What’s in a name? asks the Bard of Avon’s Juliet, to justify her love for a man from her rival’s house. At the MY Theatre festival held recently in the city, however, some of the names of the participating college theatre groups, are certainly worth a mention (and a chuckle). From Anna University’s ‘Theatron’ to WCC’s ‘Drop a Line’ and SNN’s ‘Lights Out Please’, there is plenty of originality in the nomenclature, which hopefully finds its way into the production as well.
Organised by Crea-Shakthi as part of their campus initiative, the fourth edition of the under-25 youth theatre festival saw the coming together of seven campus teams. According to Vaibhav Ranganathan Srinivasan, one of the festival directors, “This festival is important to us as this is where Crea-Shakthi began. We have worked with these colleges all through the year and this is a great platform for them to come together and showcase their work.”
The line-up is eclectic. There is Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’, Sujatha’s ‘Kadavul Vandhirundhar’, Wendy Wasserstein’s ‘Uncommon Women and Others’, Robert Harling’s ‘Steel Magnolias’, an Indian adaptation of Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Kala Key’, a bilingual.
According to Druva Thiyagu of Anna University, co-director of ‘Kadavul Vandhirundhar’, “We have done a lot of English theatre but I always wanted to do a Tamil play. ‘Kadavul Vandhirundhar’ seemed ideal — it is funny and the playwright Sujatha is apparently an alumnus of our college,” he says.
For Sabreena Irfan of WCC, ‘Uncommon Women’ was ideal because, “We wanted a play that required an all-woman cast. Also, this script appealed to us as we are all at the crossroads of life and we constantly wonder how to plan and get ahead,” she says. Meenu Srinivasan from WCC and the director of ‘Steel Magnolias’ admits that practice sessions often ended in tears, “Not because of me,” she clarifies. “But the script — it is such a moving one.”
Ritu Phillip of SSN believes that ‘Pride and Prejudice’ works across countries and times because, “The themes are so universal. A mother worrying about marrying off her daughters is so common here in India. We have added and deducted a few characters though — there are three daughters instead of five and we have added a nosy Malayali aunty as well,” she grins.
Srutanjay, who has co-directed ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’, says that the biggest takeaway is not the production but the symbiotic relationship between the groups that contributed to the festival. “There was healthy competition and we worked together and balanced each other,” he says.
Adds Vaibhav, “It is all about opening young minds to the potential of theatre and giving them a distinct identity. Yes, a large part of the audience at this festival will be parents and friends, but so what? This way we create a more informed group of future theatre-goers and set quality benchmarks for theatre in the city.”
