Dramatic building

Back to those white-on-blue enamel boards. This building has two of them, both indicating institutions that have had a glorious run on the Madras stage. One of those, I shall save for another post, but this one, sadly, seems to have been relegated to a 'bit-part' these days.

The Sukrutha Lakshmi Vilasa Sabha (SLVS) is one-hundred-and-eleven years old this year. It has been operating from this building for sixty-seven of those years. In the early days of its existence, the raison d'etre of this Sabha was to compete with the Suguna Vilasa Sabha (SVS) in staging dramatic performances. Over the years, both organizations have had to struggle for existence. The SVS has fared a little better on that count, having morphed into a social club, while the SLVS seems to have last opened its doors a few years ago.

Maybe it wants to continue its association with the performing arts - that could be the reason why it hasn't moved out of this building, which once housed Madras' first ever cinema!

Premiere show

Just over a year ago, I had written about Madras' second cinema theatre. The first, by all accounts remained untraceable. Now, it appears that the city's first cinema hall is standing, still. The Broadway of the early 20th century was as much a bustling business district as it is a hundred years later. It was on this road that a certain Mrs Klug decided to try her hand at running a movie hall; rather a permanent movie hall. In the early days of motion pictures in India, the pictures as well as their exhibition spaces were both mobile, so the establishment of a fixed venue was in itself a novelty.

Very factually named, "Mrs. Klug's Biosocope" - "The Broadway Bioscope" or "The Bioscope" - opened for business sometime early in 1911. Although the permanency aspect was highlighted only much later, the crowds were eager to take in this new form of entertainment. The leading newspaper of those days - Madras Times - played a large role in establishing the 'permanency' of the exhibition hall, for that is essentially what it was. But was there ever a "Mrs. Klug"? Or was it some genius marketer, who used a nom de screen to convince folks that movies were something so respectable that a married woman could run it single-handedly? Considering that the Bioscope ran 'continuous shows' (something that Chennai has missed ever since Blue Diamond was razed) from 6pm to 11pm every day - last show starting at 9pm - it may well have been a way to assure potential moviegoers that they were getting into a respectable establishment! We may never know that, for Mrs. Klug's last show was sometime in October 1911 and there has been no news of her since.


Many of Chennai's history buffs have been unable to find the exact location of where Mrs. Klug had her Bioscope. A few months ago, Dr. Stephen Hughes, in an article in "The Hindu", points to enough evidence for it to have been operating from the first floor of this building, which is even today home to some long-standing institutions. Now, let us hope the structure does not crumble under the added weight of being the location of India's first ever permanent movie hall!

Curtain raiser

It is the newest of the city's concert spaces, but it is more than a just a stage. With a grand semi-circular frontage, Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall offers a great venue for performances. Within two years of being open to the public, it has become the venue of choice for not only concerts, but for art exhibitions and any kind of performance in general.

The superb acoustics of the hall are complemented by the excellent equipment. Comfy seats let you enjoy the performance without having to twist and turn for that correct positioning. And there is adequate space for parking - the advantage of being able to use the space of the Lady Andal School after hours.

And though I haven't had a chance to see one such yet, the hall has a provision for providing 'surtitles' - projected on the stage, above the performance space - to enable translations of plays into another language, should it be required!

Interior, day.

Well, it is not exactly the setting for a play, but it just gives you a sense of what the Museum Theatre looks like inside. It is quite a steep drop from the doors to the stage, giving you a sense of being in an amphitheatre of olden days. A big difference is that the hall is not really semi-circular, but more a deep horseshoe. It was built more for vocal expositions than for theatrics, which is probably why it was okay to have seats at 90-degree angle to the stage. In today's times, someone in that seat would miss out on almost every expression the actors convey, so there are always two wedges of empty seats along the sides.

The 'pit' is not really as well defined as the one in the Music Academy; in fact, it is non-existent, if I'm right. Now that I think about it, I realize I have no idea where the production crew, which would normally be in the pit, sits in this theatre. The space in front of the stage is filled with seats, almost up to the footlights. There are about a hundred seats there and those are the pricey ones; if you've opted for a cheaper ticket, the best thing to do is to rush in when the doors open and take your place somewhere just behind a railing which separates the 'front-benchers' from the rest.

For this event, there were no tickets - it was a quiz competition and everyone was trying hard to get into the front, so as to not miss a single pixel of the questions being projected - and during the break, one member of each team seems to have stayed behind to guard the hard-earned seating!

Beachside Drive-in

If this photo had been taken a few hours later, it would have been full of people. But at noon, there is really no reason for anyone to be crowding at the gates of Chennai's only drive-in theatre, considering that the first show is seven hours away. With the city's expansion, what was once a difficult-to-reach destination is now close enough for people to actually go and watch a movie out there. Despite that, Prarthana doesn't seem to be getting the bigger movies, having to make do with second-rung films or ones that are on their second wind.

It has been quite a while since I've been to a movie here, but memories of doing so are quite pleasant - except for the scramble to get into the gates. That's a test of patience and it takes a lot to curb roadrage when you see someone cut in front of you after you've crawled for about 20 minutes to cover the last half-kilometre to the gates. Inside, there is enough space; though I don't remember the actual capacity, I'm sure there's enough space for at least 75 cars - that's quite a lot of people, not including the 100 or so who, having come on their two wheelers, can sit at the back.

The complex also has a regular theatre - Aradhana. That's something I didn't know until very recently - haven't heard of anyone going all the way to Prarthana and then deciding not to do the drive-in bit!

Gambling place?

Well, you could hardly associate watching a movie at Casino with gambling of any kind. It was kind of taken for granted that if Casino is playing the movie, it would be completely paisa vasool (value for money). Of course, many of the movies used to be the Hollywood blockbusters - and it was thrilling to watch them at Casino.

But now, the hall can just about get by. There's hardly any parking for cars - the theatre was built in the days when Madras had a total of four-and-a-quarter automobiles or something, when the space in front of the cinema was good enough for them to come sweeping up and pick up those genteel folks who had finished watching a good motion picture. Sadly, it seems no one with a car goes to watch a movie at Casino any more!

Multiscreen opening

When it opened, thirty-seven years ago, it was one of the first public cinema theatres on Arcot Road. AVM's Rajeshwari was more of a preview theatre in those days, and Kamala Theatre filled the gap between Liberty Theatre and the studios at Vadapalani. With a capacity of almost a thousand seats, it was one of the better halls to watch a movie in; being at the edge of the movie industry's hub, there was also a chance of getting to see a star, too. The lobbies and the stairways used to be lined with all the industry bigwigs who had visited Kamala Theatre - actually, not just the bigwigs, there were photos of just about anyone. None of them had any signs, so it was a fun game to try and identify all the lesser lights of the industry, each time we went to see a movie there.

Filling a thousand seats, show after show is a huge challenge these days, and the hall is doing what it can to meet the challenge now. Even then, they are going with just one additional screen - with their plans of adding about 600 seats, the challenge of filling seats does not seem to have got any easier. Let us hope they continue to grace their walls with bits and pieces of Tamizh cinema history; that might yet prod me to go watch one (or two) more movies there!

Theatre time

It is a rather strange amalgam that can be found within the grounds of the Government Museum Complex at Egmore. Of course, there is good reason to place the Art Gallery and the Museum together. But why would anyone want to throw a library into the mix? And having done that, to further spice it up by having a theatre included? Surely, there are good answers to these; in the meantime, we will take another look at a building that despite not being the first theatre in Chennai, is the city's premier stage today.

The Museum Theatre was inaugurated in 1896, but has its roots in the late 18th century Public Assembly Rooms which were functioning on the same site as far back as 1789. Theatrical entertainment in those days were on the lines of Greek plays; tragedies, possibly not unlike the family tear-jerker TV soaps of today. By 1830, however, the Rooms were hardly used and the Government stepped in to purchase them, in order to house the Collector's cutcherry (no, it has nothing to do with dicing fruit, but indicates a concert!). With a few additions, that building grew into the Museum Theatre of today.

Watching a play here is quite an experience. Firstly, one needs to get in quickly or risk being condemned to the side - wing - seats from where the stage can be viewed only at a 70-degree angle. Of course, the option of buying pricier tickets and taking one's place in the rectangle just in front of the stage is always open. Another reason for leaping and charging into the theatre (apart from one's interest in drama) is that the seats are not numbered, so it is first-come-first-served. The acoustics are excellent and the stage is well proportioned and provided for; it is said that the roof over the stage has grooves through which cannonballs were rolled to simulate the effect of thunder - that must have shaken the audience in their seats! Together with the ambience, one will leave with the senses sated.

The experience does not end there, if one was watching the last show of the day. As the audience comes out, it notices that the lights all over the museum complex are switched off; the museum security has locked the complex down for the night and it is now an eerie challenge to get to the vehicle and find that solitary gate through which the outside world can be accessed!

Vacant lot

I don't remember the movie that I had gone to watch. But on the seats were fliers for Silver Sands, a resort on what is today the East Coast Road. My father told me that the resort was owned by the same family that owned the theatre and I remember thinking that there couldn't have been a more appropriately named family as the owners of one of the most splendid movie-halls of Madras. Were they always called that or did they get their name from the crowds that came to watch the movies? How could anyone not go to a theatre owned by a family named Veecumsee? The Safire Complex opened in 1964/5; it must have been a gala opening, with the big name "Cleopatra" (Richard Burton / Elizabeth Taylor) being shown on the first widescreen in the country. And the novelty of having two other theatres - Emerald & Blue Diamond - in the same building!

Safire was the true sparkler, showing grand movies, mainly English, but Hindi and Tamil as well, if the scale of the movie required it. Emerald was the 'janta' theatre, where the regular movies were shown. At a time when Safire's balcony seats were priced at Rs.2.90, Blue Diamond charged Rs.7 for its tickets. And the movies were sometimes unheard of, released in the festival circuit and largely ignored by both the regular movie goers and those discerning, appreciative film audience. For Blue Diamond catered to a completely different segment: the Rs.7 ticket allowed you entry anytime from 9.00 am (yes, AM!) and you could stay in the theatre watching the same film over and over again, until the last show ended around midnight. Without realizing what I was watching, I've been enthralled by Sergei Eisenstein's "Que Viva Mexico", but have also sat (repeatedly) through some horrendous duds. It was fun to go to Blue-D, but it was not something that you'd let parents know about!

The complex was pulled down nearly 15 years ago. Since then, this empty 1-acre lot reflects the emptiness any true Madrasi feels when s/he looks at it - the Safire Complex was such an object of pride and joy that it seems like nothing can ever take its place!

Bringing down the curtains

'The Hindu', Chennai's venerable newspaper, has been bringing an annual week-long theatre festival to the city for four years now. Normally the plays are all in English, but this year's opening was a Korean adaptation of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (with English surtitles), probably in acknowledgement of Chennai's large population of Korean expats. The other new feature this year was a play produced by the Fest, in collaboration with the Goethe Institut, which premiered on August 3.

Apart from the plays - which included productions from Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chandigarh and New York - the festival had a symposium on English Theatre in India, as well as a workshop on running a theatre company. Today is the last day of the festival; owing to a variety of reasons, I have not been able to watch even a single performance this year.

I therefore had to be content with going to the Sir Venkatsubba Rao Concert Hall to take pictures of these off-stage props!

Getting theatrical

There were - and still are - very few professional theatre people in Chennai. For quite a few in the vernacular theatre circuit, it is a hobby; for others, it is a step to the screen, big or small. Tamil cinema has been fed by stage actors for about 60 of its 75 years - it is only over the past decade that its dependence on the stage has reduced. Also, very few of the actors, once they have a toehold in the movies, come back to the stage. With all that, the lure of the Tamil stage has been diminishing.

As for English theatre, it was always seen as elitist; although the Madras Players, through more than 50 years of their existence have produced several Indian works (translated into English, of course), English theatre is restricted to a small group of fans. The Players, being mainly non-professional theatre folk, have had only a few shows of each of their 200-odd productions. Other groups - Masquerade, Boardwalkers, Little Theatre, Stagefright - have had short lives, or largely hibernating ones.

About 5 years ago, a couple of graduates from MICA decided that Chennai offers the greatest market potential for high quality entertainment providers. Going off the beaten path of advertising / market-research jobs, they set up their event management company here. In the space of 5 years, their company, Evam Entertainment, has captured the imagination of the city with some remarkable marketing efforts. Some of the things Evam has done has brought theatre closer to the people: for example, a public announcement, like the one in the picture, for theatre workshop registrations was unheard of a few years ago. But now, it gives me a chance to go and try out my dramatic skills - and having done so, chances are that I'll go to watch Evam's productions for at least a couple of years, even if I'm booted out of the workshop!