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When it comes to the Big M one can be forgiven for being dismissive of theatre producers. After all how much money can theatre productions really generate? Most groups find themselves lucky if they are able to break even. Profit is almost a missing word and for the more serious theatre person it is the sheer passion that keeps him/her going. So how does a producer and PR person like Manhar Gadhia prove that there is business to be made? Mumbai Theatre Guide talks to him to find out more about the profitability and sustainability of theatre productions, amongst other theatre related things.
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MTG editorial
Hello Manhar bhai. As everyone knows theatre provides the adrenalin but not the cash. And here you are obviously successful in your business. What is the secret behind it?
You will be quite surprised to know the number of enquiries that I get from financers. Every other week there is at least one  financer who comes to me offering lakhs of rupees. But I decline most of the offers. To produce a play is not an easy task. Aur Itne saalon ke baad maine jo kuch bhi mere hisab se, jo reputation gather ki hai, jo izzat mujhe mili hai, woh main paison ki laalach mein aakar, jaldbazzi mein gawana nahin chaata hoon (And after so many years whatever reputation I have earned, the respect that I have got-I do not want to lose it by being greedy and by making hasty decisions). I don’t want to produce any wrong kind of play. This is not to say that all financers are just interested in pumping money for their petty interests. I have come across some genuine people but most of them just want to create an impression amongst their family and friends. So I don’t usually entertain the financers who run big businesses in diamonds and chemicals for example. Their attitude towards a theatre production is completely different.
For me quality is the most important thing. Jaise (As) Bernard Shaw ne bataya tha (said)-a person is known by the company he keeps. Aap kin logon mein uth the, baith the hain…jaise mein apni baat bataoon (With whom you keep company…let me tell you about myself)- I am very choosy. I am not in a hurry to achieve success. I have worked very hard. I am not just a financer. I am a producer in the true sense of the word. All the plays that I have produced to date are plays I know by heart; whether that play has been A SUITABLE BRIDE (English), GANDHI VIRUDH GANDHI (Hindi/Gujarati), a SHYAM RANG (Hindi) or EKLO JAANE RE (Gujarati), which had seven monologues in it. I can proudly say that I perhaps am the only producer who has had successful public sell-out shows for a production like A SUITABLE BRIDE.
I am also very patient. I have offered a subject to Javed Akhtar to write about. Nothing has come of it but I have full faith that it eventually will. Again I am not the kind of producer who produces plays in a hurry. Just because a particular month in a year seems a good time to produce a play, I will not do it. First make a good play. The good season will automatically follow.
So theatre can be profitable…
It can. In my case I get the basics right. To date I haven’t suffered losses. But take the case of the commercial Gujarati stage. On an average 40 plays are produced each year. Of these only two or three are super hits. Again you have another three that may do reasonably well. You will find some which can cover their costs. But 75 percent of these are flops, by which I mean that their producers lose their money.
And yet people persist…
Yes they have to because they go on in the hope that they will produce one big successful play. Ab yeh toh koi bata nahin sakta ki Sachin Tendulkar kal honewali match mein century maarega. Bus usi tarah theatre mein bhi wahi baat hai.( Now nobody can tell that Sachin Tendulkar will make a century in the next match. The same philosophy applies to the theatre). Neither the writer not the director can predict the success of the play. So one has to keep on producing the plays. What does matter is the quality of the play. Also you need to have a sense of going about things. Just because a big banner is supporting a play, there is no way you can guarantee its success.
Has quality always been your foremost concern?
Definitely. Take GANDHI VIRUDH GANDHI as an example. I produced the play in Hindi as well as in Gujarati. I had a writer like Ajit Dalvi, a director like Chandrakant Kulkarni and my main actors were Atul Kulkarni and Seema Biswas who play Gandhi and Kasturba. The production was so well received that a newspaper like ‘The Times of India’ called it the best Hindi production of the year. For a play like SHYAM RANG I was inspired by just one sentence that appeared in Aruna Dhere’s novel, which was about what would happen if Krishna before his death met Radha? What could have happened? What would have they talked about? That single line just captured my imagination and I went to Javed Siddiqui. I had always wanted him to write a play but I was on the lookout for a fitting subject for him. I could have hardly offered him something out of a James Hadley Chase novel for instance. So I got that Marathi chapter in which that sentence appeared, translated into Hindi since Javed saab could not understand Marathi. We did further research on the play for eight months. Javed Saab in fact asked me one day: “Aap thak nahin jaate? Aap ko lagta nahin ki yeh play nahin ho sakta?” (“Don’t you get tired? Don’t you think that this play may not happen?”). I assured him. Today SHYAM RANG is considered a landmark play in the Hindi language. Gulzar saab wrote two songs especially for the play and Ismail Durbar designed the music for it.
So would it be right to say that you have a business sense about getting the right people together?
Yes there is nothing like getting the right combination. Moreover I believe in doing good work. I insist that I am not just any other financer. I don’t run my business like a factory. Financers just look at their balance sheet. A theatre producer must know his play. I wouldn’t want to impinge on the freedom of my director and actors but I must know what is happening on the stage. By god’s grace I have always worked with people who understand theatre. The names range from people like Sarita Joshi, Rekha Kanekar, Seema Kapoor, Seema Biswas to Atul Kulkarni, Sachin Khedekar and Kishore Kadam.
When did all this begin for you?
On 26th June 1976 I began as a copywriter. Now I can’t say I was just lucky but the first advertisement which I wrote was creative and hard hitting. I began publicity work for theatre in the same year. Between 1976 and 78, I was approached by a lot of Gujarati theatre people for PR work. I couldn’t have got better recognition when none other than the Gujarati theatre personality Pravin Joshi bypassed his own PR manager and asked me to come and meet him. Gradually through the publicity work for the theatre I began to get closer to playwrights. I learnt early that it is the writer who is the mother of the play. These days you will come across directors and producers who don’t read. They are so much in a hurry to achieve success. There are many minus points that they suffer from.
But was it easy for you to break in?
It was never an easy task. See success does not come easy. I remember Shafi Inammdar talking to us about Sunil Gavaskar once. It seems Gavaskar was travelling one day in a bus and he was reading something. So Shafi Inamdar asked him how he could manage reading in a moving bus. He just answered by saying that all one needs is concentration. The same is with producing plays too. You need focus.
Do you face a lot of competition in your business?
There is competition but I am not worried. Creatively speaking there is very little good work that is happening. This is also sad because I have known good writers like Vihang Mehta, Uttam Gada, Sitanshu Yashaschandra and Madhu Rye who have not written for years now. Their not writing is the equivalent of the murder of the Gujarati stage. We do have a few young writers who are good. There is Saumaya Joshi from Ahemdabad for example. Now I offer subjects to playwrights like him and if they are writing it will be a good thing.
Are you working on something at present?
There is a novel by Irving Wallace called ‘The Fan Club.’ I am hoping to adapt it into a Broadway styled production; a production which is fit for an auditorium like Jamshed Bhabha or Shanmukhananda. The novel has already been adapted here before. There was a Gujarati play called BEGUM SHABAB based on it. Later there was an English production called the KIDNAPPING OF SHEILA KHAN. I want to see how I can adapt it in this century. I think the time is now ripe for me to produce at least two plays.
What according to you Manhar bhai is the average cost of producing a play?
To produce an average Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi or even an English play you need three to five lakhs. To run it you need a minimum of two to three lakhs. Lekin aaj ki tarikh mein na Gujarati, na Marathi, na Hindi theatre achha chal raha hai. (But today neither Gujarati, nor Marathi, nor Hindi theatre is doing well). If you are in a hurry to earn fast you will definitely lose money and that is what is happening. Then there is the mistaken notion that star actors or known faces will be able to run your show. How can one forgo the writer who is the most important person?
But the popular belief is that known actors do well.
It is true to some extent. For instance productions by Naseeruddin Shah’s Motley do generally well. However those in which he himself is acting do much better. In any case it is important to get the casting right, known or otherwise.
Are you partial to any one or two writers?
No. The writer can be any one but I must like the subject. Do you know that GANDHI VIRUDH GANDHI was refused by five to six producers before me? Sudhir Bhatt who completed 147 shows in Marathi made a loss. He asked me why I was keen on producing it since he himself had lost lakhs of rupees. But I had faith in the script. I just told Chandrakant Kulkarni that we need to tighten the script. It had to be a two and a half hour play and not a three hour, forty-five minute one as it earlier was. But I left it to the writer to do the editing. It was his play after all. And yet I was firm about certain things such as there should only be one interval in the play and not two. I also insisted on having my own art director because one of the reasons for the Marathi version not doing well were the number of black-outs that took place. The set design was very important to me and I accordingly got the work done.
So you’re saying that you are open to working with new and different writers?
Oh yes. They are most welcome to come and see me. After all young writers come with bright ideas.
What are your earliest memories about the theatre?
There are some things in life that I can never forget. One of them is to have seen the grandeur of Pravin Joshi on the stage. It would be very difficult to explain to young people today about the aura that Pravin Joshi possessed. Yeh Sharukh Khan, Aamir Khan aur Hritik Roshan unke mukable kuch bhi nahin hai (Sharukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Hritik Roshan are nothing compared to him). Pravin Joshi was like a magnet; such was his personality. His presence on the stage was incredible. Twenty-seven odd years have passed but I haven’t seen an actor like him. Such was his popularity that the shirt he used to wear on stage would turn into an overnight fashion in colleges in Ahemdabad. Gujarati people would begin to save in advance to just go and see his plays. I was one of them.
So you were really inspired by him?
Absolutely. The man had a vision and that is what counted. You have to be able to visualize things besides having a good knowledge of things around you. When Ismail Durbar got a standing ovation in Prithvi for the music that he had designed for SHYAM RANG, he was proud to be associated with my production.
Your production company also manages the publicity work for other events besides theatre. Off late you have also been doing a lot of work for Prithvi Theatre…
Basically 70 percent of Mumbai’s cultural activities are handled by my company. My clients have faith in me. I don’t take people for granted; not even those in the media. I don’t underestimate anyone nor insult anybody. I am also keen to get big corporate companies like Pepsi and Reliance involved in the theatre. Even if they contribute a fraction of their earnings to the theatre it will mean a lot.
So is it the sum result of all these activities that makes you a successful business man?
I think so. But having said that let me also tell you that I have not charged my professional fees for several theatre productions. KHELAIYA is one of the most successful productions of the Gujarati stage. It was a musical play that did very well. But I thought that for a play like this in which an actor like Paresh Rawal did not charge money nor did a music director like Rajat Dholakia or did Mahendra Joshi; tickets were sold for a mere Rs. 10/, what sense was there in me charging my professional fee? Since that production I haven’t charged my professional fee for any non-commercial production. I can count at least ten thousand shows whose fees I have not taken. But I have done so willingly in the pure interest of the theatre. I remember buying a ticket for the Marathi GANDHI VIRUDH GANDHI and then just running an advert for the play at my cost in a Gujarati newspaper. Simply because I wanted the Gujarati people to go and see the play. Eventually after a few months you could find a 30 percent Gujarati crowd in auditoriums such as Dinanath for the Marathi play. I was proud of that.
But how does this big-heartedness work for your business?
Nahin…Uperwalla apne aap dekhta hai. Jaise koi bhi insaan jab paise kamata hai to who khud decide karta hai ki use un paison se kya karna hai. Main na daru pita hoon. Na cigarette, na paan, na tambaku leta hoon (No…God looks after all of us. Each person decides for himself as to how he would like to spend his money. I don’t drink, smoke, eat paan or chew tobacco). Ultimately Gita mein likha hain ki karm kar, phal ki apeksha nahin (It is written in the Gita that one must do his duty and not seek the fruit of it). Maine aise hi kiya hai (I have done just that). More important than anything is the good work you do. Today why do people remember Chandrakant Kulkarni or Pravin Joshi?
What are your observations of the current theatre scene?
Bohat bura haal hai (It is a very bad scene). I personally know of commercial Marathi and Hindi plays which have got very bad houses. What does it mean when producers begin by losing Rs. 50,000 in each show? Aisi kya galti ki hai aapne ki ek ya do mainon mein aapke paanch se chhe lakh rupaiye barbad ho jaate hain? (What kind of a mistake have you made to lose five to six lakh rupees in a span of just one or two months?). That is why I keep saying that financers don’t anticipate the red signal. They just want fame and popularity. There is a dearth of original writing and it is singularly responsible for the state of the theatre today.
But as a theatre producer do you feel that the audience is also responsible for the kind of commercial plays that are staged?
No I don’t believe in that. A good play will have a good run. Do not underestimate your audience. Give them a good subject and they will more than welcome it.
*The above interview has been conducted by Deepa Punjani, Editor of this site, a theatre critic and an academic keenly interested in Theatre and Performance Studies.
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