Shunya is a theatre company in Houston, with one small detail differentiating it from the other theatre companies in Houston: it is the first and only one focusing on Indo-American drama. The com-pany's latest production, Hayavadana, finished its run last weekend, but donmt worry if you didnmt catch it: the company is planning to perform another play soon.

I had the opportunity to sit down with some of the troupe members before a rehearsal recently, and I was curious to see what experiences they had previously had with theatre and what they intended to accomplish with the company.

Soham Mehta, the artistic director and a founder of the troupe, said that a major goal with the company is to put on three productions a year. Before Hayavadana, the troupe had performed Reincarnation and Triple Bill, a collection of three one-act plays. All three shows have proved to be a success so far, with very enthusiastic responses from both the Houston theatre and Indian communities.

Mehta told me about his background, as well as what gave him the idea for Shunya. He was a triple major in theatre, computer science, and Plan II at the University of Texas. After graduating, he moved to Houston and while working with theatre groups around town, he found there was 'a real hunger' for Indian-American theatre. He immediately started calling up old theatre friends and began laying the groundwork for Shunya.

One of those old theatre friends was Guru Singh, who worked with Mehta on Reincarnation in Austin. I asked Singh how many aspiring desi actors there were in Houston. He surprised me by telling me that casting is actually quite a difficult process because so many fantastic people show up for auditions. For example, for Reincarnation, forty people showed up to try out for eight roles, and for Hayavadana, another forty people showed up for ten roles.

The troupe is comprised of theatre enthusiasts who pursue acting in the evenings, after their day jobs. But the fine performers are by no means amateurs: almost everyone has previous acting experience, either in school, college, or community theatre. Some also have formal training, such as Eswari Raja, who played the main character, Padmini, in Hayavadana. Raja said she had studied acting and dance both here in the US and in India. Danny Uddin and Chaitan Jain, who played Kapila and Devadatta, the other two major characters in Hayavadana, also had some previous acting experience at school and in community theatre.

A big question I wanted to ask was if the troupe was attracting non-Indians to its performances. Mehta said they are attracting non-Indians for a few reasons. Obviously, several troupe members have non-Indian friends who attend performances, but also, he said many regular theatregoers read about the productions in the newspaper and then go to see the show. "One of our goals from the onset was to become a theatre troupe that is Indian-American, much like a Hispanic-American troupe or an African-American troupe. We did not want to be an
Indian cultural organization. We wanted to be taken seriously by the Houston theatre scene. That's one of the reasons that we always do our plays at a true theatre (venue) rather than an auditorium and always have multi-show runs."

This dedication to 'true' theatre is reflected in the plays the troupe has performed. While the first two productions were comprised of plays written by Indian Americans, Hayavadana was written by an Indian, Girish Karnad. I asked Mehta if he had chosen an Indian playwright instead of an Indian-American playwright because of a dearth of scripts by Indian-American authors. He replied by telling me that his main goal with the company was to produce good theatre, regardless of its author. "It's difficult to find plays by Indian-Americans, but that's not the only reason that we turned to Hayavadana. Itms really just an incredible script. True, we want to provide a voice to the Indian-American experience, but that can manifest itself in many ways. It doesn't have to limit us to only doing plays written by Indian-Americans. Just by virtue of the fact that we are Indian-Americans, we will bring that to anything that we touch.

I can guarantee that our production of Hayavadana will be different than the original Kannada production of it. Our background is a mixed one, and that will be reflected in the choices we make even when we stage something by an Indian playwright or by an American playwright. When reading scripts, I always ask myself, "What can we bring to this script, and what will our audience get out of our production? If there's nothing unique that we can bring to a script, then there's no point in doing it."

Although only a year old, Shunya has already made its presence felt on the Houston scene, which is not an easy task in the difficult world of theatre. The company is planning to rest for a bit, but it won't be long before casting and rehearsals begin for its next production, scheduled for this spring. Mehta enthusiastically says he has the same goals in the upcoming season as he's had since the beginning: "To show people that there is a vibrant Indian artistic movement outside of New York and California. To move our audience and give them a unique theatrical experience that they cannot find anywhere else. To celebrate who we are. A bit lofty? Sure, but you have to be. If my feet were planted firmly on the ground, I wouldnmt be doing this."

You can find out more about Shunya at www.shunyatheatre.org.