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L THE FESTIVAL aunched in Chennai in 2005, The Hindu MetroPlus Theatre Fest has grown to become one of the bestknown theatre festivals in the country. Over the years, the Fest has showcased theatre from various parts of India and the world. This year marks a watershed in the evolution of the festival, which travels this month to three other South Indian cities — Hyderabad, Coimbatore and your own, Bangalore. The Fest in Bangalore features four plays, the details of which are provided in this brochure. We open with ‘Harlesden High Street’, a play from your own city, which won The MetroPlus Playwright Award in the year it was instituted — 2008. This award carries a prize of Rs. 1 lakh for the best English playscript that has been unpublished and unperformed. Next up, we have ‘The President is Coming’, a hilarious production that has had many runs and re-runs and has since been made into a film. This is followed by ‘Swami and Friends’, an appropriately endearing reconstruction of R.K. Narayan’s best-known and most-loved novel. The curtains come down with ‘One on One’ by Rage Productions, a collection of sharp, funny and extremely perceptive short plays by some of Mumbai’s best-known actors and directors. The play was showcased earlier this year at The MetroPlus Theatre Fest in Chennai, where it was received very warmly. We hope The MetroPlus Theatre Fest becomes an annual event in Bangalore and we seek your support in making the inaugural edition a success. For Tickets All plays start at 7.30 p.m. at Jnana Jyothi Convention Centre, Central College Campus, Palace Road, Bangalore Tickets are priced at Rs. 500, Rs. 300 and Rs. 200. Season passes are available for Rs. 1,500 and Rs. 900. Tickets for all shows can be purchased online at www.thehindu.com/theatrefest and www.indianstage.in. Tickets for all shows are also available at Landmark (Koramangala and Jayanagar), K. C. Das (St. Mark’s Road and J.P. Nagar) and The Hindu Office, Bhagwan Mahaveer Road (Infantry Road). The information contained about the plays in this brochure is mainly sourced from the material provided by the respective groups. Jnana Jyothi Convention Centre, Palace Road, 7.30 p.m. Duration: 80 minutes Harlesden High Street Indian Ensemble (Bangalore) Directed by: Neel Chaudhuri Playwright: Abhishek Majumdar CAST: Arundhati Nag, Momo Ghosh Swetanshu Bora, Abhijit Pakrashi Akhshay Urs, Arpita Phukan Biswas Chanakya Vyas, Navin Kumar Sweta Desaigoudar, Virginia Rodrigues CREDITS: Assistant Director: Virginia Rodrigues Lighting Designer: Vivek V Narayan Light Execution: Mohammed Mustafa Sound Design: Neel Chaudhuri Original Music: Samar Grewal Set Design: M.S. Sathyu Stage Manager/Backstage: Indian Ensemble A bhishek Majumdar’s play is set on the High Street in Harlesden, an area populated mostly by immigrant communities – Jamaicans, Poles and Pakistanis. Sometimes notorious in the press for its high crime rate, Harlesden is also home to the quiet aspirations and mundane frustrations of the working class. It is here that this play finds breath, in the voices and stories of three Pakistani immigrants – Rehaan, Karim and Ammi. Through the course of a day on Harlesden High Street, we share in the extraordinary histories and circumstances of these seemingly ordinary lives. Neel Chaudhuri The Indian Ensemble theatre company, based out of Bangalore, has three wings – a production house, training programme and a repertory. The company is committed to producing original work in various Indian languages and training performers, writers and directors over a one year program. Our current productions are ‘Treadmill’ (Hindi), ‘Rizwaan’ (Hindustani and English) and ‘Harlesden High Street’ (English). Our next play opens in 2011 and is based on the stories of trafficked women and children. It will be in Marathi, Tamil and Hindi. "I am particularly drawn to the idea of people struggling between nostalgia and belonging, and the fractured identities between these two states." Jnana Jyothi Convention Centre, Palace Road, 7.30 p.m. Duration: 120 minutes with interval I CAST: Ratnabali Bhattacharjee, Shivani Tanksale, Ira Dubey, Faezeh Jalali, Namit Das, Satchit Puranik, Anand Tiwari, Sumeet Vyas, Kunaal Roy Kapur and Anup Burte CREDITS: Lights: Yael Crishna Sound: Gautam Dhanu Production Manager: Toral Shah Backstage: Amanda Cardozo, Varrun Bangera n March 2006, President Bush made a four-day State visit to India – the first official visit of a U.S. Head of State to the country in a long time. One of his main goals was to meet some young faces responsible for shaping “the new India”. This comedy explores the dog-eat-dog world of constant competition, reality television and short-lived fame. A world where six ambitious Indians will stop at nothing, because The President is Coming. Fast-paced and extremely funny, the play is a mix of political satire and farce. The slapstick comedy in playwright Anuvab Pal’s script is laced with ironic wit. Staged first in 2006 as part of the Writers’ Bloc Festival in Mumbai, ‘The President is Coming’ has been a huge hit in that city, and since then has travelled to Chennai, Hyderabad and Muscat. Q Theatre Productions has staged over 20 productions in all parts of the country; these include ‘Crab’, ‘Beyond Therapy’, ‘Khatijabai of Karmali Terrace’, ‘Project S.T.R.I.P’ and ‘Some Girl(s)’. One of the key objectives of QTP is to promote theatre as an art form. This has led to initiatives such as an e-newsletter called The Script and an all-India youth theatre movement called Thespo. X X Jnana Jyothi Convention Centre, Palace Road, 7.30 p.m. Duration: 100 minutes Swami and Friends The Madras Players & Landing Stage (Chennai) Directed by: Aruna Ganesh Ram Adapted by Manasi Subramaniam from the novel by R. K. Narayan CAST: (In order of appearance) Mani: Shyam Sunder Swami: Ujwal Nair Rajam: Harish Adithya Vedanayagam/Karuppan: P.C. Ramakrishna D.Pillai/Board High Master: Mohamed Yusuf Ebenezer/Speaker: Shankar Sundaram W.T. Sreenivasan: T.T. Srinath Paati: Sushi Natraj Somu: Viswajith O Nallappa’s aid: Venkat CREDITS: Original Music composition: B. Shree Sundar Kumar Sound Execution: Prateeksha Chandrashekar Lighting Design and execution: V.Balakrishnan Costumes: Vidyullekha Raman Set execution: Victor Paulraj Production: Gopi Nair T he first novel of R. K. Narayan to gain international fame was Swami and Friends, the story of a young lad named Swami and his escapades with his two close friends, Rajam and Mani. More than anything else, it is a story of friendship and camaraderie. Set in late pre-Independence India in the fictitious town of Malgudi, the novel has delighted both the old and the young with its characterisation and sense of humour. The play is conceived as a seamless narrative, faithful to the novel but adapted and directed with a fresh perspective. It promises to be a delight for the Narayan fan and Narayan novice alike! Aruna Ganesh Ram The Madras Players, which celebrated its golden jubilee in 2005, is one of the oldest English theatre groups in India. It is now focussed on encouraging English plays on Indian themes. Landing Stage is the only entirely youth-run theatre group in Chennai. It provides a platform for students to experience the nuances of theatre, hone their creative skills and pick up the finer aspects of theatre – from managing operations, designing sets, learning lighting and sound essentials, and box-office handling. "The challenge was in identifying the visual cues that would represent Malgudi, just the way it had been crafted by the author. The setting, in my opinion, is the most crucial element of the play.” Jnana Jyothi Convention Centre, Palace Road, 7.30 p.m. Duration: 120 minutes with interval One on One Rage (Mumbai) Directed by: Akarsh Khurana, Arghya Lahiri, Kunaal Roy Kapur, Nadir Khan, Rahul da Cunha and Rajit Kapur Playwrights: Anuvab Pal, Ashok Mishra, Farhad Sorabjee, Oliver Beale, Purva Naresh and Rahul da Cunha Language: English and Hindi O CAST: Bugs Bhargava Krishna, Amit Mistry, Anand Tiwari, Imrhan Adil, Neil Bhoopalam, Preetika Chawla, Anu Menon, Rajit Kapur and Shernaz Patel CREDITS: Lights: Yael Crishna / Arghya Lahiri Sound: Nadir Khan ne on One is a unique theatrical evening, bringing together Mumbai’s finest actors, written by some of India’s most talented playwrights and directed by seven of our best-known directors. These monologues and duologues in English and Hindi address subjects as varied as the state of India’s bureaucracy, the legalisation of homosexuality, inedible airline food, the politics of road-naming ceremonies, the joke of Ajmal Kasab’s trial and the experience of living in a big city... stories of modern India that amuse, annoy and concern us all. Rage, run by Rajit Kapur, Rahul da Cunha and Shernaz Patel, is one of Mumbai’s leading theatre companies. Its focus has been on contemporary Indian-English theatre, with many plays crossing the 100-show mark. Rage is also the force behind Writers’ Bloc, a workshop and festival for emerging playwrights, conducted in collaboration with the Royal Court Theatre, U.K. Rahul da Cunha “One on One is like the Woodstock of theatre – abundant theatrical talents coming together – different writing styles and varying direction approaches. As a writer/director jostling for space in this sea of riches, it’s a true challenge.” X