Lend theatre an ear

There was a time mdash and itrsquos starting to seem so long ago now mdash when the idea of theatre involved actors staging an often grand spectacle in front of audience members who were transported to a different realm while bunched up inside an auditorium But the past year has of course turned that idea on its head Theatre practitioners have wracked their brains in order to come up with innovative ways of keeping their craft alive There was a surge in audio plays There were performances that were livestreamed on the Internet And now there is a podcast that has been built exclusively to let youngsters turn theatre into a wholly sonic mediumYoungsters take part in a workshop thatrsquos part of the projectItrsquos part of an initiative called Thespo AudioTorium and has been put together by the folks behind Thespo the theatre festival aimed at people below the age of 25 Anoushka Zaveri from the team tells us that for 21 years the annual event entailed people taking over Prithvi Theatre in Juhu showcasing their productions before a physical audience ldquoBut since that wasnrsquot possible this year it was a welcome challenge for us to think out of the box We felt during the wee months of the lockdown that it was a great time to explore mediums we have never thought about before especially as young peopleAnoushka ZaveriTheatre performed on the stage is incredibly familiar to us But we havenrsquot delved into audio storytelling as much even though we youngsters are the primary target audience of streaming platformsrdquoWith that in mind the organisers put out a call last August for sample scripts that could be brought alive as a podcast The chosen creators went through an intensive sixmonth period of workshops conducted by experts in the audio field such as Nadir Khan who works closely with the BBC and Fred Greenhalgh who runs a company called The Final Rule in the US Seven teams were eventually shortlisted to come up with diverse audio productions Three of them are already live while four more are in the pipelineBut as an audience member mdash or rather listener in this case mdash how does this format play out What is the experience of hearing a play through speakers or headphones like We listen to Covid and the City the latest of the three podcasts available at present Nimish Nanda has created it and the experimental podcast consists wholly of recorded sounds that offer a chronology of the pandemic so far ever since the lockdown last year began Itrsquos the middle of the night when we put the speakers on and there is an eerie silence outside courtesy the curfew thatrsquos again in place But that only means that the sounds of the birds and voice of news presenters updating people about the pandemic mdash which is the sort of soundscape that the podcast inhabits mdash is even more pronounced And for the next 18 minutes we are taken on a journey that is a sonic reflection of what a tumultuous period the past year has beenAnd that mdash travelling on a journey as soon as you plug your speakers in or put your headphones on mdash is the very purpose behind this podcast series Zaveri says ldquoYou can be swept away into a world that is not your ownrdquo she explains adding that the effort is testament to how youngsters have deepdived into a territory that they were totally unfamiliar with earlier So let us give them their due even as we wait for theatre to return to its old ways of being a staged spectacleLog on to spotifycom