Cold play
7 Jan 2015 9:39 PM GMT
The Films and Theatre Society offers audiences a five-day Winter Theatre Festival as a New Year’s present featuring some blockbuster performances.
The festival that spans from January 8 to 26, will be held at the Capital’s Kamani Auditorium in Mandi house and it will see Rakesh Bedi, set the stage on fire with his famous play Massage in which he plays as many as 24 different characters as the festival opens. And the curtains will be drawn by play Kahani Teri Meri starring legendary actor and costume designer Dolly Ahluwalia.
The interesting feature of this festival as is that all the plays are of different genres. After Massage on January 8, one will witness an Indian adaptation of Shakespeare’s Merchant Of Venice, called Saudagar followed by Wo Lahore, A family drama set up in the times of partition and Draupadi, an all-woman musical drama depicting the story of world’s most blessed as well as most-cursed woman.
“In the last five years, our aim has been to present before our audiences a different play and this festival confirms it. We have roped in Dolly Mam as Boodhi Kaaki in my play Kahani Teri Meri, earlier known as Koobar aur Kaaki and getting to see Dolly mam perform live on stage is a chance not everyone gets. She lives her character,” says Atul Satya Koushik, the director of the festival.
“We make sure that we are taking our plays to various cities like Jaipur, Lucknow, Mumbai, Chandigarh and as we move around, we realize that even Delhi is missing out on some amazing performances in those cities. That’s how we got the idea to invite Rakesh Bedi’s play Massage to our festival,” adds Koushik, who is also the writer-director of 15 plays produced by the society.
Massage, a two-act play, is a monologue in which Rakesh Bedi portrays several characters which can be seen vividly as the play progresses. Written by one of the most prolific and hard-hitting writers of modern India, Vijay Tendulkar, Massage tries to peep into the underbelly of today’s society through the escapades of Happy Kumar, who comes to join the film industry to become an actor while Saudagar is an Indian adaptation of one of the most famous plays of William Shakespeare – Merchant of Venice. This adaptation is peculiar for recreating quintessential Shakespearian moods on stage in an Indian set-up.
Wo Lahore, a musical drama, is set in the middle of twentieth century’s India which has been the most-written, most-performed and most-talked-about part of Indian history. This is a story of an ordinary woman, a mother of three sons, who tries to keep her family intact amongst everything that is happening around. This play shows the internal conflicts and turmoil prevailing in an ordinary Indian family with the struggle for freedom, social beliefs of those times and the then partition in the backdrop.
Draupadi has always been a celebrated character of the epic of Mahabharata and many myths, conventions and perceptions have been associated with her in various versions of her life’s story.
This plays takes excerpts from the story of Draupadi as known to everybody and adds to it some imaginative sequences to bring out the real essence of association between Draupadi and today’s women.
Kahani Teri Meri, earlier known as Koobar aur Kaaki, is an amalgamation of Munshi Premchand’s Boodhi Kaaki and Dharamveer Bharti’s Gulki Banno. Atul Satya Koushik has merged the two stories in such a way that their essence and the exquisiteness remain unharmed. The vision and mission of the director transcends the stories to an incredible level. The play depicts the various desires of human beings.
When : January 8 to 26 Where: Kamani Auditorium, Mandi House
The festival that spans from January 8 to 26, will be held at the Capital’s Kamani Auditorium in Mandi house and it will see Rakesh Bedi, set the stage on fire with his famous play Massage in which he plays as many as 24 different characters as the festival opens. And the curtains will be drawn by play Kahani Teri Meri starring legendary actor and costume designer Dolly Ahluwalia.
The interesting feature of this festival as is that all the plays are of different genres. After Massage on January 8, one will witness an Indian adaptation of Shakespeare’s Merchant Of Venice, called Saudagar followed by Wo Lahore, A family drama set up in the times of partition and Draupadi, an all-woman musical drama depicting the story of world’s most blessed as well as most-cursed woman.
“In the last five years, our aim has been to present before our audiences a different play and this festival confirms it. We have roped in Dolly Mam as Boodhi Kaaki in my play Kahani Teri Meri, earlier known as Koobar aur Kaaki and getting to see Dolly mam perform live on stage is a chance not everyone gets. She lives her character,” says Atul Satya Koushik, the director of the festival.
“We make sure that we are taking our plays to various cities like Jaipur, Lucknow, Mumbai, Chandigarh and as we move around, we realize that even Delhi is missing out on some amazing performances in those cities. That’s how we got the idea to invite Rakesh Bedi’s play Massage to our festival,” adds Koushik, who is also the writer-director of 15 plays produced by the society.
Massage, a two-act play, is a monologue in which Rakesh Bedi portrays several characters which can be seen vividly as the play progresses. Written by one of the most prolific and hard-hitting writers of modern India, Vijay Tendulkar, Massage tries to peep into the underbelly of today’s society through the escapades of Happy Kumar, who comes to join the film industry to become an actor while Saudagar is an Indian adaptation of one of the most famous plays of William Shakespeare – Merchant of Venice. This adaptation is peculiar for recreating quintessential Shakespearian moods on stage in an Indian set-up.
Wo Lahore, a musical drama, is set in the middle of twentieth century’s India which has been the most-written, most-performed and most-talked-about part of Indian history. This is a story of an ordinary woman, a mother of three sons, who tries to keep her family intact amongst everything that is happening around. This play shows the internal conflicts and turmoil prevailing in an ordinary Indian family with the struggle for freedom, social beliefs of those times and the then partition in the backdrop.
Draupadi has always been a celebrated character of the epic of Mahabharata and many myths, conventions and perceptions have been associated with her in various versions of her life’s story.
This plays takes excerpts from the story of Draupadi as known to everybody and adds to it some imaginative sequences to bring out the real essence of association between Draupadi and today’s women.
Kahani Teri Meri, earlier known as Koobar aur Kaaki, is an amalgamation of Munshi Premchand’s Boodhi Kaaki and Dharamveer Bharti’s Gulki Banno. Atul Satya Koushik has merged the two stories in such a way that their essence and the exquisiteness remain unharmed. The vision and mission of the director transcends the stories to an incredible level. The play depicts the various desires of human beings.
When : January 8 to 26 Where: Kamani Auditorium, Mandi House
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