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The Matinee Theatre, a new company in Lucknow, is redefining the city's theatre scene with innovative performances in unconventional spaces, aiming to revive its rich storytelling heritage rooted in Urdu poetry, dastangoi, and Hindi classics.
Ask someone to name India’s theatre cities and the list is predictable: Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore. These are cities with ticketing apps, dedicated auditoriums and audiences used to booking a weekend show. Lucknow rarely makes the list. The Matinee Theatre, a young company founded in the city this year, is quietly arguing that it should.
Lucknow’s theatre history is long and entirely its own. A city shaped by tehzeeb, Urdu poetry and dastangoi has never lacked storytellers. For decades its stages, centred on Bhartendu Natya Academy and Sangeet Natak Akademi, carried Hindi classics like Ashadh Ka Ek Din and Andha Yug, alongside Urdu and Awadhi adaptations of Premchand and Manto. Raj Bisaria, who founded the Academy, even brought Sartre and Pinter to the city. English-language theatre, though, never found a regular home.
That gap is where Aman Shah and Shubhra Pandey stepped in. Shah trained under Bisaria and later worked as a stand-in on screen productions in Mumbai, where he grew tired of waiting to be cast. Pandey, a former radio jockey, grew up in Lucknow’s green rooms watching her actor-mother. In July, Shah adapted Chekhov’s two-hander The Bear in a single night, and rehearsals began the next day, with the two directing each other. They debuted on 7 August and sold out.
With no permanent hall, they rehearsed over coffee at a Gomti Nagar café and rented studios by the hour. The debut took place in a run-down space, the Buddha International Centre. Then came the Lucknow Museum of Art and Heritage, whose open courtyard and small amphitheatre were built for panel talks and screenings, not plays. They staged three shows in one afternoon and sold out every slot. T
The sets come from their own homes, with sofas, rugs and lamps carried over, and Pandey brings fresh flowers from the Phool Mandi each morning. There is no lamp-lighting and there are no VIPs, only the play.
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