*LIGHTS OUT" by Manjula padmanabhan, played on Kolkata-based theatre group TreeHat

@Tuesday evening at Gyan Manch was a pleasant surprise. The full house attendance for Manjula Padmanabhan's Lights Out was overwhelming to say the least. And surely, that was an encouragement for the bunch of young theatre enthusiasts of the Kolkata-based theatre group TreeHat that staged the play.

Lights Out deals with a very common yet much misunderstood 'bystander effect". A middle class couple debates over an incident that is happening outside their building and conjures up various possible interpretations of what's being seen and heard. During the course of the conversation, few others join the couple. But none of them want to go out and help. They are either happy being voyeurs or too concerned about their safety.

Says director Shubhayan Sengupta, "Lights Out is our second production. We took a joint decision to stage Manjula's play that talks about social awareness. Though the actual events had taken place in the 80s, we don't see much of a change in the reaction of people to disturbing events happening right in front of them. Our play was intended as an eye-opener." The group had also invited the playwright to Tuesday's performance. "She was very supportive but unfortunately, couldn't make it because she was busy attending a literature conference on Tuesday," Sengupta adds.

Ask the director about the target audience and he insists on wanting to attract the city's movie-going audience. "Most English theatre productions in Kolkata are in the realm of the abstract. But we want to create a space for alternative entertainment. The crowd might not necessarily be well-versed in Samuel Beckett, Tennessee Williams and Anton Chekhov. Serious theatre, for them, might turn a bit boring." So, TreeHat's production explored a style of treating serious issues in an entertaining fashion. In many ways, this is a style that contemporary Indian cinema follows as well!

Another interesting concept in this production was the presence of a theatre mentor Aman Agarwal, who had been an assistant director himself when the same play was staged at the University of Pennsylvania. Speaking about his role, Agarwal says, "Unlike a co-director, a director mentor is the person who can't make decisions. He is assisting the director but not as a trainee but with as much or even more experience than the director. However, he will not take the final call."

A zeal to experiment and a desire to connect with the youth. Seems like English theatre in Kolkata has a lot more excitement in store without always being didactic and abstract.


Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com