Download MPTF Bangalore brochure

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been unpublished and unperformed.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