Of late, vertical series, which are one- to three-minute episodes catering to an audience increasingly accustomed to consuming quick content, have been making the rounds online. While the digital space continues to experiment with shorter formats, the performing arts, too, have started adopting them along the way. This can be observed with theatre festivals in the city, which host five or more ten-minute productions as part of a single show. Defying this contemporary trend, a theatre festival is making a case for longer narratives, bringing full-length plays and their immersive storytelling experience to the forefront. “As artistes, we know that there’s a difference between performing a 10-minute play and a 70-minute production,” says Aadithiya Raajan, founder of Showboats Production and one of the founders of Arena - The Art Experience.
This led to CUE, a month-long full-length theatre festival, organised by Arena — an independent multifunctional art space on East Coast Road. Running from October 25 to November 29, the festival features nine teams, each presenting a full-length production. Aadithiya adds, “We wanted each team to have their own dedicated slot and audience. That’s why we brought this format to promote more full-length theatre.”
One of the distinguishing aspects of CUE is that since Arena owns the venue and does not have to bear additional rental expenses to host, Aadithiya says, “Every performing team, whether they win or not, gets a 50% share of the revenue from their performance (ticket sales). We wanted the artistes to get some remuneration.”
For this edition, the organisers received around 15 entries from across India, including submissions from Kerala and West Bengal. However, the selection was eventually narrowed down, primarily to Tamil and English productions, owing to language constraints during the evaluation process.
The festival opened with two artistic showcases, ‘Naamellam Adhan Meley’ and ‘Blackbird’ on October 25 and November 1, respectively. Aadithiya adds that the competitive performances, featuring musicals and commercial plays, will resume from this week. CUE will draw the curtains on November 29 with ‘Thalaivan Irukkiran’, a showcase production by Showboats, directed by Raajan and Mukesh.
“Following the announcement of the results, we are planning a gala to celebrate the people who performed, for which we’ll move to a nearby secondary venue. We are trying to invite more theatre artistes, people from the media and cine industries so that it becomes a good networking event,” says Aadithiya. Talking about establishing CUE as an annual festival, he adds, “We want to make sure it’s a recurring thing as well as a short and sweet festival that is recognisable in the art scene.”
Aadithiya says that though theatre is a very interesting art form, it constantly needs a push. Explaining what audiences can expect at CUE, he adds, “A live performance is 100% different from what you see on screen, and it is the rawest form of acting; it can be seen only in theatre. And if people want to experience that and be entertained in the process, CUE is the place to be.”
For details and tickets, visit: @arena_theartexperience on Instagram
