Almost as if timed for election season, two plays sourced from Malayalam and Bengali stories respectively focus on the creation of political figures. Both follow similar upswings in the fortunes of two less-than-ordinary men catapulted to power ludicrously by things over which they had no control. Both recall Brecht’s depiction
The trio of recent big-ticket imports from Mumbai gave us a variety of original drama, but none fully satisfying. Mahesh Dattani’s latest work, Gauhar by the Primetime Theatre Company, the most eagerly awaited of them, also was so outrageously overpriced that it effectively excluded genuine aficionados of music and theatre
The Narada (from ancient myth, not nascent media) of Kolkata theatre, Vinay Sharma, follows the footsteps of the sage who used to interrogate the gods with awkward questions that none could answer. He does this twice in quick succession, on two new plays written and directed by him, produced by
Supernatural figments who help in transcending the travails of ordinary lives reappear in an original Bengali drama and in a twist on a famous Upendrakishore tale celebrating its centenary. Nat-ranga’s Abārita, by Sohan Bandopadhyay, finds an author suffering from writer’s block as well as professional and personal troubles. Out of
Ganakrishti has turned quite prolific this year, producing two original plays within a few months. Their long-term partnership with Slovenian dramatist Evald Flisar continues, group director Amitava Dutta adapting Flisar’s two-hander, Take Me into Your Hands, as Tomār Āmi. Scripts for two actors have become common in Western theatre, because
The quatercentenary of Shakespeare’s death seems to have caught many more people’s fancy than his 450th birth anniversary that passed relatively unsung two years ago. At a panel discussion the other day I had suggested that, while we acknowledge his undoubted dramatic genius, we should not let it cloud our
Visiting artists performed self-composed plays recently, based on life history and first-hand information respectively. From Hyderabad, Rangadhara Theatre Stream and Sutradhar brought Main Rahi Masoom, a monologue on Rahi Masoom Raza, famous as the scriptwriter of B.R. Chopra’s Mahābhārata. Vinay Varma’s one-man show presented Raza in his study, at his
With I Don’t Like It As You Like It, presented by Centre Stage Creations, Cinematograph notches up its fourth Shakespearean appropriation in eight years employing Rajat Kapoor’s directorial concept of clowns. We should take notice of this magnificent obsession; after all, he has overtaken even Vishal Bhardwaj’s trio, leave alone
Dramatization of fiction raises several problems exemplified by two new Bengali productions. Both should garner popularity, but how closely do they manifest their mid-20th century sources? Anya Theatre’s Nati Kiranshashi, written by Ujjwal Chattopadhyay, comes from Bimal Kar’s short story Pingalār Prem, about a professional heroine who toys with the
Thanks to the controversy generated when the University of Delhi unjustly dropped it from its syllabus five years ago, A. K. Ramanujan’s essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas” had placed in the public eye the academically known fact that India possesses multifarious variations of its mythological tales. Manoj Mitra stitched a handful
Theatrecian has taken a fancy to tried and tested murder drama in its last two productions. In Frederick Knott’s Dial M for Murder, the police nab the plotter of a botched murder and free his wife, who killed the would-be hitman in self-defence. In 12 Angry Women, the all-female version
This month, Theatre Workshop became the sixth among the Bengali group theatre movement to reach the magic milestone of a golden jubilee – after Bohurupee, Little Theatre Group/People’s Little Theatre, Sundaram, Shouvanik and Nandikar respectively. So many others have perished along the way; these persevered, through collective organizational ability or
