The Script
The Script, March 2007. Issue 3.

Dear Drama lover,

Hello again! March sees the return of many loved plays along some with new one's.

On the QTP front, we are all cylinders firings with our 2 new productions, Crab and The President is Coming having shows at various venues in Bombay.
Thespo has now become a year long activity, and it has found a new hangout. And guess what??? It’s in the suburbs and Prithvi is the hub. And we are bringing down the house there. Presenting to you, Thespo at Prithvi. Its fresh, its  exciting and it’s the most happening event. Every month, the first Tuesday and Wednesday, Prithvi has given dates for young theatre and we are proud to be associated with such an event. There will be Workshops, Platform Performances and most importantly a show of the best plays from the youth.

Apart from that, in this month's edition of The Script, we have  Scherazade Kaikobad continuing her reviews of Writer's Bloc 2 and Jehan Manekshaw shares his time spent in Kerala for 'Postcards from God'.

And not to forget, our monthly Great Texts reading is in the last Monday of March. Look forward to seeing you there.

Happy reading.

Yours Sincerely,
On Behalf of Q Theatre Productions,

Himanshu.
Editor, The Script.

Quick Links:
Corno-Q-pia:  The President is Coming ,Crab and Thespo at Prithvi & Great Texts
Point of View:  Scherazade Kaikobad reviews Writer's Bloc 2 (Part 2).
4 Corners: Jehan Manekshaw shares his experience of his stint with Tim Supple & the Daksha Seth Dance Company.
Up & Coming:  All the exciting plays happening in the city!
Great Stuff:  Auditions and much much more!
Curtain Call:  Ben Kingsley and the privilege of acting!

Corno-Q-pia
The horn of plenty of QTP events and happenings.

QL

Point of View:  
This month Scherazade Kaikobad reviews some of the plays shown at Writers Bloc 2. The views expressed in this article are those of the author. You are welcome to agree, disagree or comment by emailing us at qtp@vsnl.com.

DIGGING THROUGH WRITER'S BLOC 2

One of the better constructed plays to emerge out of the Writers’ Bloc festival was Ram Ganesh Kamatham’s CRAB. A tightly wrought script – and one of the few in the festival to actually move in time and space – went digging into the obsessive relationships of a love quadrangle using the metaphor of mountain climbing. The terse, almost sparse quality of the writing was complimented very well by director Arghya Lahiri’s minimalist, austere style of staging and designing, so that the play was both a verbal and visual treat. Unfortunately, though, the actors – while competent individually – lacked that tangible something called chemistry, which is essential in a play about relationships where more is said in what is left unsaid. As a result, certain moments of tenderness wound up as desultory conversation spattered with meaningless drivel, and moments of fierce antagonism descended into shrill spewing of verbiage. Moreover, the characters weren’t fully fleshed out, a situation that worsened in the case of certain characters like Zamiel played by Ankur Vikal whose monotonous laconism made one want to shake him and demand some emotion, and Jojo played by Frieshia Bomanbehram who oscillated between the extremes of frigid stiffness and shrill melodrama. That said, though, there were moments of breathtaking poignancy in the production – when Zamiel offers Jojo the gift of a sunset perched on a dangerous parapet by the sea, knowing fully well her mortal fear of such reckless risk taking; in the mountain top confrontation between Zamiel and Rocky (played by Ali Fazal, whose performance was one of the highlights of the play) when for a moment you almost believe that one of the rivals is going to kill the other; in the crackling tension between the edgy Rocky and the level-headed Priya (Devika Shahani Punjabi) when they meet each other after Zamiel’s death and attempt to maintain a degree of civility despite their mutual hostility.

 In sharp contrast to the tight control of CRAB was Vijay Nair’s DREAMCATCHER which floundered all over the place. While the script had the potential of developing into a nuanced exploration of the fraught relationship and rivalry between two dancer-sisters, the production unfortunately degenerated into using the worst possible clichés in the discourse of modernity and sexuality while digging, or rather ‘ploughing’ (a more apt metaphor that suggests the aggressiveness with which it was manhandled) to unearth the private and professional jealousies of the sisters who are confined together in a hotel room while a riot rages outside when they have come to perform in Bombay. Though one could sense a well thought out underlying graph which peaked towards the end in which the older, more conservative Padmaja (Juhi Babbar) revealed the price she had to pay for being her mother’s favourite and professionally favoured daughter, the plotting of this graph on stage was shoddy. One almost sensed the absence of a directing hand, when ironically there were not one but two directors for this production! Trishla Patel and Faezeh Jalali – otherwise both fine actors in their own right – could have done better as directors if they that reigned in the excesses of their actors and channelized their performances towards serving the larger vision of the play. The production design too was a let down with gaudy and tacky sets, in fact one of the very few indifferent designs seen at the festival. The literary design of each scene was also rather tacky (quite surprising considering that Nair is not a first-time writer), with almost every scene ending on a dramatic – almost melodramatic – high note, in a Balaji TV serial-like attempt at dramatic suspense and tension. A nice, though not entirely novel, touch to the writing was the interspersion of flashbacks where we saw the sisters as young children growing up. Unfortunately, the child actors cast as the siblings did not seem to understand where they fit in the whole scheme of the play and did little more than spout the lines allotted to them.

 One play that went digging to the murkiest emotional depths was Sachin Kundalkar’s POORNAVIRAM. And although my limited Marathi meant that I was unable to grasp some of the nuances in this heavily verbal play that bordered on the verbose, yet this did seem like a fine piece of writing. The subject matter was not entirely new, delving into the emotional and literary angst of a writer, Prassana (Sarang Sathye), who comes to live at a friend’s house which is already occupied by a small-town girl Shreya (Radhika Apte) who has come to the city to become an actress. While the angst did tend to weigh rather heavily at times, especially in the monologues, the play was redeemed by fantastic acting across the board and some decent direction by Mohit Talkarkar. One rather jarring note in the production, though, was an inconsistency in the style of staging and design which swung between realism and extreme stylization.

 One of the few plays to move beyond the festival’s obsessive concern with inter-personal relationships (a sign of our times? Or just an area of focus in the Writer's Bloc workshops which spilled over into the festival plays?) was Manaswini Lata Ravindra’s MAZYA VATANICHA KHARA-KHURA, though this too was unable to get away from it completely. Through the efforts of a struggling playwright to get his play staged, the production attempts to shed light on the difficulties faced by newcomers in the profession. If the play was a tad indulgent, it was only because some of the issues it touched on could have done with a bit more exploration. Director Satish Manwar’s staging was slightly indifferent, as was the production design and most of the acting – apart from some flashes of brilliance by the actor playing the playwright.

Scherazade Kaikobad

scherazade@rediffmail.com

QL

4 Corners:
Jehan Manekshaw gives us a report on his experience with Tim Supple and the Daksha Seth Dance Company.

In November, just after coming back to the UK, QTP was kind enough to set me up with a gig assistant directing and production, managing a workshop by Devissaro and The Daksha Seth dance company that set out to refine their existing production. "Postcards from God". 

 They invited Tim Supple into direct the workshop, and having just watched Midsummer Nights Dream at no less hallowed a place than the Royal Shakespeare Company's Swan theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon, I was quite excited to get this opportunity. What better way to come back to theatre in India than to work on a show with such a team behind it (Devissaro also composed the music for Dream, and we all know Daksha Seth's company).

Imagine my surprise when I went down to Natyashram in Trivandrum, which I can only describe as a gorgeous slice of heaven on earth. Their rehearsal studio was a high roofed brick and thatch structure with huge open porticoes that looked out onto one of only two fresh water lakes in Kerela. It was an inspiring place to work in. We needed that kind of setting. Because it was here that Tim Supple was faced with the challenging task of taking an existing piece of artistic work, and without breaking it, and discarding all the creative and emotional energy that had already been invested in it, help transform it into something that the Devissaro, Daksha, the cast, and Tim could all be happy with.

In my first few days there prior to the entire team coming down, the question kept going through my mind - how does one approach re-working an existing piece of performance art. When you create something, and rehearse it constantly, it becomes 'your baby'. We have the expression in theatre, killing ones babies, and it looked very much at points in my own minds eye, that this would be a necessary part of any re-evaluation of the work. Would Tim come in with a focused plan, did he have a strategy by which to go ahead and make changes that would turn Postcards from God from a montage of lovely artistic and aesthetic moments, images, poetry and music into a piece that had more of a unifying thread through it? I in my own viewing for the video of previous productions had already jumped to conclusions (as I sometimes tend to do)

 "This needs to go", I thought,

 "We need to rework this so that it can connect better to the next scene",
"This entire plot line isn't holding up, what will we do about that?"

All these decisions were being made in my head. But, as I have learned from having assisted with a lot of directors in the UK, patience allows you to learn a lot, and in this case. Holding back with what I know would have been unconstructive suggestions, waiting and watching, would be the best way to go.

On the Sunday before the two week workshop commenced, Tim came in with the workshop cast, and Dev showed him the video of the past production, stopping to explain the things he believed were problematic with the piece. Through a long evening, he and Daksha recollected their memories of the performances they had done, and Tim listened, asking questions about the events happening on screen that gave him a sense of what the piece was. By the end of the evening, there were no answers, but conversations started to resolve into the questions that needed to be asked during the next two weeks of the workshop. We were here to discover the directions PFG could go, not to come in and put whatever we thought needed to be done to it in place.

The first few days of rehearsal were fascinating to watch, as Tim watched the show as they had done it, and started by simply addressing the concerns Devissaro had about the piece. Through this time, I watched him develop a sense of how Devissaro and Daksha worked together, how they composed, choreographed, and conceptualised their work into existence. It was by understanding first the language and vocabulary of performance that existed in that theatre company, where Tim and I were guests, that we could then start to speak and re-visit the questions that were asked in the first few days, constantly working to address Daksha and Dev's issues with the play, but also helping them focus on the deeper issues of themes, why this piece existed in the first place, and what they hoped to leave the audience with at the end of a performance.

A consistent question that we discussed when I was on my theatre directing course in the UK was, "Is the director a five star facilitator, or a five star manipulator?" Now the question itself deals in absolutes, and in that sense is a fallacious premise to start with, its like asking if something is black or white, ignoring the possibility that there may be a thousand shades of grey in between. The truth of the matter was I got to watch Tim both manipulate the rehearsal room and facilitate the process of creating theatre, manipulate insofar as he never said 'No' to anybody contributing a creative idea to the piece, be it an actress, singer, musician, or dancer. Everyone got to have their say, and there was always a sense that peoples ideas were accepted into the mix, however for the most part, there was always a subconscious focus that Tim kept bringing everyone back to, about what the scene was about, how did this sequence of song, dance and poetry fit in with the scene before, where would it lead us? This, was directing craftsmanship, and this is what I got the pleasure of witnessing and participating in first hand.

By the time we reached the end of week one, we had a strong working process in place, everyone in the room knew what we were aiming towards, or at the very least, what creative questions we seeked to answer, a shared vocabulary began to evolve which then turned into things unsaid, but understood, allowing the cast, Dev and Daksha to dig deeper and create really powerful moments of theatre. There was a sense of openness, and more importantly, a willingness to learn strongly from each others methods. Everyone in the room was learning, Tim, me, Dev, Daksha the cast, all from each other.
The other brilliant thing to watch was the way that Tim included and involved Daksha's dancers. Trained in more of a guru chela, the dancers were used to a creative process where they followed their Guru's lead.  This, I think was one of the biggest challenges, as I saw Tim wanting them to open up and move from being DANCERS doing a graceful move choreographed by Daksha, to becoming PERFORMERS where each and every move provided to them had meaning, and came from somewhere within the character, so that every element that was shown to the audience during a performance, contained a truth in it. Suddenly, graceful choreography transformed into graceful performance, and the dancers were challenged to bring their own experiences in to create an honesty in their performances. A truthfulness, so that an audience member watching one of them curl up into a ball, or stretch to the sky, didn't see a dancer doing a move, but a character feeling the pain that made them go fetal, or feeling the joy that made them reach for the sky.

More importantly, and the most exciting thing for me, was during the entire process watching each of those involved hungrily lap up each others ideas and practices. The ability to communicate across cultures, performance styles, and the openness of adapting and using each others methods in their own was what made this experiences so enriching.

At the end of two weeks of 12 hour days of rehearsal, that began with Kallari and Yoga warm ups in the morning, and ended with music and text work in the late evening, we had a put together the major structural elements of an entirely new post cards from God, which took the best of what Dev and Daksha had initially created, and built on its strengths, gently eliminating its weaknesses. In two weeks, so much was achieved. Imagine what kind of quality theatre could be achieved if we could continue to use such methods, models and experiences.

For me, the Trivandrum process stood as a strong inspiration: professional full time theatre practice CAN exist in India, and with it, performance and directing methods from the UK can be married with casts and creative ideas from here, and with all of this, we can create theatre products that would blow audiences away.

 Jehan Manekshaw is a theatre director who has previously directed ''The Tale of ManaSeth' produced by QTP.

QL

Up&Coming:
The following is a list of shows you should watch out for this month. The code to it's deciphering is as follows:
red is the Theatre Club show 
and in blue are QTP events. 
Those with an (R) next to them means that we have reviewed it, and if you require a review simply email us at qtp@vsnl.com asking for it. 
Those with an (PP) next to them means that it is a platform performance, entry free!