Being an art entrepreneur is certainly risky, but for some souls, love of the arts overcomes the fear
Thirty-two-year-old Jehan Manekshaw, like his more famous counterpart Sanjna Kapoor, director of Mumbai’s Prithvi Theatre, is dedicated to the cause of improving the prospects of contemporary Indian theater.
But Jehan’s efforts are anything but similar to those of Sanjna, who has symbolized the desperate struggle of India’s independent theater to carve out a space for itself in India’s increasingly crowded, cluttered urban landscape.
“Some people say I am dreaming,” says the young theater professional, excited, as he steps up to do what he has always wanted to do—create a nationwide platform for theater and theater artists. “But I have to find out for myself.” Jehan is betting on India’s nouveau riche—the corporates—to support theater in cities like Mumbai where Sanjna confesses to have ‘failed’. While Sanjna is cast more in the mould of the traditional, die-hard independent theater person, Jehan is able to see himself as someone trying to fill a new market opportunity for world-class art that has arisen with the emergence of wealth.
“India Inc today has the same level of professionalism as in global cities, like London and New York. It also has more ‘global’ tastes. Like other arts, theater done here at the same level of professionalism [as London and New York] would have an audience now for that very reason,” he says.
Jehan, who holds a Master’s in theater direction from the University of London, is one of India’s new generation art-entrepreneurs. Impelled by their passion for their art, they embark on the risky adventure of combining the not-always-friendly art and commerce. Like Mayuri and Madhuri Upadhya, two Bangalore-based sisters who, along with four friends, started the now famous Indian contemporary dance company Nritarutya seven years ago; or Jayachandran Palazhy, former director of the Imlata Dance Company of London who left a thriving ‘international’ career in 2001 to start the Bangalore-based contemporary dance company Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts.
While Jehan has just embarked on his quest to create a nation-wide platform for theater in the country, the other two are well on their way to creating a sustainable, even profitable way to practise and propagate their art. Ask Bangalore-based Ashwin Mohan, who has created a Rs 3.3 million business in just one year out of his passion for martial arts. “There is a lot of money to be made in the arts, you just have to approach it with the right entrepreneurial spirit,” he says. Nritarutya has meanwhile grown into a full-fledged corporate entity, with full-time dancers earning a salary at the company as they would in any other field.
What does it take to make it as an entrepreneur in this field? What qualities must an entrepreneur of the arts possess? What are the risks?
The raw material
Like entrepreneurship in any sector, there are two key ingredients to success in creating a successful business rooted in the arts—passion and innovation.
“Any business is good business, if you have focus and a vision,” says 53-year-old Maher Dadha who started his career as a gems trader. Dadha traded in rubber, chemicals and even ran a security lockers company before turning his attention to artworks in 1992, setting up Dukan to trade in antiques, paintings, lithographs etc. Last year, Dadha set up his second business in the arts field, the auctioneer Bid and Hammer.
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“To succeed in any business, you need passion,” says Dadha, himself an avid collector and the author of Views of India – Connoisseurs’ Compendium. “It is especially true in businesses that deal with art, since it is all about passion,” he points out.
Dadha is not kidding, of course. Without a burning passion, an art entrepreneur is unlikely to succeed, says the big daddy of Indian contemporary dance, Shiamak Davar. “As a ‘business’ art tends to be unpredictable,” he says. “I wouldn’t advise one who has no feeling for it to dabble in it without proper guidance from experts.”
Anmol Vellani, artist, art philosopher and director of the Indian Foundation for Art, points out that successful art entrepreneurs have all been either artists, trying to create conditions that enable them to pursue their art, or non-artists led by a passion and love for art.
In his paper Arts Entrepreneurship in the Age of Creative Industries, Anmol points out how innovation and out-of-the-box thinking can help even the so-called dying arts to turn into a profitable venture. One of the examples he uses is Rang Vidushak, the Bhopal-based theater organization set up by Bansi Kaul.
“For three decades, Bansi has been driven by the idea of developing and rooting a contemporary Indian theater in the impoverished hinterland of the Hindi belt––a theater based on small-town sensibilities and everyday life,” he says. Borrowing heavily from the performance styles of the traditional Indian clown-narrators, street gymnasts and akhadas, he points out that “virtually from scratch, the group has not only created an extremely energetic, refined and distinctive idiom of theater, its repertoire of productions circulates in all the Hindi-speaking states and even beyond. Rang Vidushak has also cultivated audiences in villages, small towns and big cities, bridging a rural-urban divide that few theater groups manage to do.”
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written by Theatre Arts School, April 17, 2009
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