When everything can be archived, then why not plays?

Have you ever wondered while watching a play, that this is the only time you can watch it, or maybe wait till the same theatre group comes to perform the same play in your city? Wouldn’t it be nice to somehow archive a play in such a manner that you can watch it whenever you want to? Cineplay as a concept has developed in the past year to address exactly that sentiment of the avid theatre-goer, seeking to preserve theatre and take it to a wider audience.Recently, two plays – Bombay Talkies and Adhe Adhure – were screened in the city. Yes, you read it right. Plays were screened like a movie, and not staged. The plot, the set and the dialogues, everything was that of a play, but it was not a live performance.
Theatre inspired by cinema Entrepreneur Subodh Maskara, the founder of this concept, says, “I’m neither from cinema nor from a theatre background. I thought about it when I was doing a play with my wife (Nandita Das). When I told other people, they all laughed, saying, ‘Isko kuch pata bhi hai?’ But now, Cineplay is getting a good response. It is basically theatre inspired by cinema. We have stories from theatre but we make it like cinema. In cinema, we shoot over a period of time and at various places. In theatre, everything happens live and at one go. But in Cineplay, we don’t necessarily shoot in a day. We shoot over a week and change the background. The actors are not loud here, unlike theatre.”
How Cineplay is different from cinema and plays Cineplay, which has some features of film and some of theatre, is in many ways different from them. Maskara says, “Film is much more realistic, in the sense that if a flat is being shown in the film, they will show a complete flat, the locality, etc. But here (in Cineplay) if we are talking about a flat or we are saying that this family lives in a flat, we will not show it. We will just show the room just like we do in plays. It has the theatricality of theatre and the experience of cinema. We do not change the script. Theatre mein silence nahi hota, films mein silence hota hai. So in Cineplays, there will be no silence.”
Plays can get subtitles now Maskara adds, “I was talking to Shabanaji and we were discussing how a play like Tumhari Amrita has no video available. Right now, I can’t see a Bangla play because I will not be able to understand it, but if it is in the Cineplay format at least, there will be subtitles available. It will take Indian plays to global audiences, which is not happening now. It will open up a lot more opportunities. The only thing that is not archived is theatre. Theatre ki koi archive rahegi toh it will be available for the future generation, even they can see the acting and sets. Currently, a play is watched by 500-600 people only, Cineplay will increase the reach of plays.”