‘Actors cannot work from home’
Shreyas Talpade, who considers theatre his first love, has come up with the idea of an online theatre where plays can be taken to the audience using the digital medium.The actor has taken it upon himself to help revive the theater industry, making it viable and bring it to everybody’s home. Having received a positive response from former Maharashtra Chief Minister, Devendra Fadnavis, politician Vinod Tawde,talking about this initiative he says, “The idea of an online theater came when we were almost a month into the lockdown. All of us were thinking of what to do to survive.
Actors don’t have an option of work from home. I thought this could be an opportunity where we record a play and stream it online by charging a nominal ticket fee.”
The Gomaal actor says that all the necessary permissions and precautions would be taken, “The theatre crew is limited to 15 or 20 people. We hire a theatre, clean it and follow all the protocols, hire a multi-camera set-up and go in. We shoot with the actors performing and do an online and offline edit, and once we have the final product ready, we can project the play online as a normal show,” he explains.
Would people be ready to buy tickets?, “The idea is to charge a nominal price, for example, ₹300 for a family as we can’t charge on per person basis. I feel it’s quite economical,” he says.
Talpade is returning to the stage with a teleplay and is currently being streamed online. “I love the format of a teleplay and that’s the reason why I decided to be a part of this project. I think teleplay is a great experiment where we get rid of the proverbial fourth wall. It was quite challenging but I think these formats need to be explored. I’m glad that it is being appreciated and watched on so many platforms.”