A Play in Ten Minutes

One of the most memorable live performances I have ever seen was an informal one—a veteran Kolkata theatre actor performing highly condensed versions of Shakespeare classics behind closed doors for friends. Romeo and Juliet? Seven minutes, lots of deaths, and done. As You Like It? A breezy, chuckle-filled five minutes. I later found that the actor was simply ‘Indianising’ concepts laid out by Jess Winfield of The Reduced Shakespeare Company, a troupe that has been performing these condensed, frequently improvised versions of classic plays around the world. At the time I was a teenager and tickled silly by the idea that some of the greatest works of literature ever known to man could be easily and effectively broken down for a lay audience in a matter of minutes. Looking back, I probably did not appreciate the tremendous amount of skill and craft required for such an enterprise.

Theatre lovers today, however, can enjoy plays in a radically condensed timeframe, as the fourth edition of Thespis, India’s first ever ‘micro drama festival’, proved recently. Thespis began life in 2017 and held consecutive editions until 2019, following which of course the pandemic forced a hiatus until now. It is conducted by the Delhi-based group Vriksh the Theatre. During a telephonic interview, festival director Abhilash Pillai spoke about the origin and evolution of Thespis. “The festival evolved out of a simple teaching exercise,” said Pillai. “I have been teaching at NSD for a while now and I assigned students an exercise, to create a short play (five-seven minutes) or a skit based on something out of the newspaper that week. It could be any story that caught their eye, but they had to communicate the gist of it within the defined timespan.”

Soon, the idea took on a life of its own and Thespis was the result. During the first edition in 2017, there were plays from across the country, in over a dozen languages and some non-verbal plays as well. A feature that would soon become a hallmark was the number of college troupes performing during the festival. Even with established, professional troupes, a lot of the performers were recent graduates. “The younger performers have grown up at a time of reduced attention spans,” said Pillai. “Even today, if you see, youth culture is dominated by reels on Instagram and other kinds of short-form content. Other countries of course have TikTok or something very similar. The younger actors and directors have an instinct for how to express themselves effectively within a few minutes, communicating the core of their plays to the audience in an accessible format. Sometimes, the skit may involve gibberish or may not involve spoken language at all, but more of non-verbal cues.”

Following the third edition in 2019, the pandemic forced a hiatus. But it is important to note here that the Covid-19 lockdowns actually forced theatre troupes across the country and all around the world to adapt to short-form content—especially monologues. Why? Because this was a time when theatre, ordinarily a form that thrives off collaboration and the frisson of in-person rehearsals, was operating on an ‘each man for himself’ level.

The result was a lot of plays structured as a series of short monologues—because that way the players could rehearse all by themselves during lockdown. Occasionally, they could all assemble on Zoom and perform their bits in tandem—think of the ‘dramatised table reads’ trend that took off in Hollywood during this time. Actors from classic movies would come together on video call and read from the film’s screenplay. The influence of these trends is reflected in the theatre festivals conducted in India across the last two-three years.

In the leadup to the fourth edition of Thespis, the organising team at Vriksh received over 250 entries from all around India, out of which 30 plays were selected in the final list. Each play had a cutoff time of 10 minutes and in total, the 30 selected plays featured over 600 artists working in a range of Indian languages. During a phone conversation, one of the participating directors, Tejas Gowda K, spoke about his upcoming production Adhu on behalf of Bengaluru’s Kala Kadamba Art Centre.

“This play was originally written for the competition, Bengaluru short play festival 2024, led by theatre teams Pravara and Ashvaghosha, around the theme of equality,” Gowda said. “So, you can say that my intention through this play was to show equity is more important than equality. Giving everyone the same opportunity or the same platform might seem fair but often it’s not that simple.”

“It reflects the prevailing middle and lower middle-class lifestyle in this country and the struggles they go through. How the law works differently for the rich or the influential and the poor and so on—I was inspired by a recent hit-and-run case in Pune. The reason why I feel it relates to modern-day themes is that this play doesn’t have an ending where the truth triumphs. Rather it ends on a note of ‘the fight continues’.”

Both Gowda and Pillai independently spoke about the importance of body language and non-verbal/non-linguistic modes of communication. These become especially important for micro drama theatre because of the preponderance of children’s stories involving animal characters, supernatural beings or personifications of human traits. It’s way too wordy to explain the deus ex machina of animals communicating with the human characters, for example—it’s much easier to have an actor pulling off an animal voice consisting of growls, howls and chirps. If you look at some of the great Shakespearean theatre actors of recent times, you can see why Gowda and Pillai emphasise this aspect. Kathryn Hunter, for example, is an icon of physical theatre, and played all three Witches in Joel Coen’s stunning 2021 film The Tragedy of Macbeth. In her bouquet of physical contortions and growls and grunts, Hunter conveys more than a lot of actors would in a ten-minute monologue.

 

Gowda also agreed with the idea that younger actors are naturally attuned to the micro drama format. He said that he has been working with the same set of children for a few years now on a string of short plays. He said, “I’ve written a few short plays in the past years and all of them have been for the same team. Majority of the artists in my team are children. The challenges I face are training them to adapt to different styles of performance and making them understand the concept of the play. Other than that, we train a lot to make sure that we are within the time constraints of the festival.”

Another play at Thespis 2025 was Mavli, performed in a mixture of Hindi and non-verbal communication, by the Vadodara-based theatre group Triveni, which has been operating since the 1960s, specialising in experimental theatre. Speaking about the play during a telephonic interview, Nisarg Raval said, “Our play Mavli is about the environment, broadly speaking. I grew up in a place called Ukai in Gujarat which is home to a lot of people from Adivasi communities. From my childhood I spent time with them and observed their customs, their festivals, the costumes that they put on to perform songs and dances during these festivals. Most of their stories involve themes of nature and conservation and I wanted to bring that before the audience in Mavli.

The story involves a young woman from Ukai’s tribal populace with supernatural powers—she can transform mud into flour, stone into grains of rice. Essentially, she is a nature deity in a demi-god form. The devas (gods) get jealous of the village people because of this, and they whisk the woman away to their heavenly kingdom, but her powers and indeed, her natural life cycle doesn’t work the same way there. So, they have to return the woman to earth where she marries a farmer whom she is in love with (who else but a farmer would a nature deity love?).

Thespis 2025 was rich in these indigenous and hyperlocal stories. As the passion and the narrative impact of these ‘micro dramas’ reaches a wider audience, further innovations in theatrical craft (not just acting or directing but also assorted stagecraft like lighting or costumes) are to be expected.

“While performing their traditional dance, the Adivasi community in Ukai wears these huge masks that are four-five-feet long and almost equally as wide,” Desai said. “It is quite mesmerising. If I can convey even a fraction of that art through this play, if I can convey even a fraction of the research behind the script to the audience, then I can say that Mavli is a success.”

Abhilash PillaiAs You Like It?Kala Kadamba Art Centre.micro theatreNSDtheatreThespisVrikshWeb Exclusive