Adaptations of classics accounted for most of the new productions from other parts of India at Nandikar’s 33rd National Theatre Festival. They included Shaw’s Pygmalion and Osborne’s Look Back in Anger in Hindi, from Delhi. Both compress their sources unwarrantedly, reducing the level of complexity, but relatively speaking, Flying Feathers
Hardly anyone writes drama on esoteric subjects in science, so it caused rare pleasure to view two plays based on physics that came to town. Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, a contemporary classic abroad, has had a decent Indian run in the production by Centre for Film and Drama (Bengaluru). Our city
Magic and the supernatural pervade two Bengali plays revived. Ekush Shatak goes back to one of Mohit Chattopadhyaya’s earliest, the poetic and elusive Nishād (1968), which one can interpret in various ways. It prophesies that the doctor protagonist will die twice and be reborn, his survival a third time depending
Bengali theatre has revived significant adaptations from the 1980s of two international classics dating to the mid-20th century: Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953) and Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit (1956). Both originally carried extraordinary political reverberations regarding the collective betrayal by a community of its own members. Audiences can judge for
Exchange visits at the national level by young groups enable us to view promising new acts that we normally do not get to see. Natak Company (Pune) and our Mad About Drama met at the Thespo Festival, Mumbai, and worked out a mutually beneficial arrangement whereby each hosts the other,
One rejoices when a group from a district town springs a surprise, exploding the unfair stereotype that nothing artistically inventive happens in the suburbs. Barasat Kalpik has made a mark in theatre circles with their shorter plays, including a visit to the Thespo festival in Mumbai; still, that did not
New initiatives to promote theatre nationally deserve unstinted applause, always, because experience tells us that these good intentions do not last beyond four or five years — for whatever reason, the organizers back out. The possibilities of qualifying under the central government’s Corporate Social Responsibility rules do not seem to
International Women’s Day triggers these musings. All-women plays transformed Western theatre in the 1970s and 1980s, rebelling against the conventional shortage of female roles, but Indian theatre never followed this important movement. Rangakarmee’s Saptaparni, featuring seven ladies directing seven solo actresses, marks a refreshing change, but the chance goes abegging
The inexcusable neglect of Indian classical literature in our education results, among other things, in a subsidiary neglect of Sanskrit drama by contemporary Indian theatre. The societal assumption is that these ancient texts have no relevance to our times. Tellingly, Bengali directors revive Greek and Roman tragedies with greater regularity
News about a couple of nationally successful productions preceded their arrival last weekend. Yugpurush: Mahatma na Mahatma celebrated its 300th (not a misprint) show — counting all three versions in Gujarati, Hindi and Kannada so far — in Kolkata, courtesy of Centre Stage Creations. Having opened just a few months
Disability representation has had trailblazing exponents in Kolkata theatre history, and new productions follow in their wake. The standard approach involves a regular troupe depicting the story of a differently-abled character sympathetically. On the other hand, we have a few groups comprising disabled member-performers expressing their diverse artistic impulses. Sohan
British genres of stage entertainment drive the new productions of two recently-formed city groups led by veterans. After debuting with Joe Orton’s subversive bedroom comedy What the Butler Saw, Dramatics Calcutta picks a whodunit, whereas The Ultimate Theatre does the reverse, regressing into West End sex farce after having adapted
