From exposing the ridiculous, tender, outlandish to the ludicrous and innocent, Tea With Everything – a composition of six short plays – manages to bring out the weird frailties of human beings. Directed by Mala Pasha of the Hyderabad-based The Torn Curtains theatre group, the play opened in Vizag last weekend at The Park and will be taken to Hyderabad and Bangalore in its next leg.
Adapted from Neil Simon’s Good Doctor where he dramatises short stories written by Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov, Mala Pasha flits in and out of the Chekhovian satire and Simon’s wisecracks to present stories set in the post-independence era giving an Indian context to the characters and themes. Each scene tells its own story, but the behaviour of the characters and the resolutions of their stories are not typical or predictable.
The characters give you a sense of Chekhov’s take on the human condition peppered with witty and pithy dialogues.
The Writer, a lady suffering from writer’s block and her own artistic temperament, is the one unifying element in the scenes, introducing them, commenting on them, and wryly offering alternate ending to each tale as it unfolds. Other than that, each scene stands alone as its own story with its own characters.
The plays are done by seven actors. In an interaction with Metro Plus, Mala Pasha, the director, spoke about the theatre group’s latest production and the plans ahead.
"We have brought Neil Simon’s script to India, so it’s no longer Russian. We have changed the locale and characters. We added a few more characters. So in each little play, there are more characters than in the original script. The whole flavour is Indian. But we stuck to the essence of the stories,” says Mala.
The theatre group is ready with 10 plays, though at the opening six of those were presented.
The stories themselves are very poignant with many layers to it.
“If you look beyond the surface, you will find much more. It’s comic and there is an undercurrent of tragedy sometimes. Or it may seem tragic and there is an undercurrent of comedy. It’s overtly funny, and inwardly you can peel the layers. So they are tragic-comic,” Mala explains.
The plays present a whole panorama of acting – from a snooty wife of a general to a street-walker at the red-light area of Sonagachi.
“As a director, for me the most exciting part was that each story became a new creation, it was like giving birth to a baby. We watched it grow,” says the director.
Time to conceptualise
While the play was conceptualised in February last year, the auditioning for the plays started in September. “After that it took us three months to finish the entire production,” Mala says.
The plays hold a special place in her heart. “I have set the plays in the 1950s and 60s because I could not have done justice if I had set it in the current times. I liked it to have the magic of the post-independence era. It’s all about the innocence of the characters. That time a change was happening in India and there was a kind of magic. My childhood experiences have been filled with this magic. I have tried to bring that element in the plays,” adds Mala.
The evolution of English theatre
Theatre has taken a great leap in this century. The Torn Curtains started way back in 1971 and back then they did theatre twice a year. “But today, we do a lot more. It is very exciting to see the growth in the theatre scene with smaller groups coming up with great works.
There are these young groups who are experimenting, because they can afford to experiment.
In Hyderabad for instance, we have the open cultural centre Lamakaan, which gives a platform to new young theatre groups to experiment at nominal cost. It’s wonderful to see the way the youth have taken to theatre. I think it’s a very exciting age,” says Mala.
Mala Pasha’s next goal is to start an academy of theatre training in Hyderabad, which she hopes to lay the foundation this year.
Says she, “For me theatre is not just performing up on stage; it is performing every day in your life, everywhere you go. You are looked upon and the public watches you. Theatre gives you the ability to control your body and have it say what you want it to say. Theatre gives people a lot of self confidence.”
