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Another houseful
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Is the impressive turnout at Oxford Bookstore's theatre festival another pointer to Bangalore's newfound love for the stage?
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A dramatic moment from My Body, My Temple — Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash
YOU DON'T expect more than 10 people to turn up for any event bang in the middle of Deepavali holidays. People would be busy bursting crackers, lighting lamps, making the best of festival discounts... or simply lazing around and surfing channels, you would presume.
But the audience strength at the ongoing Theatre Festival with Mahesh Dattani hosted by Dialogue, a forum for theatre activities at Oxford Bookstore, would force you to rethink such presumptions. Even if one made allowances for the friends and relatives of the new and very enthusiastic actors, the attendance was impressive. In fact, more impressive than what one is used to seeing at the book launches at the store.
Contemporary themes
After Shakespeare's Macbeth as the first play in the series, the four-week, every-Friday festival took a big leap in time and space and showcased two plays with contemporary themes by local talents last weekend — My Body, My Temple by Madhu Nataraj Heri and No Choice by Padma Kanani.
The first one revolved around two dancers — which was what one expected considering that the playwright is a renowned dancer herself. One of the dancers is a retired Devadasi and the other just starting her career in dance. The play looks at two levels of perception: that of society's towards women in performing arts and that of the performers themselves towards their bodies and their art. No Choice talks about to what extent we are or aren't masters of our own destines. The play digressed quite a bit to talk about the travails of growing up and coming to terms with complex relationships.
In the making
These plays are still "in the making" and the show was more by way of testing out what works and what doesn't on stage. As Dattani put it, whatever one teaches in the classroomish situation of a workshop is incomplete until there is feedback from the audience. There was no missing the earnestness of the actors (Sheila Govindaraj, Spatika, Alka, Akul Balaji, Sunil Bannur and Santosh), directors (Abhishekh Majumdar and Alka), and playwrights. They had packed the two plays into a week of practice and the raw edges showed. But the idea, anyway, was not to present a "finished product".
The numbers that turned up for the show was more surprising for this very reason — that they were meant to be raw productions. That takes us to another question: how is it that theatre is suddenly hot in Bangalore? We hear that all tickets for all shows are sold out at the ongoing Ranga Shankar theatre festival too!
Filling emptiness
Dattani says he is himself quite surprised at the turnout at the Dialogue festival. There is much enthusiasm in Bangalore now for theatre as well as other creative activities, he says.
There was a time when he had to beg people to act in plays, but now 40 to 50 people turn up for an audition for a play! "Maybe people are starved for something creative," he reasons. "They sense an emptiness and crave for something rich and meaningful." Wonder if this is, among other things, also one happy side effect of the dismal cinema scene!
BAGESHREE S.
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