Thursday 26 January 2017

500 Theatre Lovers Gathered For a Sleepover in Pune and It Was Awesome.

It's 5am in the morning. 500 people have been sitting in an auditorium for the last 8 hours and have witnessed three mind blowing plays. They refuse to budge. Instead they sit there for 3 more hours to watch another couple of plays, all of them written by under-30 year olds.


The city of Pune witnessed a historic occasion on Jan 25th, 2017. It hosted the very first Natyasattak Rajani, an overnight event of 5 terrific plays showcasing some of it's finest young talents. When the audience walked in at 9 o'clock in the night, there was an unmatchable energetic buzz. When they walked out at around 8 o'clock the next morning, they were overwhelmed, exhausted but exhilarated. It was a magical night and personally, I wouldn't hesitate to call it the best experience I've ever had in the theatre.

Here's a brief about the five plays that were curated:

White Rabbit Red Rabbit
An actor gets the script written by an Iranian playwright (Nassim Soleimanpour) directly on stage. With zero clue about what is in store, he performs the play. A new actor performs every show.
In this show, ace actor Girish Kulkarni stepped onto stage amidst thunderous applause. The applause refused to die out right till the end of the show. In the middle when he paused to ask the audience, "are you with me?", the resounding yes was almost reminiscent of a cheesy Rishi Kapoor song.

Binkamache Sanwad
An abstract and layered play, Binkamache Sanwad is a dark, hilarious and hard-hitting commentary on the social situation in the country. With a very strong ensemble, the play manages to make a powerful impact.
I had seen this play two years ago; it is scary how increasingly relatable it has gotten over time. What is also incredible is how much every line in the play has to offer even in the lightest moments. And the non-Marathi friend I was watching it with, not only understood the whole thing despite the language but was also as affected as I was.

Bhanvar
A night watchman stands guard to a shut factory. It is his last night of duty, or so he believes. It's also the longest night of his life. Thankfully, his adorable antic keep both, himself and the audience entertained.
It won almost every award at Thespo. That's all I'm gonna say.

Anathema
Three roommates encounter an unwarranted guest - is it a ghoul, is it a poltergeist, and does it want them dead?
This was one of the plays I had actually travelled to Pune for, and it was so worth it. The play manages to evoke equal amounts of gasps and giggles from the viewer; if you're not shrieking with joy, you're probably shreiking in terror.

Ullagaddi
A middle-aged Maharashtrian man finds himself stuck on a tree during a storm and with him, a little Kannada girl. A one-act play that took competitions by storm a few years ago, Ullagaddi potrays a poignant tale of love and loss.
I'd been hearing about this play ever since I joined college and was super-amazed to find that it lived up to every compliment it has ever received.

Maharashtrian Theatre is one of the fittest arts that has no intention of dying out. Ranging from the far East end of the state (Nagpur) to Bombay, college theatre continues to make its mark every year. So colleges from Ahmednagar come down to Pune for the Purushottam Karandak and students from small villages in the Konkan belt take home trophies from the Mumbai University Youth Festival.
But Pune is a city that stands tall above all.
As opposed to Bombay (where young theatre is often either abandoned or merely used as a stepping stone considering its proximity to the film industry), Pune really cherishes and nurtures it's talent.
all photos borrowed from Facebook
Natyasattak was one of the best examples of this. And by the end of the opening night (literally), it wasn't just a showcase. The Natyasattak was an expression of the pride the city has for its up-and-coming gems, replete in both the presenters and the audiences.

Organised by Wide Wings Media, the night shone on because of the many gifted participants.
Actress Pournima Manohar opened the night with an inherent sweetness and a warm demeanour that quickly put us, the restless spectators in comfort. Bhairavi Khot of Wide Wings was the resident emcee for the rest of the night and did an excellent job of keeping up the spirits of the auditorium with her zest and energy. Girish Kulkarni made the audience swoon  in the opening act.
all photos borrowed from facebook
My person favorite, Siddhesh Purkar hit a home run twice - first as the translator and presenter of White Rabbit Red Rabbit and then as a part of the able cast of Binkamache Sanwad. Suraj Parasnis, another Natak Company alumni produced Bhanvar and acted, co-directed Anathema as a part of his Theatre On Entertainment.
Jaydeep Vaidya, Devendra Bhome and Ketan Pawar of the band Misree won every heart in the hall with soulful renditions of Hindi classics.
Abhay Mahajan's tired Bhosanka, Omkar Govardhan's infectiously vibrant Aabeka and Laxmi Birajdar's pornstar Loly Loly in Binkamache.. deserve special mention, as does Chaitali Bakshi as the little Kannada girl in Ullagaddi.

But the night ultimately belonged to the golden boys - Shivraj Waichal and Virajas Kulkarni.
Shivraj Waichal single-handedly kept the audience hooked in Bhanvar, which he has co-written and co-directed with Kulkarni. It's not easy to not lose the audience's interest when you are performing a solo play at 2am in the morning. But it was no work at all for the unbelievably accomplished Waichal. And if that wasn't enough, he returned as the writer, director and lead actor of the heart wrenching Ullagaddi. So when he walked on stage drenched at the end of the night, one couldn't help but stand-up in applause.
Virajas Kulkarni who was a surprise package as the many voiceovers in Bhanvar and also walked away with the Thespo for Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role for the same (without stepping on stage even once, I must add) is the other star we must look out for. With Bhanvar, he also wrote and co-directed Anathema. The script is witty, interesting and profoundly simple. It's the light moments in the writing that bring out the best in what is generically a horror story. Kulkarni's acting role in the Anathema only adds to his long list of achievements in the night. Not to mention, a lot of swagger (borderline rude at times, but well) as he came in to make announcements before the shows.

Natyasattak intends to host overnight every year on January 25. With the kind of amazing response their first year had, I can only hope that this initiative lasts for decades. Because as long ideas, artists and showgoers exist, we can all be sure that the city will continue to breed superstars and keep building it's cultural legacy onwards and upwards.
Hats off!

(The festival continues till the end of January. Check out their schedule here.)

Thursday 5 January 2017

Story Of Mujer

   I'm not very big on watching stuff at Prithvi House. Prithvi House is a black box theatre opposite the main Prithvi Theatre and is a convertible, almost bare space. There's no proper seating, which is a big turn-off for me because I enjoy sitting comfortably when watching anything. Besides, if I'm not completely glued to the performance, I get very restless which is problem when the audience is cramped and seated on the floor.
So of the 15 or so Fringe Performances that happened in my 3 years at Thespo, I saw none..And then, the ones I saw this year virtually took my breath away. 
    
   The first one was called Chenda. The one-man-show was scheduled on a day that another one-man-show (Bhanwar) would wow the audience off. And there couldn't have been a better precedent than Chenda. It told the story of a drunkard street performer, who believes his cow's soul now resides in his musical instrument. Chenda is an instrument made from the skin of a cow's belly. The following guilt, internal conflict and the hilarious struggle were aptly brought to life by a very able Abhinav Grover, who wrote, directed and performed the piece. 

  The Fringe Performances for the next day went a step further. The description given for Mujer was something like this - Six Actresses and One Stage Manager who know nothing about puppetry come together for a puppetry workshop that culminates in a play.

Interesting.
But what happened once the performance started, no words can do justice to. The play essentially speaks what it means to be a misfit, and a woman, in the society. It combined as many Indian languages as possible and the performers extracted stories from their own lives, making the play even more real. Every girl spoke with an odd sort of honesty, that either made you be her or empathize with her.
Poetic, rhythmic and yeI'm on very big on watching stuff at Prithvi House. Prithvi House is a black box theatre opposite the main Prithvi Theatre and is a convertible, almost bare space. There's no proper seating, which is a big turn-off for me because I enjoy sitting comfortably when watching anything. Besides, if I'm not completely glued to the performance, I get very restless which is problem when the audience is cramped and seated on the floor.
So of the 1t somehow a vers libre, Mujer stayed with me for a long time. But I shall come to that later.

I was very curious about how the play took shape. Unfortunately, I had no information on that. Who I did have access to, was one of the six girls, and Theatre Potato's official illustrator - Mati Rajput. Here's her account of the workshop.:

I sat there numb, contemplating whether or not to smile when I heard a whisper, 
"It's going to be all right."
       All right! That's pretty much what my days felt like with her around - all right . I took extra care to reach on time to meet her. You know what it's like living in Bombay! You just tend to get late. But do you know what it's like to be a woman in Bombay?
It was quite tricky, spending 14 days trying to answer this question - 3 crucial hours for two whole weeks working with a director who had no clue about our life styles. (Facilitator Trina Haldar flew in from the UK) What she had brought along with her was a huge roll of paper, a few sketch pens and a Puppet specially commissioned for us. I, along with five other performers and a stage manager tried to put in our keen minds, ears and souls to everything Trina had in store for us. None of us had worked with a puppet before but we were all fascinated by the way she functions. She's made out of recycled paper and GAF tape. The only description Trina had given the designer was that she should fit into all age groups and should look like feminine. 
     The workshop/ Fringe performance was called 'Mujer'. If you haven't already guessed what it means, it means Women in Spanish and it is pronounced as 'Muher'. So all of us decided to name our puppet friend just that. Mujer would often come to life the minute we started to operate her. Having said that, operating her was not a cakewalk. Our puppeteers - Tanvi Sonigra, Urmila and Tanvi Pandit spent quality time going back to simplest ways of living; focusing more on Mujer and her daily routine, etc. Soon, Mujer had become an inspiration for us. In our eyes she was a super hero, an everyday human being who portrayed the lives of our role models. She would fly, swim, dance, breathe. Name it and she would do it! 
‌      Mujer wasn't the only puppet we worked with while building the piece though. Trina taught us how anything can come to life if you let it. We worked with cushions that later became a major prop in our performance. We had minimum props to work with. 4 wooden boxes, 4 print outs of our favorite book covers and 6 cushions. Also, while devising the performance, we had no script in hand. So we asked each other various questions. The fact that we could say anything through this piece made us more diligent about what did we actually want to put across. Not patronizing, not being sexist or for that matter any other -ist. Our only aim was to narrate a beautiful piece about Women. The piece went from one woman to another and Mujer was the thread between us all. We put together various stories of what it has taken for us to 'exist' in minutest ways possible.  
‌    Mujer has been one of the most memorable and greatest experience of my life. It has also turned me into a creep that eavesdrops on other people's conversations while commuting. All thanks to Trina! She would teach us various exercises, acquaint us with her experiences and would ask us to make crucial decisions. I can proudly say that confused individuals like us are very much capable of at least making decisions today. Good, bad, ugly, doesn't matter. Apart from that, Mujer has helped me discover various things about myself and grow into a much more independent human being. And I'm glad that the brilliant minds I've worked with are progressive and put a genuine effort into putting up a show like Mujer. 
‌      I'm grateful to Thespo and Meghana Telang for giving us the opportunity of this international collaboration. It is a very genuine effort by Thespo to make the youth of our country familiar to theatre around the world and everyone who has been a part of these international collaborations has only been happy and learnt something new and different. 
‌    What we have discovered through Mujer is that We're all works in progress and we're just as strange as you! Now go follow Mashi theatre and check out Trina Haldar's amazing work on social media. 
Over to you Kalpak. 
- Mato 
(Theatre Potato)

 For a good week after Mujer was performed, people were still talking about the piece and particularly the puppet. There's a part in the play when Mujer goes to four of the girl, puts her hand on their heads and gently caresses them. I can only reckon that; that is the most comforting thing in the world. Special shout out to the puppeteers for that one.




And then about 15 days post the festival, we met Thespo loyalist Kashin Shetty at Prithvi. He had just finished performing his own play and was taking in the shower of compliments, but the first thing he did when he saw Mati was congratulate her for Mujer. I suppose that says it all.

As for my love/hate for Prithvi House, maybe I can convince Thespo to put on the Fringe Department next year?