experience behind me, all these helped me to take up my hobby as a career. There was no looking back since," said Damle.
He has played a variety of characters such as Moru, Madhav, Manya, Keshav, Pundalik, Baharupi, Raja, Falgunrao, among others, in 32 plays. Damle had set another record when he performed five shows at a stretch on a single day. "Soon after this marathon performance, I got a very bad throat. So much so that I could hardly speak, and it seemed that I would never get my voice back. It literally took me two to three years for my voice to become normal. I then decided that my health was most important and vowed not to continue with such experiments."
Running to packed house
Damle said the stage was always a big draw for him as only three shows were cancelled in his career, with the majority of them running to packed auditoriums. "At the beginning of my career, around 1983, I had 15 shows lined up three days at a stretch, all of them housefull. What more can an artist want?" said Damle.
By his own admission, he has slowed down in the last few years. Earlier, he used to stage around 60-70 shows a month, which has now come down to 30.
Damle said that even though he has a packed schedule till March 2023, it is a challenge to sustain the pace. "I just cannot just sit and bask in the glory of my 12,500th show. It is more important to sustain this performance and ensure that every single person who pays to watch my plays gets his/her money's worth."
"Staging 12,500 shows is not a joke and people still want to see him on stage. Sometimes, there are chances of overdose of an artist, but it is not so with Prashant. He will continue to perform and that shows how much the audience has accepted him," veteran actor Varsha Ujgaonkar said