India’s first Broadway musical, Beauty and the Beast, completed more than 12 shows in Mumbai and Delhi combined. Shrabasti Mallik finds out from Vikrant Pawar, the show director, how actors were free to make small improvisations on the stage to keep the audience entertained
How do you manage 65 actors on a larger-than- life stage at the same time, while making sure that no one runs over each other, step on someone else’s foot and make a scene seem as fluid as a running streamIJ “The entire trick is tactful coordination,” pat came the answer from Vikranth Pawar, the director and creative head of live entertainment at Disney India. He is the mind and eyes behind India’s first musical Broadway, Beauty and the Beast.
With over 10 shows, already performed in Mumbai, and four in Delhi, Pawar still doesn’t believe that Disney pulled it off and with such stupendous success. “It is fabulous. I mean, it is India’s first Broadway, so to speak, and I still can’t believe that is still pulling in crowds, more with every show,” he could barely conceal his excitement. This, coupled with the fact that the entire cast and crew is Indian, has perhaps set the bar of how grand a show like this can get. Pawar added, “Moreover, it is a well travelled play and a much loved story. And staging it with an entire Indian cast and crew just goes to prove that something as spectacular and grand as this can also be presented on the Indian stage.”
He told us that the actors had been rehearing for quite sometime — brushing up their diction and acting skills under the watchful eyes of Terence lewis (choreography) and Suzanne D’Mello (vocal training). “It was quite intimidating at times but when the group focussed, it became clear for both me and the choreographer to set things in place. After that the actors knew how and what to deliver,” he said.
So how much liberty did the actors and he take in improvising every time they went on stage. “Not much,” he said and mentioned that except for the music and the script, which has been kept original, they had re-created the entire experience, fit for a Broadway stage. “But then, that is the beauty of theatre. You improvise along with your audience’s response. That shapes the show and determines the way an actor presents the character. The actors in the musical are free to work on their expressions impromptu on the stage like to pause for a laugh or add a little joke here and there, just to keep the audience engaged in the narrative. This way, we keep the entire thing real and relatable,” Pawar added.
Putting together India’s first Broadway might sound a little intimidating and Pawar felt the same to, in the beginning. “But the amount of support that we received from Disney India was incredible. We made it as grand as we could. Everything in theatre is a challenge but one needs to rise above it and Disney backing this project was our biggest strength. We had plenty of time to prepare so the few challenges that cropped up were sorted by a group of highly capable people,” he sang in praise of Disney, India.
The Beauty and the Beast musical made its debut in Mumbai and then came to Delhi. When we asked Pawar, where they would go next, he said, “We have no definite plan although there are plenty of preparations to be done and requirements to be met to stage something as big as this. So, let’s see where we go next.”
He believes that it is important to attract audience by doing work that they find entertaining like Broadway on a good scale with Indian talent. “People will come to watch, they will love the presentation and then the culture of the theatre will grow with the whole process,” Pawar wrapped up.
with an input from IANS