CHENNAI: Opening a cultural space without funding from big patrons is a leap into the unknown. To have done so in the midst of a pandemic would be purely suicidal. Or at least, that’s what B Charles was told when he opened Medai in Alwarpet, a year ago. Still, he pursued his dream project. Come October 30, Medai successfully completes a year, and is now one of the city’s go-to weekend hubs.
Charles opened his 150-seater black box theatre at a time when the dust had just settled after a devastating second wave of COVID-19, and spaces like theatres and auditoriums had to function at 50 per cent seating capacity. Barely three months after he’d begun, the third wave was on. It wasn’t until the end of February that things began to take off in a really big way.
“From October till February, we had a tough time,” Charles recalls. “Artistes were reluctant to perform live, and so were audiences to watch a show live, fearing they would get infected. We even had the third wave in between. But I held on to my instinctive feeling that this would be a success, and it finally paid off. When people look for where to go during the weekend, Medai is one of the names that crops up. I’m quite happy with that growth.”
The genesis
Charles is a lighting designer, a profession that took him to several venues countrywide. After many years of doing so, the idea of a space of his own gradually crept in. Having worked with a lot of performing artistes, he began to get an idea of what they look for in a venue. “One of the things you notice in our space is that we don’t use a lot of branding.
Artistes usually hate it when they have to perform in front of a banner that displays the name of the venue, as if it was more important than the performance,” he says. He eventually centred on the idea of a black box theatre, and began scouting for a suitable space in the city. It took him another five years before he finally leased out a space in a three-storey building in Alwarpet.
The funding mostly came from friends, family, well-wishers etc. With little access to corporate funding, the resources were limited. For everything including the design and other installations, Charles relied on people he knew well. “Even within our limited resources, we wanted to come up with a space that refused to compromise on quality,” he remarks.
Focus on inclusivity
From the outset, Medai was envisioned as an eclectic space, one that wasn’t tied down to a particular stream of performing arts. The inaugural show was a kutcheri by Sanjay Subrahmanyan, followed by a concert by Arivu, and a performance of Erotica a series of four short plays all of them catering to different audience groups.
Then there were stand-up shows by people like Arvind SA and Kenny Sebastian. “What we want for Medai is for it not to be associated with a particular stream like say, Kalakshetra which is usually associated with classical dance, or Music Academy, which immediately brings to mind classical concerts. I wanted to break that mould, so I started off with as eclectic a combination as I could, so nobody would pinpoint Medai as a comedy club or a sabha or a theatre space,” Charles adds.
Most venues in Chennai rely on traditional lighting, he says, and it is not often that you have a space that features intelligent lighting, i.e. lighting systems that can be programmed to meet the specific needs of the show. Medai has arrangements for both traditional and intelligent lighting systems.
Self-financed project
Running a self-sustaining space through the revenue earned from three shows a week (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) is no easy task. So on weekdays, he rents out the space for workshops, photography and video shoots and the like. As we spoke, Charles was busy in the midst of a workshop for an upcoming Suriya movie. “But we stick strictly to performing-arts related events. We don’t rent out our space for birthday functions, corporate events or anything like that.”
Charles also eschewed marketing in favour of a more organic approach, letting it spread through word-of-mouth. “Thankfully, the art fraternity in Chennai is quite tightly knit and very supportive of initiatives such as these. I could just approach Sanjay Subrahmanyan and ask him to perform at our venue. Such support was also crucial to our success,” he says.
Medai will celebrate the completion of its first year with an impressive line-up of performances — KK’s stand-up routine ‘Aansplaining’, a Q&A session with Baradwaj Rangan, a concert by classical violinist Apoorva Krishnan, and others, staying true to Medai’s spirit of eclecticism. For the future, Charles hopes to expand his brand to other cities. And he’s already set eyes on Bengaluru.