Category Archives: Play Review

Sadarame – Rangashankara

Posted on March 17, 2009 by Rk
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This is one of the plays I kept hearing about but couldn’t watch it before. Coming from B Jayashri’s team, this is one of those “typical” plays — from which the Indian movies can be said to have originated from — complete with actors singing, drama punctuated by songs/dances and sometimes with a laughter sidetrack.

The story is about a prince who opposes his marriage until he falls for a beautiful woman, Sadarame. Sadarame’s father & grandfather are cunning misers and demand to be crowned in exchange for the daughter’s wedding. King, very eager to get his son married, accepts to this demand. Sadarame and her husband, wander away to another province and find it difficult to survive having exhausted the money.
Sadarame’s husband approaches the prince of the land, who is lusty and lures Sadarame for marriage. She hatches a plan for delaying marriage and plans to escape with husband. Again, a thief overhears her plan and acts as her husband and takes her away and ask her to marry him. She again manages to escape from the thief and lands in another state, and remains impersonated as a man. She, having survived a challenge qualifies to marry the princess of the state. She discloses her true self to the princess, yet remains king until she finds her husband back. After which all three stay together (yeah !), and the cheats get punished.

Main plot as described above at times looked like a thin sketch, it was about other parts – often the side track, that evoked much laughter. For example, of course the masterly act of the thief by B Jayashri herself is priceless – her energy level, her lung power, her singing – and that of a male thief’s make-up was wonderful. And then there was a drunkard singing and mouthing dialogs – his acting was brilliant. The song sequences – the actors singing themselves with simple lyrics – were though good (esp by the hero), but it eloborated too much than required at places. Likewise a scene of bargaining and cheating by Sadarame’s father went on and on. Also I could not follow many Telugu dialogs spoken by him. But Dingri Nagaraj was fantastic and had the audience split with his timings and humour. I also felt, may be this play required more than 2 hours of time and they did considerable editing – especially the challenge which Sadarame wins, was just told in words and had no scene to it and looked abrupt. It reminded me of the TV channels chopping the scenes to accommodate advertisements. Wondered why there was no character introduction at the end of the play. Finally a mention has to be made about the colorful and eloborate stage preparation mostly with the apt giant screens.

Overall: As the pamphlet suggested, the play displayed “navrasas”, the humour being very strong. As such it was an enjoyable experience. The story let me down, but the performances were superlative.

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All you need is love

Posted on February 23, 2009 by Rk

“All you need is love” was the play presented by “Yours Truly theatre” on Sunday Feb 22nd at Nayana auditorium. There were two shows of the same – yet since this is an interactive theatre in playback format, each show is unique. In playback format, to put briefly, the input from audience is enacted on the stage. I was quite curious to see this happening and my reaction is mixed.

There were multiple parts to the show – the first one being, what they called, “fluids”. Answers to questions like “what does love mean to you”, “what would happen if there was only love”, were collected from audience and the actors on stage enacted a depiction of it. This happened for few rounds. What was interesting in this was in the way the actors enacted the meanings – it could be straight forward interpretation, or by adding a touch of humour, or by a means of sarcasm. It made me realize there were many ways of looking at same thing and I feel if ..if I can creatively imagine on the similar lines, my gazing-out-of-window-during-busy-traffic-hours could get just a little more engaging and colorful.

There was a round of fluid for the audience reactions to the show…which was a nice touch.

Overall some of the interpretations were not convincing to me..or may be it is just me, I can’t take all ! But some others were apt. And there were many hilarious moments – especially when we are aware that it is impromptu show – the timing and situational comedy was good. As an audience later said, the process and in turn the actors seem to be very intelligent.

The second part was about depiction of a conflict. A deep conflict, for eg, in the second show an audience mentioned “Is love enough for marriage, should one marry at all, or isn’t there a life beyond that” as a conflict. It was a conflict to me few months ago and I found an answer – two infact , one the ideal and second the practical – and it ceased to be a conflict to me. However,in the show, it was a much welcome conflict to ponder upon rather than other futile conflicts that could have come up. Conflicts too, were enacted by three pairs in their own way and the audience-whose conflict was selected- was given a chance to choose which of the three pairs came close to what he/she had in mind. It must have been an unique and strange satisfaction to see the demons/thought of the mind take the form of words and interpretations and en-act on the stage.

The third part was, the actual story being enacted on stage. For this, one of the audience was asked to narrate their story and the actors will act the story in a dramatic way on the stage. The story in the first show was about a job-seeker being helped with a bus ticket by a stranger was not strong on the plot – as per me(because personally, have been through very strong emotions and turmoil…) The emotions or the story wasn’t as profound as the second show’s story. However, the actors did a nice job of highlighting the north-south divide which was just an after thought in the story but it took good shape in the play.

(However as an aside, those who complain about the north-south divide troubling them in Bangalore – in my Bengaluru which embraces everyone without complaining – should really go to Chennai(I did live there, to support my claim) – as the character does go, in this story. Ironically, that character must have realized what a comfortable place Bangalore is, compared to Chennai; I wished this could come out in the play – but it was out of context I guess.)

Comparatively the second story,that of a grandson who hated his grandfather for his discipline while he was alive; but after reading his diary realizes how much care and love his grandfather really had towards him; the soft heart he had beneath the hard outlook. This plot was profound and had a depth of substance; and the actors did superb justice to it.

As is evident, the half the strength of part of the show – for a viewer – lies in the story. If the story is quite substantial – as it was in the second show than the first – the play results in an experience to remember. More the depth-> little more the duration of the play->better the engagement with the audience and a better experience/memory. The co-ordination, flow (the speed), energy and performance as a whole – with acting and music – was quite an entertaining and engaging experience. The only grouse is, this format requires a good story from the audience.

That said, the joy to see one’s story on stage, in full colour and music, must be overwhelming ! Especially to a person like me – I see my story or can relate to an incident or a personality in most of the movies;either to me or to a person I know. Again I was silent for most part of the audience interaction – except for one or two sound bites – otherwise just trying to capture and dissect; to assimilate and analyse the audience’ thoughts and beliefs. But one day, some day.. I will have a story – a grand one.

Uff, the perils of an interactive theatre. And aah, the joys of the same.

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Attakkalari Dance Festival

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Rk

International Contemporary dance festival – attakkalari, happened in Bangalore for last 10 days, spread over at different venues. I happened to watch 2 of them, a briefing of the same follows.
Cosmic dance of Shiva
The first one was “Cosmic dance of Shiva”. Shiva, as is known to all, is a king of dances – Nataraja. And his “tandava nrutya” – rudra tandava to be specific- is as full of aggressiveness and passion as it could get. As wikipedia says,

The dance is a pictorial allegory of the five principal manifestations of eternal energy:
‘Shrishti’ – creation, evolution
‘Sthiti’ – preservation, support
‘Samhara’ – destruction, evolution
‘Tirobhava’ – illusion
‘Anugraha’ – release, emancipation, grace
Thus Tandava symbolizes the cosmic cycles of creation and destruction, as well as the daily rhythm of birth and death.

I have always enjoyed the (almost same) music and the dance in mythological scenes in movies or in tv. It is usually when Shiva gets angry, he breaks into a dance!

So, I was expecting to watch something on similar lines. But what I watched has stunned me. The performance, by “Samudra” , was visually beautiful and colorful due to the costumes and lighting. But the dance and music ( music was very varied) itself were even better. The rthythmic movements mostly showcasing different yogic postures (and probably different forms of dances ) were a visual treat. I did try to notice the happy and anger facial expressions but I could not relate the dance to any “sequence/event/meaning” – it was supposed to have a meaning which I came to know during post-show discussion.
However the show has motivated me to try Yoga, sometime.

Extended teenage Era…
This was a performance by Samir Akika, is about study of young artists that learn well but without a job – as per the description.

This was at Chowdiah memorial hall, where I wanted to attend a performance since – the time I went too early for a Evam show of FPS (which I could never watch it, alas) and returned. Its architecture and the environment itself is so arty that I feel good being there.

The show started with a lady instructing the audience about the “don’ts” in an ironical way and was funny. More impressing was her voice and speaking which was so musical and warm that I feel should be used for some philosophical discourse.

Once the performance started by one of the artists, other artists got busy with their work – tearing pages, using cardboard to build boxes or hang postures. The whole stage was their workplace and this went on for the entire show. This initially created a distraction or restless and informal happening on the stage, it slowly became a part of the performance and culminated in a wonderfully surprising way (see below).

The characters were an ensemble of different nationality or cutlure, but supposedly of same age except a small kid – who was thoroughly cute and unbelievable at times. I not only doubted if such small kid could do anything on being told, but to imagine him to rehearse or to do anything on time was beyond my imagination. Probably the impromptu environment could have helped, where he could do anything and still it looks like a part of the performance, but not to take away any credit from him – he did dance quite spectacularly for his age and shouted beats perfectly.

Rest of the characters, each an expert in dance – I am not sure if I could call it dance at all , because it included many things – at one point I wondered if they were straight out of a circus company for they performed gymnastics. Other times too, it was an intense – and sometimes shocking – body movements and jumping around, but there were well choreographed chorus dancing too. Even in the most unconventional movements, what were clearly visible were energy and the beautiful synchronization – a cursor to the amount of extra-ordinary effort that must have gone into the practice – they later said they stayed as a family for 2 months – yet 2 months is not much for the kind of show they put.

I enjoyed the dance and the music, though I didn’t relate it to the narrative or the main plot .. I could realize it was either an angst put out in dance or a celebration. The plot in general moved with childhood memories – the association with pets, the growing up – a superb recital of A for __ to Z for __ with totally unconventional words – probably poking fun at the conventional A for Apple stuff, was funny. The “follow rules” for a slightly grown up kid where parents start suggesting the right ways to sit, stand, walk, even about cleanliness – was humourosly-symbolically represented by a person who learns to sit and eat. Identity crisis was presented as a game (like 20questions). There was a slight touch upon –fear and love – two prominent emotions that suddenly get highlighted(uh,blame on hormones) in pre-teen or teenage. A monologue that followed, which tried to exemplify the beauty of solitude – am sure was a subtle satire on love failure , will be very disappointed if I am wrong. Except that I liked that I got to hear to my favorite concepts – time is important, lost time is gone forever, time is the most precious gift one can give other.

The entire duration was frequently punctuated by a dance or a monologue (a breakfast monologue – totally unrelated or disconnected, as per me, was humorous because of his presentation and delivery. I didn’t get the jokes – it was related to breakfast of Germany,probably boring and monotonic – but yet I could laugh and enjoy.) and while all this, other cast members were busy constructing some random objects – or so they seemed. At the culmination of the show the entire stage was full with those constructed objects – and looked quite chaotically beautiful –formed a part of chain-reaction setup (I found a name to this kind of setup -Rube Goldberg machine ) over the entire stage with all carefully planted objects – that it finally made sense. And that chain-reaction was brilliant too.

With all the plus, a minor grouse – at many times, so many things were happening in parallel on stage that I found it hard to switch eyes from one to anohter and had confusion where to look or what to concentrate on. Also, if only I could relate more to the dance , monologues.

In total, a performance, contemporary and unconventional, which was so full of energy and vibrant, which must be a result of tremendous effort and rehearsal – so much so that, it looked casual and informal – at a level it probably was informal and impromptu, brilliant dances/body movements to good range of music – such magnificant canvas and such art – the package created fans and deserved the repeated standing ovation it got from the audience.

Ps: If my writing is unstructured, grammatically incorrect, sentence formation confusing – good, I am currently influenced by the unconventional show and am on my way to do unconventional, chaotic perhaps, writing. To hell with editing and correction and all – I want to write free flow; but, to the extent that interested/curious reader must/will get the point.
Pps:
This is a famous video that shows Rube Goldberg Machine ..

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