Traverse travels to Mumbai
BY the time you read this, a team from the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh will already be in Mumbai, the city formerly known as Bombay, which, as the capital of the state of Maharashtra, forms one of the most densely populated cities of India. It is not only the wealthiest part of the country, but is the birthplace of Bollywood, India’s fantastical form of musical cinema.
Whether any of this has any bearing on the Traverse’s work with young people in the city remains to be seen. Either way, the initiation of Class Act Mumbai, which is the reason for the two-week long visit, promises to be as lively as similar set-ups have been in Scotland for the last quarter of a century.
For those who may not be aware of Class Act, the now annual event began in 1991 as what was then styled as a theatre in education initiative, in which professional playwrights and theatre directors worked with secondary school pupils from various Edinburgh schools to help them develop their own short plays. What the young people wrote was then developed further in the rehearsal room, with professional actors lifting the students’ work off the page and bringing them to life.
All of the plays were then performed on the main stage of the Traverse, with what was effectively a classroom-size compendium of world premieres being performed before an audience of the young writers’ peers, friends and family.
As symposium held at the Traverse last autumn to coincide with the 2017 Class Act presentations made clear, such a relatively simple idea has grown in stature to not only enrich the artistic lives of those taking part.
It has also helped foster a radical form of artistic exchange which has developed into an inclusive aesthetic, through which young people get to express whatever is on their minds in suitably dramatic fashion.
With Class Act having long developed into an international concern by way of exchanges with Russia and the Ukraine, the Mumbai visit is one more link in a world wide web that puts its participants in physical proximity with each other rather than a virtual one.
“It’s really exciting to be working in a different cultural and theatrical context,” says playwright Nicola McCartney, who has been involveded in