In early 1850s, the students of Elphinstone College in Mumbai had formed a dramatic society and started performing Shakespeare.
[5] The first Parsi Theatre company called "Pārsī Nāṭak Maṇḍali" performed their first play Roostum Zabooli and Sohrab in 1853, followed by King Afrasiab and Rustom Pehlvan and Pādśāh Faredun.
As Parsi theatre companies started travelling across North India, they employed native writers to churn out scripts in Hindustani language, mix of Hindi and Urdu.
[9] Later Parsi plays "blended realism and fantasy, music and dance, narrative and spectacle, earthy dialogue and ingenuity of stage presentation, integrating them into a dramatic discourse of melodrama".
For mass appeal the plays incorporated humour, melodious songs and music, sensationalism and stagecraft.