City of Gardens
Let me share with you the experience of watching my first play " City of Gardens" at Ranga Shankara..
This whole week I was excited at the prospect of watching a play. I got incredibly bored of movies. Bangalore has a strong presence in the theatre arena. A few of my team mates are avid theatre-goers. So Dhilip and I went to watch this play "City of Gardens" at Ranga Shankara.
The first thing that struck me on reaching the place was the place itself. It had a quaint feeling to it with low-lights and antique furniture. Huge B&W photos of erstwhile and esteemed theatre actors hung on one side of the wall. We tried to figure out those personalities but except for Girish Karnad and Anupam Kher, others could be anybody. The crowd seemed very erudite and I guess most of them were regulars. So we stepped in to the auditorium which looked like a minature opera hall. There were only some 100 odd people in the theatre. The hall certainly had capacity for some 500 odd people but I guess the director sold only 100 tickets. Everyone sat in a plushy sofa close to the stage surrounding it.
The play "City of Gardens" is an adaptation from Anton Chekov's "Cherry Orchard". It was quite simply, a story how one's home very unwittingly becomes an integral part in one's life. It considers the social, political and emotional valences in the notion of home. The events following the imminent sale of a family estate and how it affects the characters depending on it was the highlight of the play. From the words of the director, the play asks questions like "Does romantic nostalgia for an idyllic and frozen past deny the inexorable imovement of time? , How might "home" offer shelter and refuge to some while simultaneously being a space of repression and terror for others", Why do we privelege home over travel, roots over routes?"
If all my talk sounds boring to you, the play was not. There were some five characters in the play and they put up very intense and honest performances . Imagine, no retakes, the dialogues have to be learnt by heart, and spectators were sitting so close to them, it's really not a cakewalk to script a play. Thee dialogues were full of prose ,very literary and witty. The transition one from scene to another was brilliantly choreographed. The timeline of the story was not linear, but still we were able to follow it. At the end of the play, the stage actor pointed to Dhilip and said " This was the person who was responsible for this". Even the lights hovered above him. I was completely flummoxed. It was then I realized that the director of the play was sitting right next to us. We were bowled over by the performances that we sat through the whole 60 minutes without passing any comments. For anyone who loves literature and cinema, this is the best refuge.
This whole week I was excited at the prospect of watching a play. I got incredibly bored of movies. Bangalore has a strong presence in the theatre arena. A few of my team mates are avid theatre-goers. So Dhilip and I went to watch this play "City of Gardens" at Ranga Shankara.
The first thing that struck me on reaching the place was the place itself. It had a quaint feeling to it with low-lights and antique furniture. Huge B&W photos of erstwhile and esteemed theatre actors hung on one side of the wall. We tried to figure out those personalities but except for Girish Karnad and Anupam Kher, others could be anybody. The crowd seemed very erudite and I guess most of them were regulars. So we stepped in to the auditorium which looked like a minature opera hall. There were only some 100 odd people in the theatre. The hall certainly had capacity for some 500 odd people but I guess the director sold only 100 tickets. Everyone sat in a plushy sofa close to the stage surrounding it.
The play "City of Gardens" is an adaptation from Anton Chekov's "Cherry Orchard". It was quite simply, a story how one's home very unwittingly becomes an integral part in one's life. It considers the social, political and emotional valences in the notion of home. The events following the imminent sale of a family estate and how it affects the characters depending on it was the highlight of the play. From the words of the director, the play asks questions like "Does romantic nostalgia for an idyllic and frozen past deny the inexorable imovement of time? , How might "home" offer shelter and refuge to some while simultaneously being a space of repression and terror for others", Why do we privelege home over travel, roots over routes?"
If all my talk sounds boring to you, the play was not. There were some five characters in the play and they put up very intense and honest performances . Imagine, no retakes, the dialogues have to be learnt by heart, and spectators were sitting so close to them, it's really not a cakewalk to script a play. Thee dialogues were full of prose ,very literary and witty. The transition one from scene to another was brilliantly choreographed. The timeline of the story was not linear, but still we were able to follow it. At the end of the play, the stage actor pointed to Dhilip and said " This was the person who was responsible for this". Even the lights hovered above him. I was completely flummoxed. It was then I realized that the director of the play was sitting right next to us. We were bowled over by the performances that we sat through the whole 60 minutes without passing any comments. For anyone who loves literature and cinema, this is the best refuge.
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