The Hindu has announced its MetroPlus Playwright Award for the year 2009. The contest carries a cash prize of Rs. 1 Lakh and calls for writers to submit an original, unpublished English play.

The entry must be a full-length play on any subject of your choice – not less than 60 minutes, and not exceeding 120 minutes of performance time.

The last date for submitting your entry is November 30th, 2008 and requires you to courier your work to their Chennai office. Click here for more details and information.

My tryst with Dr. Seuss happened when I performed for The Script’s production – The Lorax.

Lorax is an interesting poem written by Dr. Seuss, who predominantly wrote for children. However, all his works had more than a clear relevance to adults as well. Lorax was a poem which depicted man’s devastating impact on the environment and urged people to develop a sense of responsibility towards mother nature.

In the poem, the character Lorax is the representative of all things green. And when Once-ler, owing to his ever increasing greed, starts chopping off truffula trees and depriving the Brown Bar-ba-loots their habitat, the Lorax appears in front of the Once-ler and appraises him of the disaster that he is causing by doing all this.

As is evident, Dr. Seuss was famous for coining terms and words that had no meaning but brought out the underlying concept beautifully. You can read The Lorax here. It is a beautiful poem and I thoroughly enjoyed performing this work on stage.

The Lorax, was one of Dr. Seuss’ most controversial works and many claimed that it was unfair to the logging industry.

Recently, I saw a movie adaption of Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! This is a story about an elephant (Horton) who, by accident, gets in possession of a speck. The speck rests on a clover which the elephant carries around with him as an ornament. One fine day, he begins to hear voices coming from the speck. It is then revealed to us, the viewers, that the speck is a world in itself, with people there living ordinary lives very similar to ours. What happens next and how the elephant manages to save this speck from all external influences is a part of the story.

What I found more relevant is the metaphorical usage of the speck. As we all know by now, our planet too is a speck in the cosmic dimensions and although we might be fretting a lot about our daily lives, it could be that everything is based on chance and depends on an elephant living in another world who is carrying this speck around. It brings in some perspective of our place in this universe. Simplistic in its story line, Horton hears a Who! is a great movie with a universal appeal, if I may use that word.

You can read more about Dr. Seuss’ life in this Wikipedia article.

A few months ago, I had written about a radio program aired on AIR (All India Radio), titled “Manthan”.

Another program that the Mrs. and I try to catch if we are driving back during that time is Hawa Mahal, which is also aired on AIR (102.9 FM) at 8 pm every week day.

Hawa Mahal showcases 15 minutes radio plays written by various play writers. These are usually repeats of what has been broadcasted over the past many years, some of them dating back 20 – 25 years ago.

Most of these plays try to address social mindsets which prevailed at that time. Widow re-marriage, scarcity of jobs and other such issues which the middle class faced in the late 70s and early 80s of India. The best thing about the plays is they way they are rendered. A lot of attention is given to minute of details. The rattling of tea cups when a prospective bride serves tea to the visiting boy, the sounds of busy markets in the backgrounds when a babu goes shopping for his wife – all these make for a great session of play listening. It takes you back to an era away from the modern day India where the joys of living were simple and desires of men and women were easily met within the constraints of an evolving and struggling society.

The next time you are stuck in traffic and want an escape route to go back to an era that you only faintly remember through memories of brilliant serials like Nukkad and Buniyaad, go ahead and switch to All India Radio at 8 pm. Those 15 minutes will be well worth your time.

It has been quite hectic over the past few days, with work taking center-stage. This post is more about what else has managed to squeeze-in the recent past.

I managed to start and stop midway V.S. Naipaul’s India – A Million Mutinies Now. The reason why I stopped it was because it was getting a bit too condescending about everything related to India. I am not suggesting that everything is great here; but it is definitely not the way Naipaul makes it seem. To contrast it, I plan to start reading Nehru’s Discovery of India. I have watched the television series and fell in love with its title track. (Listen to it, its just ethereal).

We managed to watch Sarkar Raj, which I absolutely loved and many others didn’t quite like it. For me, Big B rocked. He is far beyond any of his peers and steals the show in this movie. A highly recommended watch, at least for Amitabh Bachhan’s performance.

A play we caught a week ago was White Lilies. Quite boring and a very dull ensemble on stage. The play comprised of three short stories, all three involving two characters who discover more about each other’s past lives and thoughts. In case it tours your city, try and avoid.

Time to get back to work. Have a great day, ladies and gentlemen. And oh yes, do remember to fill some feedback for us. Please

Watched a play last evening – Ghalib in New Delhi by Pierrot Troupe productions.

The lesser said about it the better. But then, we can’t let the better rule can we? So, I have to write about it.

The play began almost 45 minutes late (a blasphemy if you are a regular RangaShankara goer) and a certain section of the audience area had chairs and tables where people could dine and watch the play.

Now, for me, theatre is a sort of sacred art. For me (I emphasise that over and over), this sanctity gets breached when the stage is set up for pleasing people as compared to conveying or displaying a special art form. I have nothing against people dining and at the same time watching a play. Go ahead and do it. But it pains me to watch something like that. It is something like asking a wannabe professional singer to sing in a wedding orchestra. You are an accessory in someone’s celebrations.

The only solace I was seeking or waiting for was that the play would turn out to be good. To the credit of my regular-bad-luck-in-recent-months, the play was far from what one would term as a presentable show.

Slapstick comedy is one thing. Screaming your head off and making random frivolous (I hate that word now) movements to make someone laugh out of exasperation is quite another.

The play was supposed to portray the insensitivity that today’s world shows to someone as iconic in the literary field as Mirza Ghalib. However, I think this particular play did more injustice to Ghalib than what the society has managed to achieve collectively till date. Now, I am no Ghalib fan yet it pained me to see such a shoddy treatment of the great Urdu poet.

One line of thought I came across was that it was light comedy. I failed to see what was light and what was comedy. Every 20 minutes there would be an aircraft flying above the venue where we were sitting, keeping me awake and interested in waiting for the next aircraft to fly by.

To stop ranting about it, I would like to add that the protagonist of the play did an excellent job and stood out with his acting skills. About the direction, I was disappointed to a large extent. There is one scene where around 7-8 people are on stage depicting various activities. Now, when you want the audience to focus on a conversation happening on stage, all your other actors on stage should mute down their movements. Otherwise, the entire scene comes across as an irritating aberration. This is a basic requirement that one has to adhere to. However, the director of the play had missed out this point. Infact, the director had missed out the entire aesthetic sense of this play.

Overall, the play comprised of snippets of scenes which were probably clubbed together just hours before the show in the darkness of the green room.
Needless to say, it fell apart pretty fast.

Cotton 56, Polyester 84

During my visit to Bangalore, I was lucky enough to catch the October theatre festival at Ranga Shankara.
They play that I watched was titled “Cotton 56 Polyester 84″.

This play, written by Ramu Ramnathan and directed by Sunil Shanbhag, is one of the few outstanding plays I have seen at Ranga Shankara.
Cotton 56 Polyester 84 is a play that revolves around the lives of two former mill workers who have lost their jobs owing to the shutdown of the old mills.

Bhau Saheb and Kaka spend their time at a road-side corner, reminiscing their past and at times re-living the forgotten moments. To kill time, they play a game of counting the number of people wearing cotton and the number of people wearing polyester. At the end of the play, the count stands at Cotton – 56 and Polyester – 84. Polyester winning signifies the death of the old cotton mills and the victory of the new manufacturing units.

Within this game is intertwined the lives of Kaka, Bhau, Bhau’s wife and son, Kaka’s daughter, Bhau’s son’s girlfriend, Gopal Seth who is an opportunistic trader and Dharavi’s Bhai who runs the mafia involved with garbage collection and dumping.

For me, this play had many hard-hitting lines. The starting couplets that Bhau sings in Marathi provoke a sense of ashamed patriotism (I wouldn’t bother explaining that).

Kaka is a Muslim and Bhau is a Maharashtrian. During their conversations about the unions and the political parties, one learns that Kaka (inspite of being a Muslim!) was a staunch supporter of Shiv Sena and Bhau was a communist.
Bhau jokingly tells Kaka, “Bala (Thakre) Saheb didn’t know that you were a Muslim. Otherwise he wouldn’t have allowed you to attend any of the Sena’s rallies”.
To this Kaka replies, “In those days, it was not that bad to be a Muslim”.

The audience chuckled and I withdrew in a shell. Probably because I was watching the play with a Muslim friend?
The sensitivity of that particular line hit me hard in the face. It was that same feeling which I had got when I was acting in the Babri-masjid scene in my last play – Vision 2020.

Bhau and Kaka continue living through their past, living through their children’s deaths and living through their constant marginalisation by the ever-increasing rich society.

The play breaks away in many places into Marathi folk songs and dances. Bhau’s wife does the Lavni as she makes her entry into the stage. She is portrayed as a strong woman who even starts off her own kitchen to make ends meet when Bhau loses his job. She withstands everything from her husband being unemployed to her son’s death. I found her character one of the strongest portrayals of the strength and determination of the Indian housewife belonging to the lower class of the society.

If you are in Mumbai, you might be lucky enough to catch it at the Prithvi theatre.

Following are other reviews of this play (all links sent in by F via e-mail):
http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/2006-May/000909.html
http://www.mumbaitheatreguide.com/dramas/hindi/c56p84.asp
http://www.abillioneyes.in/cotton06.htm (Poster-picture obtained from this website)

Stepping away from the play and into the reality of the affairs, FreeIndiaMedia provides a good article here – http://www.freeindiamedia.com/economy/10_april_06.html
Excerpts from the article:

Such is the display of contempt for workers in Mumbai now that the very memory of the textile workers is being wiped out with the closure of textile mills and the destruction of even the physical structures of the mills that brought the industrial revolution to this country. Right in front of the Shiv Sena’s Sena Bhavan at Shivaji Park stood the Kohinoor Mill that was run by the National Textile Corporation

With the destruction of mills and the eviction of mill workers from working class areas that are now being gentrified and “developed”, the memory of the workers may now remain only through literature, drama and other works of art.

Come to think of it, the last time I was in Mumbai, I was trying to strike down pins at a bowling alley which was set up in one of the demolished mills.

Strike 10 anyone? 56? 84?