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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Stage flight
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Stage flight

Our pick from the eclectic mix at the National School of Drama's annual festival

Anitta Suikkari in Mun Lean Inanna.Premium
Anitta Suikkari in Mun Lean Inanna.

The National School of Drama’s annual Bharat Rang Mahotsav, on till 18 February, has acquired an international tenor, and is now dubbed Asia’s largest theatre festival. This time, 82 productions, selected from more than 500 applications, are on the itinerary.

Traditional forms widely practised in parts of India—from bhauna to pandavani to Kathakali—are being showcased alongside the urbane theatre of city groups, leading to a mix of sensibilities that, if nothing else, is certainly representative of the country’s theatre ethos.

Select productions are being performed simultaneously at “parallel festivals" in Agartala, Aurangabad, Panaji and Jabalpur.

The full plate may well prove daunting to even the most avid theatre-goer, but here are eight productions worth a watch.

Oedipus, 7 February: Established in 1994, the rural group, Ebong Amra, operates out of Bengal’s only theatre village, Tepantar, with a 30-member (including eight women) repertory group. Its innovative dramas have been staged widely in India and Bangladesh. Founder Kallol Bhattacharya directs their production of Sophocles’ Oedipus, designed for an open space and stripped down to its essence. It reflects a strong focus on devised movement innate to performing traditions such as chhau, and stands in some contrast to the stagy aesthetic of city theatre that the group eschews.

Mun Lean Inanna, 9 February: The ancient Mesopotamian goddess Inanna has been a recurring pop-cultural motif in films, books and plays. The Norwegian group, Beaivváš Sámi Našunálateáhter, stages Mun Lean Inanna (I Am Inannna) as a monologue performed by Anitta Suikkari, in which the rites of passage of a young woman preordained to be a deity acquire dramatic heft.

Postal Delivery To God, 12 February: The evanescent girlhood of two women, whose lives are governed by orthodox norms in a religious school, forms the crux of this semi-autobiographical Israeli play from collaborators Amit Zarka and Ruthie Osterman. Cloistered young women, who could really be schoolgirls anywhere, populate the stage and demonstrate an unflappable buoyancy of spirit even in the face of much repression. This rare (and candid) look at female adolescence opened at the Woman Festival 2012 in Holon, Israel.

All The Things You Said You Never Said Before You Thought You Could Ever Say, 13 February This is a compelling new work from choreographer Vivien Wood, in association with Switzerland’s Compagnie TDU, whose earlier collaboration with Studio Matejka, Awkward Happiness—a meditation on ennui-ridden urban courtship—toured India in 2014. Relationships are again centre stage in this piece that seeks to probe the “recesses of the subconscious". A segment that juxtaposes these inner conflicts against the double-speak of airline safety lectures chillingly evokes the aviation disasters of the past year.

Bacchae, 14 February: Imphal’s Chorus Repertory Theatre mints a new director in Ratan Thiyam’s son, Thawai, who takes up Euripides’ Bacchae as his directorial debut. In a contemporaneous spin, the great Greek tragedy is suffused with the ravages of globalization on the developing world. More than a vengeful god, Dionysus represents progress, science and intuition in a production that bears all the hallmarks of Ratan Thiyam’s theatre—dreamy visuals and performances rooted in traditional forms.

Punar Jani, 16 February: The feminist perspective of Nireeksha, a 16-year-old women’s theatre group from Thiruvananthapuram, informs their new production, Punar Jani, directed by Sudhi Devayani. The central trope allows its protagonist to switch lives with other women just as they are being killed—a powerful idea that could make for gut-wrenching theatre.

C Sharp C Blunt, 17 February Flinntheater’s Sophia Stepf has been involved in India-related projects for more than a decade, and this quirky one-woman piece featuring singer M.D. Pallavi feeds into the climate of feminine angst that has become almost a subgenre of theatre over the past couple of years. Even if the text portions are a little too pat, an impressive soundscape blends seamlessly with Pallavi’s turn as a “singing app" custom-made for an entitled male clientele that is ultimately indicted for its deep-seated misogyny.

An Enemy Of The People, 18 February: What made this 2012 German production of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy Of The People even more pressing was the Edward Snowden story, on classified information leaks, in mid-2013—the protagonist, Thomas Stockmann, is one of our foremost literary whistle-blowers. It’s a story that transcends cultures—Satyajit Ray adapted it for film as Ganashatru in 1990. This relentlessly reinterpreted version by Thomas Ostermeier, the artistic director of Berlin’s celebrated Schaubühne, marks an eerily prescient closing to a state-owned arts festival.

The Bharat Rang Mahotsav is on till 18 February. Timings and venues vary. Tickets, 50-200, available on https://eticket.nsd.gov.in and at the venues. For details, visit www.nsdtheatrefest.com

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Published: 07 Feb 2015, 01:03 AM IST
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