Beyond boundaries

Tell It To The Walls, the play by the students of Women’s Christian College, was a blend of ancient folklore and modern interpretation

September 30, 2014 08:13 pm | Updated 08:13 pm IST

TALE WELL TOLD The students of WCC take centre stage

TALE WELL TOLD The students of WCC take centre stage

Stories have always been a reflection of life, a concentration of those ideals and values that define us and are at some level a microcosm of the worlds we know and want to know. The aural tradition of storytelling has always been part of our culture — from wide-eyed children at their mother’s knee to the performance arts that inculcate these stories in their movements, from street plays that drive home a message to corporate trainers trying to preach a company’s values, we all love a good story.

And the Women’s Christian College’s play,  Tell It To The Walls,  directed by Hans Kaushik ,  based on the folklore that we grew up with, is an interesting interpretation of these tales, that uses the technique of a chorus as a tale-weaving tool. The primary narrator is an old lady abandoned by her family who needs to tell her stories. She does it to a set of four walls — with every story she tells, one comes tumbling down.

The stories are simple ones — familiar perhaps to the avid reader. A sparrow, a wily Malayalee man called Shagunni, a pair of sisters and a frightening monster called Nung Gwama come alive on stage through a series of improvisations. And the simplicity doesn’t necessarily indicate triviality — they all deal with the human condition and the values we live with that shape our identities and our lives.

 The girls in brightly coloured clothes and dramatic eye make-up bustled energetically on stage playing role after role—the same cast metamorphosing into objects from people and vice-versa, based on the demands of the situation.  

The production was amateur, understandably so, it being a college play. The sets were minimal, the lighting just about adequate, the choreography, at times sloppy and the accents of the players were often not spot-on but what made up for it was the sheer energy and joie de vivre on stage. There were no stars in this production — just a bunch of young, vibrant women who donned masks, danced, sang, cracked jokes and enjoyed themselves thoroughly on stage. And that was good enough to hold the audience’s attention till the very end.

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