San Francisco Frontiers - Chennai venue launches month-long festival devoted to full-length theatre

A Chennai arts venue has launched CUE, a month-long theatre festival designed to give full-length productions dedicated performance slots at a time when short-form entertainment is expanding online and on stage. Arena - The Art Experience, an independent multifunctional venue on East Coast Road, is organizing the festival from October 25 to November 29. Nine theatre groups are participating, with each team presenting one complete production rather than sharing a programme of several short plays.

Aadithiya Raajan, founder of Showboats Production and a co-founder of Arena, said performing a 70-minute work requires a different approach from staging a ten-minute play. Organizers created CUE to promote longer narratives and allow each company to perform for its own audience. Because Arena owns the venue, the festival does not carry the additional rental expense normally associated with hiring a theatre. Organizers said every participating team would receive 50 percent of the ticket revenue from its performance, regardless of whether it wins a prize, providing some direct compensation to the artists.

CUE received about 15 submissions from across India, including entries from Kerala and West Bengal. The final selection focused mainly on Tamil- and English-language productions because the evaluation process could not accommodate every language represented in the applications. The festival opened with Naamellam Adhan Meley on October 25 and Blackbird on November 1. Competitive performances, including musicals and commercial plays, were scheduled to resume during the following week.

The programme will conclude on November 29 with Thalaivan Irukkiran, a showcase production by Showboats directed by Raajan and Mukesh. Organizers also plan to announce the results and hold a gala at a nearby secondary venue. The closing event is intended to bring together theatre artists and representatives from the media and film industries, giving participants an opportunity to build professional connections beyond the performances themselves.

Raajan said the team wants CUE to become a recurring, recognizable event on Chennai’s arts calendar while remaining compact enough to retain a clear identity. He argued that live theatre offers an immediate form of performance that cannot be reproduced on a screen and requires continued support to reach wider audiences. By assigning each company a separate date, revenue share and full running time, the organizers hope to create conditions in which longer productions can develop an audience without competing for attention inside a mixed short-play programme.

V.Mitchell--SFF