The room could have been anywhere in Silicon Valley. Fluorescent lights in a faceless office complex , a giant mall nearby, Starbucks, a parking lot full of minivans. But every weekend it serves as rehearsal space for one of the Bay Area's most prolific South Asian theater companies – Naatak. And though the members might be dressed in jeans, sweats, and t-shirts with computer company logos, Naatak remains close to its desi roots.

"We need to get you to really mug the lines," founder Sujit Saraf is saying to one of his actors.

Mugging – I haven't heard that since my history examinations in high school in Kolkata. But mugging is alive and well among the members of Naatak (naatak.com). As it should be.  On December 2, 3 and 4, Naatak is celebrating 10 years with a new play Everyone Loves a Good Tsunami, written and directed by Saraf.

"The play ridicules armchair philanthropy," says Saraf who as a student at UC Berkeley started Naatak with a fellow student. At that time they had found the Bay Area was home to many community organizations and cultural festivals. But there were no outlets for theater. So they announced an audition for Vijay Tendulkar's Khaamosh! Aadalat Jaari Hai.

They were unable to find a full cast through auditions. Those they found could speak Hindi but had lost the habit of reading Hindi. They had no theater to stage the play.  Half the cast were students at Berkeley, the other half were engineers in Silicon Valley – an hour away. The students had no cars, the engineers had day jobs. They had no idea how many people would show up for the actual show. Eventually some 250 people did and Naatak was born as an organization.

Now ten years later, Naatak is presenting its 22^nd production, with three films and plays in Hindi, Tamil and English under its belt and a solid reputation in the Bay Area.

And beyond.

"In ten years we'd like to be like Naatak," says Ninaad Vaidya, the managing director of Shunya (shunyatheatre.org), a three year-old theater group in Houston. From San Jose to Houston, from New York to Chicago., wherever there are major hubs of desis, community theater is springing up, fueled more with passion than paisa, relying on volunteers and enthusiasts to build sets, sell samosas, and of course, "mug" their lines.

Dramatis Personae

There are two kinds of desi community theater. Some like Naatak are made up largely of immigrants bringing Hindi, Tamil or Marathi theater to fellow desis. For example in Atlanta, Bengalis put on some dramatic production every Durga Puja. "But there the play is not the principal thing, it's a part of many programs and we cannot do full length one," says Pranab Lahiri. So Lahiri, a retired CPA and his friends decided to rent a theater and do a full scale Bengali play unaffiliated with any Durga Puja celebration. "We want to do just theater, nothing else," says Lahiri. They called their group Just Natak (justnatak.org).

But important as these plays were to immigrants nostalgic for a slice of home and memories of college plays in Mumbai or Kolkata, for their children, plays in Hindi or Bengali can't cross the language divide. Though they have grown up in America the second generation still felt the need to have theater they could call their own. "Houston had Gujarati, Malayalee, Tamil troupes but nothing in English for young South Asians," says Saraswati Kumar who just finished a stint as managing director of Shunya.

Seeing themselves on stage was important even for a generation that considered themselves as American as the kid next-door. "We want to be part of the story as South Asians, to be  related to other people in the story, not just always Apu or the neighbor," says Barnali Das explaining why eight twenty-something second gen South Asians came together to create Rasaka theater (rasakatheatre.org) in Chicago.

Rasaka was born when Anjalee Deshpande tried to workshop her play, Tamasha, in Chicago and roped in a group of South Asian actors. The serendipity of finding each other led them to explore the idea of doing a reading series. "It was a Tuesday night and we were sold out," remembers Das. And they realized there was something there larger than their individual passions.

Not all groups break down on generational lines. New York's Salaam theater company (SALAAMtheatre.org) founded by the indefatigable Geeta Citygirl tries to cross those lines. Puja Lalmalani discovered Salaam on her first weekend in New York and ended up as an associate artist with it. "At Salaam I worked with second generation people, newly arrived immigrants in their forties; I worked with Native American and African Americans," says Lalmalani now working with the American Conservatory Theater's A Christmas Carol in San Francisco.

Unlike Lalmalani or Rasaka's Das, most of the members of first generation groups like Naatak are not professionally trained. Naatak's cast and crew come from Silicon Valley engineers like Vijay Rajvaidya. "I did theater as an amateur in India and I always wanted to do more but life engulfs you and you can't get out of the whirlwind," says Rajvaidya. "Now this is my chance. I love being here."

But can you do theater on love alone?

The Script

The biggest problem is finding good scripts. When Naatak started 10 years ago, the novelty of hearing Hindi on stage was enough for the audience. Now as the audience grows older, settles into life with minivans and mortgages, "they can't really identify with a middle-class typist in Connaught Place," says Sujit Saraf. They have become neither completely Indian nor completely American, "somewhere in between Sageena Mahato and Willy Loman." And many of the Hindi plays he comes across, says Saraf are really "Hindi movies without good-looking faces written by mediocre leftists in flowery language."

As a result many theater companies have been looking at English plays from India. Naatak's most commercially successful production was Mahesh Dattani's Where There's A Will. Shunya staged  Dattani's Final Solutions. Dattani finds it interesting that diasporan groups find his plays set in modern India relevant to them.  Though the culture of the South Asian diaspora is in a different state of transition from the culture of modern India, Dattani says "identities, pushing boundaries, need for acceptance and love are all very universal and timeless themes."

But the very existence of these theater companies has also meant more work is coming from South Asians in America.  The Artwallah cultural festival in Los Angeles commissioned its own work from the South Asian Artists Collective (southasianartists.org) says SAAC president, Shilpa Agarwal. The play called House about an Indian immigrant planning to sell his house after the death of his wife really tapped into the breadth of the artistic talents of the community. "It had six scenes, a full score, two dance segments and two video segments," remembers Agarwal. "It allowed artists to collaborate to create something that had never been done before."

Of course creating your own work comes with its pitfalls. While a Vijay Tendulkar might have a Sahitya Academy-style gold seal of approval, some of the contemporary work created in the diaspora can raise hackles. SAAC's Agarwal remembers how some community members were taken aback by the play As Vishnu Dreams which radically retold the Ramayana, questioning Rama's goodness and raised prickly issues e.g. how someone labels someone else a terrorist.

Even more controversially, some South Asian groups are staging plays that having nothing to do with their ethnicity. Rasaka gave the testosterone-laden American classic – David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross a twist. The all-male all-American cast was played by South Asian women. "The same words, the same script-but it still gets changed by having all South Asian actors," says Rasaka's Barnali Das.

The Cast and Crew

OK, so now you have a script, home-grown or imported from the desh. How do you put together a cast and crew? 

"We put the word out on email for auditions," says Naatak's Saraf. Response can be unpredictable. During the audition of the Hindi play Tathaa Kuru he put up poems on the website that wanna-be actors would have to memorize. Very few people showed up.

On the other hand in Chicago, playwright William Kovacsik though his South Asian-themed play The Masrayana would have at most one Indian actor because he didn't know where to find more. Until he and Rasaka found each other. Barnali Das remembers crying on closing night. "There was a standing ovation and I looked around and thought we had come a long way from meeting in each other's apartments."

Over in Washington D.C. Manju Gupta knows that feeling. D.C.'s Natya Bharati (natyabharati.org) has been staging Hindi plays since 1984. Gupta says the first time she heard about a Hindi play in D.C. she had to go see it. "I cried just from the fact of seeing a Hindi play in Washington D.C.," she recalls. Now she is the president of Natya Bharati.

Many of Naatak's members also started out as audience members. Now they come on as actors, sometimes as producers or publicists. And if they have a good script some even come on as playwrights. "Initially I thought it was all about the acting," says Shunya's Ninaad Vaidya. "Now I know it's more about collaboration."

Manju Gupta remembers how once an Indian taxi driver showed up an audition having heard about Natya Bharati on a Hindi music radio program. He got a couple of lines in an office scene. He ended up on professional stage in Washington D.C. playing a butler. "He had no lines but in the program notes he said his Washington debut was with Natya Bharati," chuckles Gupta.

But it's still hard. The cast has to juggle jobs, kids and families putting aside hours every weekend for months on end, rehearsing in each other's houses. Gupta is a CPA. Ninaad Vaidya is an electrical engineer. "It's tough because I have a five year-old son but my husband helps me," says Naatak cast member Sayantanee Dutt who used to act in Bengali plays in Kolkata. "I encourage him with his football and cricket and he eggs me on with my theater."

The Cash

There's a script. The cast has mugged its lines. But before you rent that theater you need cash. Actually to even launch a theater company you need cold hard cash.

"The big challenge is financially what it takes to launch a theater company," says Salaam's Lalmalani. About ten people chipped in a hundred dollars each to create Just Naatak in Atlanta. The first eight members of Rasaka pooled their money together to register it as a non-profit.

By registering as 501©(3) non-profits, some of the theater companies are now applying for arts grants. Others are too small to do that but have found other local theater groups who help them out with crew and technicians. Friends construct websites, volunteer as ushers. And when all else fails says SAAC's Shilpa Agarwal you host a fundraiser.

The goal is to be as professional as possible. That means says Natya Bharati's Gupta they rent a proper theater not a school auditorium even though that swallows up the bulk of the approximately $7,000 budget of each play. It also means says Just Natak's Pranab Lahiri that they had to have Bengali speakers guiding the American technicians with lighting cues.

But they find hope in other groups like Houston's African American Ensemble Theatre. Now the largest African American theater company in the country with a four million dollar facility, it started says Shunya's Saraswati Kumar, in a church basement.

The Audience

So we have a play, a director, a cast and crew and have booked a playhouse. Now who's coming to see it? In the end most desi community theater companies rely on ticket sales to keep going. Naatak's Saraf has a rough formula for ticket sales. "15x + 200 where 200 is the base core audience and X is the number of actors in the play." Saraf grins and looks around at his cast as they take a coffee break. "How many tickets have you each sold?" he asks.

It's a struggle says Barnali Das of Rasaka. "The South Asian community supports dance groups, music groups," says Das. "But people still complain about paying 25 dollars for a theater ticket." Of course, people pay that and more to watch Salman Khan dance.

Naatak's Saraf says while their plays have a loyal core group of "single or newly-married engineer types" thinking man's theater is not everyone's idea of time-pass. He knows Naatak will never have the type of mass audiences that enjoy something like "Shaadi Ek Barbaadi type of miya biwi comedies."

Nowadays Bollywood stars like Jaya Bachchan and Paresh Rawal are coming to the US with their own plays. But community theater is different. "Those plays with stars are here to make money. They rent high school auditoriums with no air conditioning to keep costs low," says Natya Bharati's Manju Gupta. "We are not here to make money. We already have jobs. We want to keep the culture alive."

"(Salaam founder) Geeta says we get art and activism mixed up," says Puja Lalmalani who sees Salaam plays as a "place to start a dialogue, an opportunity to talk to the audience and one another."

Encore

The longevity of groups like Naatak and Natya Bharati, the rise of new groups like Rasaka and Shunya all point to a growing audience and a hungry one. But it also highlights some of the challenges.

The person who always did Natya Bharati's sets just had a bypass. Other longtime members are getting older and less active and Manju Gupta says younger immigrants from India  "seem less interested in doing plays or seeing plays, preferring to go to movies instead."

A generation apart and hundreds of miles away, Rasaka's Barnali Das agrees. Though Rasaka's audiences were originally largely second gen, now many of their parents' generation "even those whose kids are NOT in the play are coming." But, says Das, "we haven't been able to tap into those coming from India who are our age, twenty-somethings with no kids."

And there is the perennial issue of venue – the single biggest financial headache for any theater company. Naatak's Saraf dreams of having a permanent place where they could do more plays a year, smaller ones with better sets because he feels their scripts are on par with professional theater but the production quality could be better. "And I'd love to take Naatak plays to other cities," says Saraf.

But for now he's hustling his actors to give their best, recreating the living room of a Silicon Valley tycoon in the makeshift rehearsal space with straggly streamers from some birthday party on the whitewashed wall.  They have to keep their voices down because there is a meeting going on next door. "Ting Tong," says Saraf pretending to be a doorbell. Then he rushes across the room to guide his actress to the door. "Bhabhi, you are not reacting fast enough," he says. "We want to avoid too much silence on stage. Let's try it again." And they do.