At an age when the last thing youngsters agonise about is whether to be or not to be, Ram Ganesh Kamatham, then a 16-year-old, dug up one of the Bard’s greatest plays and did a spoof on it—Omlet, his reworking of Hamlet. Five years and 10 plays later, the Bangalore-based dramatist made the theatre world sit up and take notice of his experimental Square Root of Minus One (2001), which he considers his first adult play. Since then, Kamatham has written 14 plays, including the much talked-about Crab and his latest Creeper, both a mix of dark humour and biting satire.

Not everyone is an early starter like Kamatham but the number of young playwrights—some in their early twenties—bringing in a flush of new perspectives has been increasing in the recent years, particularly in theatre hubs like Mumbai and Bangalore. The last Writers’ Bloc, a festival of plays by new writers, received 100 entries, of which nearly 60 were from writers below 28. Mumbai is again gearing up to celebrate young theatre with the ninth edition of Thespo, a festival for theatrewallahs below the age of 25. The festival, kicking off on December 13, will showcase Pratap Phad’s original Marathi play Aayushyamaan, which deals with the fear of AIDS.

The theatrewallahs’ woe that original plays are hard to come by is not new. But some like Manav Kaul, who traded acting for writing and directing plays, have taken up the pen to fix the problem. The result was Shakkar Ke Paanch Daane, a one-actor play with an unconventional method of story telling. The 32-year-old Mumbai-based dramatist followed it up with Peele Scooterwala Admi, Baali Aur Shambu, Ilhaam and Aisa Kahte Hain—all of them characterised by a richness of language and experimentation.

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