Evam gears up for year 10

It’s hard to top what Evam has accomplished in nine years. The company’s ‘happy’ brand of theatre coupled with smart initiatives such as First Rush (for newcomers to the stage), Theatricals (platform for college students), and a revamped Standup Tamasha has made the country sit up and take notice. Gearing up to enter their tenth year this September, it is hard to imagine what more they could have in store.

“For starters, we’re going to orient our shows to do a lot of overseas touring,” says Karthik Kumar, co-founder of Evam. “Not just one-off trips, but proper city-to-city tours abroad, starting with America and then South East Asia. We will be starting Flash, an art-theatre-dance school for children, from next summer,” he goes on. This foray will give parents the option of having their kids learn arts the ‘Evam’ way.

Certainly a busy year ahead, with lots of work. “Lots of fun,” Karthik smiles. “That was the whole point of starting Evam – to do something we both loved doing.” Sunil Vishnu K, the other founder of the company, was abroad and couldn’t make the interview.

Most people are already familiar with the tale of two 26-year-old graduates from the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad, who founded Evam in 2003. Here is the part that a lot of people probably don’t know. “We did a thesis in our final year,” recalls Karthik, “on whether theatre could provide a sustainable living or not.” Ironically, the thesis said they couldn’t. But they decided to meet up two years from graduation anyway, once they had cleared their education loans. “We were two middle class boys with a lakh-and-a-half and no property to fall back on,” Karthik reminisces. “In fact, our first practice space was at my parent’s house, on the terrace.”

Fast forward to today and Evam is 13 employees strong, spread across Chennai and Bangalore, with a turnover of `1 crore so far this year. “We’re also proud to say that we’re sponsor-independent,” states Karthik. The founders, along with friend and theatre actor TM Krishna and techie Amrutha, started Sideways Training last year. “We thought it would be a great idea to have corporate training marry the arts,” says Karthik.

It will be raining plays from Evam come this September, he says. “We have 40 shows of six of our plays lined up,” he reveals. “It’s going to be an annual event every September in Chennai and October in Bangalore.” They call it the Evam Omni Bus.

Even more exciting is Evam’s foray into experimental theatre. The idea is to take productions outside a conventional venue and into real life situations. It may take a moment to sink in, but picture this — midnight ghost stories at Amethyst, where the audience is walking around as the cast unfolds the play or a trip from Alliance Francaise to another destination with the cast meeting them at points along the road. “This is theatre for the facebook generation — individualised theatre,” Karthik sums up.