Grey Heads, Empty Rows

At a theatre festival filled with legends, the loudest absence in the room was my own generation.

"Watching Anupam Kher live was exciting. Being one of the only Gen Zs there wasn’t." image: google, Illustration- Hansika Kohli

By Aryaki Verma

I : something mildly embarrassing about my generation while sitting inside Siri Fort Auditorium last November.

My generation will happily stand in a sweaty crowd for five hours at a concert, scream lyrics we barely remember, and spend ₹7,000 on tickets without thinking twice. But ask us to sit quietly in a theatre for two hours and suddenly everyone has “assignments,” “plans,” or a mysterious need to stay home and “recharge.”

The Delhi Theatre Festival, held from 15th to 17th November 2025, had everything one would expect from a serious cultural event: dimmed lights, hushed conversations, and a lineup featuring veterans like Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher. The stage carried the quiet electricity that only live performance can produce.

But when I looked around the hall, something was unmistakably missing.

Young people.

From the balcony, the audience looked less like a cultural festival and more like an alumni reunion. Rows of white and grey heads filled the auditorium with remarkable discipline, the kind of audience that listens carefully and applauds with intention. Somewhere between them sat a handful of confused Gen Z attendees — including me.

Ticket prices for the festival ranged roughly between ₹500 and ₹10,000 depending on the performance and seating. I paid around ₹3,000 for a seat at the back where the actors appeared slightly smaller than I had hoped. Was it expensive? Perhaps.

But let’s be honest. Gen Z spends far more on concert tickets, limited-edition sneakers, and cafés that charge ₹450 for something described as “artisanal iced coffee.”

So clearly, the problem isn’t money.

The problem is patience.

"How can someone sit straight for 2 hours with notifications and food in a theatre?", asked Priyaki Verma, a political science student at Delhi University. -Reveal the very truth of theatre vs cinema.

Theatre demands something modern entertainment rarely does: full attention. A play unfolds in real time. There are no cuts, no retakes, no clever editing tricks. An actor steps onto the stage and performs the story once, live. No notifications buzzing in your pocket, no pause button, and certainly no popcorn breaks every ten minutes. A situation that, for many people my age, already sounds mildly terrifying.

And yet that is precisely where the beauty of theatre lies. Mistakes are not edited out; they are improvised. A forgotten line becomes a moment of creativity. A dropped prop becomes part of the story. Every performance exists only once. What the audience witnesses in that moment will never happen in exactly the same way again.

I was reminded of this recently at Revive Studio in Okhla during a theatrical dance intensive where I performed in the final showcase. Weeks of rehearsals had gone into shaping the piece. 

When the performance began, barely fifteen people were sitting in the audience.

Standing on stage, smiling through choreography, I remember wondering: where is everyone?

'Unfortunately, some performances which put in a lot of hardwork, have no audience to witness.' Credits: Getty Images, Simon Skafar

This is the strange contradiction of Gen Z. We proudly call ourselves creative. Our social media bios proudly announce “artist,” “creative soul,” or “culture lover.” We celebrate aesthetics and romanticise art.

Yet the very art form that shaped storytelling itself — theatre — often sits quietly ignored.

Ironically, Delhi offers plenty of opportunities to watch live performances. Spaces like Triveni Kala Sangam, Lalit Kala Akademi, and the theatres around Mandi House regularly host plays that are free or extremely affordable.

Access is not the issue. Attention is.

Sanya Chauhan, a theatre practitioner from the Theatre-Dance Intensive in Delhi who performed in Blackout at IFBC Studio, believes the disconnect is cultural. “People forget theatre shaped storytelling long before cinema existed,” she says. “When young audiences stop coming, it’s not just seats that go empty — it’s legacy.”

We still admire artists, but from a distance. Reels are celebrated, not rehearsals.

Maybe the next time we choose a two-hour screen experience, we should ask ourselves a simple question: when did we stop showing up for stories told live?

Because once the grey heads disappear, who will be left to clap?

"Only people with experience value art, which young people often ignore." Credits: Siri Fort Auditorium