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Theatre changed her lawyer dreams Ranjitha Surya Vamshi talks about how, when and why she got into Theatre even though her childhood dream was to become a lawyer. She talks about the various people who encouraged and supported her through her journey. She also shares her views on why women should not limit themselves to the four walls of their houses.   For the love of acting Nayana Sooda, a native of Dakshina Kannada / Karnataka has lived in Bangalore for over 20 years. She shares how she entered the world of theatre. Many people encouraged Nayana to take up…

Having watched an excellent play staged by Tadpole Repertory earlier (you can see the review here if you wish to) I was eager to watch the production of  “This Will Only Take Several Minutes”, which this group was staging as a joint effort with Hanchu-Yuei, a Tokyo-based theatre collective. The introduction on the Ranga Shankara website was very intriguing. A play in Hindi, Japanese and English! Off I went, with three friends.  The play is the result of a joint effort between two playwrights, and deals with six characters, who interact with each other (not all at the same time),…

There are times when the production of a play makes the task easy for the reviewer. When there are plenty of criticisms to be made, it always grieves me to have to make negative comments, when I know that each stage production has so much of passion, dedication and sheer hard work that has gone into it.  But when a production is, from both artistic, aesthetic, and technical standpoints, excellent and highly professional, the critic’s task is just to enumerate the good points.  The play, “Krishna’s Dairy”, by Jacob Rajan, who also essayed the two characters who feature in it,…

For children….   Once a year, Children’s Day (celebrated on Nov 14 in India) comes around, and we have many initiatives just for them. One of these was   “Maya Bazaar” a story of mythology and fantasy, which was made into an epic movie in both Tamil and Telugu.   Over the years, this story (loosely based on characters in the Mahabharata) has been treated as a subject on many stages...folk, street, and mainstream theatre.   So, when Bangalore Little Theatre sent an invitation to the staging of the original English language adapation  of this tale, on the 13th of…

It's always intriguing to watch poetry being dramatized, and I was keen on going to watch "Kitchen Poems" by Dhiruben Patel, a 90+ year-old Gujarati writer. Padmavathi Rao, who was the solo actor in this performance produced by Aantarya Film and Theatre House, is well-known to the theatregoers of Bangalore, and it was with pleasant anticipation that I went to the performance. I was not disappointed. Dhiruben's poems (written in English) were translated on to the stage seamlessly. Padmavathi's command over the words showed in the effortless way in which she seemed, not to be playing an archetypal woman and…

It’s not easy to review a play when the theme is intense-- political unrest, and the social chaos that results.. This was the thread underlying  “Mein hoon Yusuf, aur yeh hai mera bhai”, which I watched at Ranga Shankara on 8th November 2015. Two theatre groups collaborated in this production. The action of the play is set against the background of the conflict in Palestine. It’s January 1948, and the British Mandate is ending. There is a lot of conflict over how the Palestine pie will be cut up. In a small village, Ali’s love for Nada faces difficulties because…

It’s not often that I attend a play without prior planning, but this happened to me when my friend Prathap invited me, after rather a long day outdoors, to “Still and Still Moving” at Ranga Shankara on 31st October 2015, staged by Tadpole Repertory Theatre. It was worth the effort of changing tracks, from nature to theatre. You can find Tadpole Rep’s blog here,   and they are on FaceBook,   here. A Delhi-based group, their professionalism in all departments of stagecraft was outstanding. I will be listing the cast and crew at the end, so I may not mention…

After a long absence, it was refreshing to enter my favourite theatre space, Ranga Shankara, once again, this time to watch a Hindi play, "Rocky Ka Insaaf", staged by Mashaal.   The play has been expanded from a ten-minute vignette that was staged as part of the "Great Galata Festival" at Ranga Shankara in 2013.     The main protagonist, Rocky, takes a journey into the world of the common man today; a world where “development”, while raising the standard of living in material terms for some people, leaves others untouched in India. Rampant corruption, the me-vs.-you attitude of the…

Bengali plays are not very common at Ranga Shankara, so I was quite keen to watch this Badal Sircar play, produced by Centre for Film and Drama (CFD), and directed by Nilanjan  P Choudhry.   For this play, a neat brochure had been prepared by CFD  and the write up described it as a "fast-paced comedy".   Bogota(sic) Charit Manas depicts the journey of a young orphan, whose naivety and lack of self-esteem leads him to be bullied at every turn. Driven to the brink of suicide at the prospect  of having to become a "ghar jamai" at his maternal…

I thought it was difficult to write a review of a play I liked very much; I did not want to sound as if the theatre group had sponsored my review!But alas, the difficulty of that task is nothing compared to that of writing a review for a play that left me completely cold. Whatever the impression the play has on a member of the audience....the fact remains that a lot of effort and time has been invested in the production. For this reason alone I would like to find some positives in any play that I watch, and write…