BENGALURU: An increase in number of shows, national and international acclaim, and new performance spaces brought cheer to comic and theatre artistes, as well as musicians in 2018. But several issues such as ban on live music, lack of enthusiastic community and financial issues continues to daunt them. City artistes, however, remain hopeful of the year to come, finds Tania Thomas
Despite the live music ban,2018 was a breakthrough year for independent bands
Bengaluru’s music scene the past year has been synonymous with the hullabaloo that was created around banning of live music performances. Even though the restriction did impact many performance spaces, and in turn bands that rely on these gigs, there were many independent musicians who got national and even international acclaim this year.
Project Mishram is one such band that is getting ready for an international music festival, UK Tech-Fest, a four-day festival to be held in July 2019. Lead vocalist of the band Shivraj Natraj, said, “Bengaluru has a good crowd, with a considerable number listening to all genres of music. The city also has a growing number of jam rooms where we can practice. A lot of us have day jobs and these spaces give us a chance to meet, experiment and play music. With the coming festival, the graph looks positive. We’re getting a good number of shows that will be lined up.”
Perfect Strangers set another milestone for independent musicians of the city. The band recently won the first place at the Hornbill International Rock Festival in Nagaland. This is the first time in eight years that a band from Bengaluru has bagged this award. With this they have also won themselves an opportunity to play at Vrocks, a music festival in Russia.
Talking about their accomplishments as a band this year, Raphael Emileena, lead vocalist of the band said, “We have seen great success throughout 2018, thanks to the people of Bengaluru. We were able to launch our album A Strange Connection which garnered a great response from all parts of the world, much to our surprise. Now we’re ready to release our third video, Blow Up Doll on January 12.”
“As far as 2019 is concerned, we are looking forward to more gigs, hoping that we will be allowed to perform in venues in the city. Definitely looking forward to the release of more albums from Indie artistes. Our wish for 2019 would be for more unity within the Indie community so we can promote each other’s music to reach larger audiences. At the end of the day, that’s all we really want – for more people to hear what we make,” added Emileena.
Comic fraternity highlights work,attempts to bring in self-sustainability
This year has been promising for comic artistes. For starters, the indie comics festival was held for the first time in the city, along with seven other cities in the country.Amitabh Kumar, one of the organisers of the indie comics festivals held this year, said, “This has been a landmark year for comic artists. We had a comic festival, comic courtyard and Citrus fest, which was held at Shrishti.
What we learnt was that, not only can content be independently sourced, but experiences can be independently made.” Kumar added that more than a big budget, one needs a community to create these platforms. “The form promotes an independent approach to seeking a vision of a larger culture, or a sub-culture at the very least. It’s zero-budget, self-sustained and it allows for a larger platform, where people invested in arts and can express themselves,” he said.
According to Kumar, 2019 seems to be an exciting year for comic artists. “In order for a culture to sustain itself we need to take back a lot of positivity from the recent success of the festivals. There are existing cultures, where comics are the popular culture form. There is no reason we can’t create programmes to sensitise comics. Be it in workshops, readings, pop up-up evenings, etc.”
Appupen, a comic artist and graphic novelist from the city, feels the success of these festivals should be taken with a pinch of salt. He is of the opinion that, even though this is a start, there’s a long way to go in making this a self-sustaining, viable art form for independent artists. “When I go out of Bengaluru, I hear that the scene in the city is happening, which gives me the feeling that elsewhere, nothing is happening. It’s good that indie comic festivals and new creators have come up this year. We’ll have to see whether they stick to it,” he said.
Theatre artistes hope for a stronger community in 2019
Unlike the comic and music scenes, in theatre, however, veteran theatre artiste Jagdish Raja is of the opinion that participation has been low.He said, “We need to establish a community spirit in theatre. The ultimatum would be if a group of people come and say, ‘We’d like to put up a play.’ Whether that spirit will come out in 2019, we don’t know.”
Talking about the response for plays in Jagriti this year, Raja said, “We got 40-50 people for one of the plays. This, despite there being a good actor who was playing the lead. The weekend before that, we had a children’s play, Manya, which saw a good crowd. However, if we had Naseeruddin Shah in the lead, we would have a full house. People want to see well-known faces.”
Ashish Sen, a veteran theatre artiste, has however, seen some positive growth in theatre. He said, “We’ve seen more and more original work. Whether it was Ram Ganesh’s The Ultimate Kurukshetra, or JK Jayaram’s Costume Party. Over the years, we have seen more intimate theatre spaces like Shoonya. The third area of optimism is cross collaborations. You’re getting influences from Germany coming and working in not just theatre, but in the arts in Bengaluru. I think 2019 will move in that direction.”
“On the flip side, we also need to look at two things. For any aspect of the arts to flourish, we need a community and I think that is an area of concern. Theatre is being challenged by other media. There are various groups that are trying different ways to sustain people for plays. We do have more auditoriums, which cater to smaller audiences. But there’s the challenge of audiences filling up the seats. Despite this, there has been some experimental work undertaken by the new production houses, like Lebeda Productions that has staged plays like Kamala and The Pied Pipress. The second concern is that, there has been so much emphasis given to physical theatre, which is good, but this sometimes comes at the expense of the word. The rendering of the word is a very powerful component in theatre. I think that is something theatre practitioners need to address too,” he added.