पृथ्वी थिएटर

THE SHOW MUST GO ON

- Tiwari Photographer Raj Lalwani

Jennifer Kendal and Shashi Kapoor were children of the theatre.

Jennifer's parents, Geoffrey Kendal and Laura Liddell, came to India in the 1940s as actors and founded a travelling theatre company called Shakespearana that performed English classics around the country.

Shashi's father, the legendary Indian actor Prithviraj Kapoor, was the founder of Prithvi Theatres, a company that laid the foundation of modern Hindi theatre by staging thousands of shows of largely original scripts across India.

In 1974, two years after Prithviraj Kapoor's passing, Shashi, then a major star in Hindi cinema, mooted the idea of building a physical theatre in Mumbai to house the formidable legacies bequeathed to him and his wife, Jennifer. While she knew the task would be Herculean, they resolved to get it done.

The Kapoors brought in architect Ved Segan and, together, set out to make history.

THE THEATRE IS WHERE BOTH JENNIFER AND SHASHI spent their childhood, working on and off the stage; it is also where the two met and fell in love.

The travelling troupes they worked with performed in the remotest parts of India-in schools, colleges, tents, palaces and, once, as legend has it, on top of a billiards table.