The Bangalore theatre scene, this year was marked by new productions, new forms, re-runs of older plays, and plays from the city staged abroad. Apart from the regular theatre festivals, including The Hindu MetroPlus Theatre Festival and Jagriti Season 2014, Ranga Shankara celebrated turning a decade and the 60th birth anniversary of veteran theatre personality, Shankar Nag, with a theatre festival that showcased some of the best contemporary Indian productions.
S. Surendranath, artistic director of Ranga Shankara, names three. “Ramneek Singh’s Chidiyon Ka Pinjra was very well received by the audience. Abhishek Majumdar’s Kaumudi was one of the best productions that happened in Indian theatre. The writing, the performances and the overall structure were excellent. And A Straight Proposal from Delhi was an eye opener.”
Nimi Ravindran and Shiva Pathak are ecstatic with how much they have achieved with Sandbox. “We have done 110 shows. There have been 35 shows of Anish Victor’s Koogu. It was staged in Delhi, Kolkata and Assam and even travelled to Kenya. We also had 26 shows of Ajay Krishnan’s Trivial Disasters ,” says Nimi. The focus of Sandbox is to stage plays at alternate spaces. Shiva adds that performances, so far, have primarily been held in home spaces. “But we have also had plays at offices, at academic spaces like IIHS quite a few performances at Humming Tree in Indiranagar and at Beaglesloft.”
Remote Bangalore , presented by Rimini Protokoll and produced by Goethe-Insitut, Max Mueller Bhavan, was another unique theatre experience for Bangaloreans. The ‘performance’ involved a re-look at the city through a tour through undiscovered spaces. Sandbox Collective closely collaborated with German-based Rimini Protokoll for Remote Bangalore. Sandbox is set to welcome 2015 with travelling with The Company Theatre’s Piya Behrupiya to Chile.
2014 was yet another year of achievement for Abhishek Majumdar. He won the first Shankar Nag Theatre Award. His theatre company The Indian Ensemble, which he founded with Sandeep Shikhar, also had a fruitful year. Two landmark productions, Thook , commissioned by the Hunger for Trade Project, an international theatre network, and Kaumudi , were presented by Indian Ensemble. “It was a challenging year for us,” says Abhishek. “We have never had two openings in the same year. Thook and Kaumudi were very different productions. Also, Indian Ensemble came together in a way that has made us very happy. We had our first international tour as a company. We travelled to the United States and performed at Carriage House Theatre in Hartford Connecticut and the Iseman Theatre at Yale.”
This year Indian Ensemble started the Director’s Programme. “It was started with four students, Basav Biradar, Amit Sharma, Anju Alva Naik and Karen D'Mello. The students have already put up individual scenes from Sakharam Binder .”
There were other members from Indian Ensemble who won awards and acclaim for their work. Ramneek Singh received the Inlaks Scholarship to continue his studies at LISPA and Anshuman Acharya won the Hindu MetroPlus Playwright Award.
Bangalore Little Theatre, the city’s oldest English theatre group, lived up to their reputation of staging stunning productions, including Finding Ananda, a tribute to Swami Vivekananda on his 150th birthday, Ira Hauptman’s Partition , directed by Sridhar Ramanathan, both held as part of the History of Ideas Programme, and Our Iceberg is Melting , directed by Amjad Prawej.
Vijay Padaki, director of BLT, says: “One of the most successful productions in the History of Ideas programme has been The Prophet and The Poet . Prasar Bharati commissioned a tele-film of the play. It was broadcast by Doordarshan twice in the year. An event of great significance was a theatre festival facilitated by BLT. It involved four other theatre groups of Bangalore, and was a tribute to the playwright-statesman Vaclav Havel. The experience of the Theatre Collective was presented by me in an international conference in Prague on Havel’s life and works. BLT organised the All-India Arts and Heritage Management Conclave that was held in Bangalore.”
Actor and director Vivek Madan says this year a lot of shows travelled abroad. “There were a lot of collaborations. New forms developed because of Sandbox Collective. There was also Zip Zap Pow, an all-woman, one-minute festival.”
But 2014 was also a year of loss and bereavement for the theatre community. One of the most talented light designers in the city, Beary Mustafa passed away, leaving behind a void in the theatre community.
“We worked together for ten years. It is a huge thing to adjust to going to a theatre space and not seeing him,” says Abhishek.
