The Stage Is Calling Us Back — And This Time, We’re Listening

Theatre in India is inconvenient because it demands a kind of patience that most people have long abandoned. It survives mostly on unpaid labour, personal savings, and the stubbornness of people who refuse to shut up. It requires you to rehearse in rooms without ventilation, to convince friends to buy tickets, to perform to audiences that sometimes show up out of politeness, sometimes out of curiosity, and often not at all. There’s nothing aspirational about it. If anything, theatre is the opposite of what the country is obsessed with today: speed, scale, comfort, virality, shortcuts.

And yet, despite all of that, it refuses to disappear.

In a cultural moment where every artistic impulse is expected to become a brand strategy, a marketing asset, or viral content, theatre remains defiantly unmanageable. It cannot be compressed into a reel, edited into perfection, or distributed through algorithms. It cannot be scaled or monetised without losing the essential reason people return to it. There is no spotlight bright enough to disguise exhaustion, no applause track to cushion failure, no camera angle to correct a shaky breath. It invites questions no young artist wants to hear: “How long are you planning to do this?”, “Is there any future in it?”, “When will you do something real?” Maybe that is precisely why the people who stay are remarkable.

They are not driven by fame, nor are they waiting for a cinematic breakthrough. They do not arrive here because it looks impressive on social media. They remain because there is something in the form that cannot be found anywhere else — a rawness that resists polishing, a human truth that collapses under editing, a kind of emotional honesty that can only exist when nothing protects you from silence. Theatre is where performers and audiences agree to breathe the same air, carry the same tension, and share a moment that will never happen again in the same way. It is where stories are allowed to be fragile, where mistakes can become revelations, and where vulnerability refuses to hide. 

What is happening in India right now is not a revival or a renaissance framed in optimistic language. It is survival driven by conviction. It is persistence against economic and cultural gravity. It is a quiet revolution powered by artists who have realised that truth needs a stage, not a screen. And perhaps, beneath the noise of everything faster, louder, and shinier around us, theatre is becoming the last remaining space in the country where people still speak without waiting to be recorded. 

The scale of this resurgence becomes visible when one looks at the artists who have returned to the stage after years of work on film and OTT platforms, not because theatre is fashionable but because it is necessary. Amol Parashar’s solo production Besharam Aadmi, a piece he describes as a deeply personal excavation disguised within humour, has travelled across Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Bengaluru, performing in intimate rooms where audience and performer share a pulse. He speaks about his return with a clarity that dismantles any romanticism around the process.

“The actor in me was born on stage,” he says, remembering years before the screen claimed him. “I came to Mumbai only to do theatre. After countless plays, I became jaded, and just when screen work took off, I moved away. A decade later, I wanted to go back to my origin story, and I wanted to use my free time creatively, because as actors we spend so many months waiting: waiting for scripts, meetings, approvals, even waiting for the sun to set just right. I wanted to use that time to create something I could own and control.”

He describes the stage as something stripped of safety nets, where the simplicity of structure forces a complexity of experience. “Technically, theatre doesn’t need much — an actor, a stage, an audience — but emotionally it demands everything. It demands that you show up now with whatever truth you have. On stage, I prove to myself what I am capable of. It is terrifying for the mind, but it is fantastic for the soul.”

The performance space today is no longer reserved for loyal audiences in traditional proscenium theatres. Amol has witnessed a striking shift in how people, especially younger viewers, engage with live storytelling. “People are far more emotionally literate than we give them credit for. In every city the laughs land in different places, the silences stretch differently, but their ability to smell honesty does not change. Many young people come to my shows having never seen a live performance before, and they get a taste of what it can feel like. They do not care if it is stand-up, theatre, storytelling, real or fiction, as long as the seventy-five minutes are alive and meaningful. Mistakes become souvenirs.” The rawness that comes with immediacy, he insists, has created an intimacy that screen cannot reproduce. There is no editing room, no second take, no filter, no algorithm. Only breath, risk, and the trembling exchange of faith.

That urgency is echoed by Shweta Tripathi, whose production of the play Cock — the Indian staging of Mike Bartlett’s acclaimed text — opened with sold-out shows in Delhi and Mumbai earlier this year. Shweta did not take the stage herself, but chose instead to produce the work and hold the weight of its vulnerability from behind the scenes. She speaks about the play in a way that tells you it altered her relationship to storytelling: “I was drawn to Cock because it holds up a mirror to the emotional chaos we quietly carry — the confusion, the desire to belong, the pressure to choose a single identity when life is far more fluid. At a time when labels are getting louder, this play reminds us that human beings are bigger than boxes.” She calls theatre a space that allows discomfort without fear and softness without apology. “Conversations around identity and love are evolving every day, but empathy isn’t always catching up. Theatre gives us space to sit with those feelings without judgement.”

What surprised Shweta most was how personally audiences responded, especially those who arrived expecting intellectual discourse and left instead having experienced something intensely intimate. “People didn’t just watch Cock — they recognised themselves in it. They told us the play made them reflect on their own relationships, choices and fears. Even through discomfort, the humour landed and opened hearts instead of shutting them down. The tenderness with which audiences received it reaffirmed that vulnerability on stage creates vulnerability in the room.” It is the kind of revelation that changes a creative life.

“I see a hunger to reconnect with storytelling in its purest form. Film and OTT actors aren’t returning to theatre so much as remembering their roots. There is an authenticity and discipline that grounds us again. I hope this revival leads to more cross-pollination, where we’re not boxed into being just ‘film actors’ or ‘stage actors’.”

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If Shweta and Amol speak from a place of rediscovery, Atul Kumar speaks from the authority of decades. A pioneer of contemporary Indian theatre whose practice has been shaped by Kathakali, Kalaripayattu, puppetry and visual theatre across India and Europe, he has witnessed shifts that extend far beyond the seasonal enthusiasm of audiences. He believes the energy right now is propelled by young people building new structures outside old gatekeeping systems.

“New spaces are opening everywhere. Young people are hungry, they push their teachers, they challenge their instructors, they are not easily satisfied. Two friends get together, they make a play, and suddenly there are posters across every café in the neighbourhood. These tiny theatres in Mumbai, especially in Aram Nagar, have changed the game. They no longer have to wait for dates at big theatres.”

He sees the resurgence as partly shaped by collective grief and collective isolation. “It is sad that it often takes calamity for people to realise the importance of coming together. But live arts become one of the reasons to gather, to share, to feel catharsis. Since 2021 I have seen a surge, more people studying theatre, more experiments, more collaboration. I hope the government understands the urgency and includes theatre in education so it becomes part of the fabric of daily life.” He ends with a reflection that rings like a quiet challenge: “Why is going to the theatre not on our grocery list every month? Why is money not kept aside for it, like Maharashtrians and Gujaratis do?”

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The shift is not only geographical or generational; it is also formal. One of the most radical directions emerges from documentary theatre, shaped in India through the work of Anuja Ghosalkar, founder of Drama Queen, whose practice dismantles traditional binaries between fiction and truth, performer and archive. She describes her form not as realism, but as interrogation.

“What draws me to documentary theatre is that we move away from playing characters and real people come on stage to tell their stories, not naively or earnestly, but through the idea of the document. A document is not unidimensional — it can be a photograph, a sound piece, a gesture. We create layers of material, sometimes even fictional material, to uncover what history leaves out.” She refuses the assumption that truth is a clean or objective entity. “I use fiction to throw light on what history erases. It is a constant interplay between fiction and fact — and meaning comes from the seams, from how theatre is made, distributed and owned.”

Anuja’s audience has changed radically since she began ten years ago. “When I showed ‘Lady Anandi’ in 2017, people asked ‘where is the plot?’ ‘who is the character?’ Now documentary theatre has become much more accepted, partly because the pandemic flattened conventional theatre structures. We did plays on Zoom and in virtual reality. Audiences became more open, more experimental, more curious. They were willing to ask difficult questions along with us.” Her emphasis on archives extends beyond art into politics. “The ethical question around archives is urgent: who gets to have a voice? Institutional archives often withhold access and shape history to serve power. As an artist I have to intervene, misbehave, infiltrate. When it comes to personal archives, the terms of engagement must be clear, there must be trust, consent, mutual clarity. But I cannot remain safe. Brave work requires discomfort.”

While these artists shape new frameworks, younger performers articulate why theatre still matters for those growing up in an India built on screens and speed. Lauren Robinson aka Toto, known from the Netflix serie Mismatched and for their work in queer theatre, describes theatre as the foundation that taught them rigour and generosity.

“Theatre gave me my discipline and my softness at the same time. Showing up on time, warming up, reading lines with co-actors — all of it became a ritual of respect. I journal as my character, I work with breath and movement, I arrive early to touch the space and understand its architecture. It trained me to stay alive to the moment.” 

They describe the difference between performing in close proximity to an audience and working with the camera. “Onstage your entire body is visible, your voice and breath are in dialogue with the room. The presence of the audience changes the energy of the performance. That real-time communion doesn’t exist on camera.” They speak about performing queer tenderness in Jhumkewali, set in the 1970s. “Holding that softness in front of a live audience felt quietly radical. Young people responded with so much emotional generosity that I felt the hunger for narratives that widen our imagination of love and freedom.”

Niharika Lyra Dutt, known for Paatal Lok and Call Me Bae, carries an emotional ferocity for theatre that feels almost devotional. “I fell in love with the craft before I knew it was a craft. Theatre makes me feel alive in a way nothing else does. You are aware of each pore in your body, you feel the fullness of emotion and express it with everything you have. Once the curtains go up there is no retake, it is now or never. I love those stakes.” She emphasises the community built around performance, shaped by years of rehearsals, grief and resilience. “When I was travelling with ‘Taking Sides’ while grieving the loss of someone I loved, this troupe held me through it. They understood the depth of grief because theatre deals with matters of the heart. Being alive on stage helped me navigate pain.” She also reflects on the symbiotic growth between stage and screen.

“The camera doesn’t allow you to lie. It taught me to seek the kernel of truth onstage. Theatre grounds me and film sharpens me, and each feeds the other in ways I cannot compute.”

The plurality of theatre becomes even richer when seen through youth voices. Vedika Rohira and Priyanka, both twenty-year-old students from Jai Hind College Mumbai, articulate the emotional architecture of discovering a stage that feels like purpose. For Priyanka, the first time an auditorium of five hundred rose to applause on her eighteenth birthday, with her mother in tears in the audience, became the moment she realised theatre was not extracurricular but identity.

“I do not remember grades or marks. All I remember is how it felt to stand in front of hundreds of people, to speak lines I had added myself, to look through a tiny hole backstage and see the entire theatre full. That feeling was so powerful I knew it would stay with me forever.”

Vedika describes theatre as a space that allowed her to break cycles of fear. “Theatre was not just about acting. It was about saying things in front of everyone that I could never say in real life. It was my way of breaking patterns I was stuck inside. There are no retakes. It is the moment, the scene, and the end. I want people to respect that.”

Young working performers echo the same fire. Pritesh Acharya, a theatre artist from Ahmedabad, describes theatre as a biological necessity. “We have an inherent need for expression, movement, and emotional experience. Theatre fulfils that without dependence on machines. It gives attention, recognition, and human connection. Money is unstable, but everything else is rich. Anyone who has tasted theatre carries it in their existence forever.” And the Mumbai-based duo behind Tadgola describe theatre as the currency of validation and improvisation.

“The instant gratification of someone laughing at a joke the moment you crack it, while you are still in character, is something only theatre can give. The ability to improvise changes everything — it will never happen the same way again. That rawness is what brings me back.”

The form is evolving both politically and structurally. Filmmaker Tanmaya Shekhar and actor Molshri, creators of the film Nukkad Natak, speak about the enduring power of street theatre rooted in activism. Tanmaya believes the medium can reach audiences who did not set out to consume art. “On the street, you reach people who are going to shop or take a bus and they stop to watch. That is the power of Nukkad Natak — the point is to fight social injustice and change hearts and minds. It does not become preachy if it is woven through performance.” Molshri remembers college street theatre as a training ground for courage. “You have to be loud and unapologetic. It reflected in our personalities. It made us socially aware and unafraid to protest. And now live performances in Mumbai feel empowering for the youth — we need that courage.”

Standing at the intersection of all these voices, what emerges is not a neat thesis but a restless truth: theatre in India is no longer a legacy form preserved by loyalty, nor is it a niche artistic curiosity buried beneath cinema. It is a living organism reshaping itself through grief, through rebellion, through tenderness, through experimentation, through the refusal to remain quiet in a time when quiet is convenient. It is art that asks you to show up, to stay awake, to feel something fully, and to carry it with you into the world outside the doors of a darkened room. It is a reminder that stories are not passive consumption; they are encounters.

People are returning because theatre is real in a way the world is forgetting how to be.

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