hmmmm

It was more than two hours of nice and entertaining performance - and all at a cost of what ? Rs 49/- Before I go onto tell about the play , a few things about the place where the event was organised.

Rangashankara was the realization of a persistent dream of a man who had immense passion for performing arts. Please do visit www.rangashankara.org

Well, I almost thought I would be late as I cldnt leave early from the office yet I made it in time for the play, ignoring the calls of my stomach which if you know to listen, you could hear it as a growling noise ;-) !!!


It was a palette of four plays in complete-the-story style. The actors enact the story and freeze it at one point. The audience collectively give their reactions and one of the climax is enacted on the spot by the actors. Its an interesting style of presentation.
And this was the first time, this group is staging in this style for public audience. They had earlier done it only for a certain select audience.

Each play was of a different language ,Kannada, English, Tamil and Hindi. However it was interspersed with lots of dialogues in english so that the audience do not have a problem in understanding.
They were Purple Roses, Ctrl+Alt+Del, ShanthiNilaya, Friend philosopher guide. And the second play was also presented in perspective theatre style where it is enacted in the perspective of one character where if that characters thinks the rest are clowns, they become clowns.

Well, I cldnt have asked for a better evening on a tuesday leave alone the fact that I had just an akki roti for dinner during the interval. For a moment, I wished for my friend to be there with me, but I guess I enjoy my outings any case these days, like I used to before. So here are the storylines for the four plays...Anyone wanna complete it and know how it was done finally?

1. Purple Roses
Set in the Zamindar Era, the story is narrated as a folk tale by a group of villagers. This is a story of a girl Rajini who is in love with Nagendra who goes to the city to make their dreams come true. Rajini in the meanwhile goes after money and gets married to a narcisist zamindar who illtreats her. The zamindar is lured by a visiting Englishman who promises him power, fame and fortune in return for serving him with his wife. Rajini gets a letter from NAgendra who comes back for her to meet her near the bridge at sunset which the Englishman reads and offers to take her to London with him relieved of all the problems. Finally, she meets him at the specified place when she is caught red handed by the Zamindar along with the Englishman. The story freezes here.

2. Ctrl+Alt+Del
A modern office story where three collegues (one, being the lead who steals others ideas as his own) are pitching for a high volume business. The night before the pitch, the power goes off suddenly and when it returns the files are deleted and the old chai wala tells them that the back ups of the compaign and the printouts in the studio are burnt. A thunder, a lightening and the studio burst. The gods are angry and the world is coming to an end he says. There is also the beautiful secretary who is accidentally hugged from behind during the power failure while the doer takes his friends help to hide it.

The story unfolds as an investigation from each ones perspectives....Starts with the perspective of One where its a mafia set up in lines of GodFather. Believe me ,that was awesome piece of enacting by the guys in the mafia role ;-). In the other, the characters become the historical kings and Narad, ( the best part when the secretary becomes meera bhai) . Each one seems to accuse the other, while one is angry at his ideas used by his boss, the other is angry that the boss and other guy are in a relationship and ignores him and the boss himself guilty of stealing ideas.

Well, audience had to decide whos the cuplrit who actually deleted the files and burnt the generator and why?

3. ShanthiNilaya
Set in the Bangalore of 1980s, its about a family where the woman of the family is a pain in the you-know-where, a silent husband, their daughter, poor and illtreated beautiful maid, an unruly, stupid and funny uncle, a driver, both of whom try their luck at the maid. With the head of the family also giving her glances occasionally. The daughter takes to the maid for everything, she teaches the maid and becomes a moral support to her. One fine day, the uncle finds a medical report in the kitchen which says the maid is pregnant. Three guys in the family, now, whos the culprit?

4. Friend Philosopher Guide.
Set in the env of a railway station, its a story of a tourist guide, his chai selling kaka and couple of awaras singing. It was made as a musical with those awaras playing the right music for the situations. They were brilliant. The guide meets Sapna, who has run away from the family and waits for a boy friend who never turns up. The guide sympthasises with the girl who doesnt speak, tries in vain to reach her boyfriend and puts her up in a hostel and then slowly they meet daily..The girls goes on to get a job and this guy becomes a marketing executive and just when he is ready to porpose the love for the girl, the boy friend calls him.
The story freezes there and the audience had to move the story forward ....

Trust me, we had a hearty laugh at the reactions and suggestions of the audience. try guessing the way the stories have to move forward....

BTW, to get the audience to a comfort level intially, we tried something where each one has to turn to their neighbours and try to guess which part of India they come from ....I had a young couple on my right and a senior citizen on my left. I was amused to find that none of us actually made a right choice the first time. The man on my left was a Kannadiga who had worked in Chennai for 10 years and the lady on my right was from chennai again, and settled in north for a long time and had moved to Bangalore. Was interesting and a simple exercise but so easy to break the ice....And I also observed before the start of the play, two guys seriously discussing how the pricing of the tickets were a wrong strategy and would not even help them in sustaining the auditorium and they were almost creating empirical relations to figure out what the right cost of the tickets would be. Well, mes not into work at such places, hehehe !!! I guess some people just cant get out of it.

A worthwhile evening in all !!!

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