A note from Team Thespo Hello, hello, hello! As the monsoon batters us down, we’ve been across the country on our phones, speaking to people from Jammu to Kerala, from Gujarat to Tripura and now the lots are in: we’re finally done with registrations! It’s amazing, the number of people we’ve spoken to and met. Now it’s time for Thespo to literally go across the country in search of some amazing theatre that will storm the Prithvi Theatre (Mumbai) stage this December! This edition has a musician from the UK writing in about collaboration, and creating a piece that is harmonious, and a Bombay based writer protesting disharmony between her generation and Shakespeare. Siddharth Menon joins us for this time’s Quick 8, while renowned playwright Mahesh Dattani recommends plays that young theatre nuts should read. If you have anything you’d like to share with us, from your thoughts on the articles, to an article of your own, do not hesitate to email us on ink@thespo.org.
Happy Reading!
Wilfred Petherbridge
Siddharth Menon
Meghana Telang
Mahesh Dattani
The Screening Journey Begins
Wilfred Petherbridge is a musician based in the UK, who regularly composes for theatre and dance and runs Coegi Music and Dance; a cross collaborative company. His approach to composition revolves around continued exploration of electronic, improvised and contemporary practices.
Wilfred juggles multiple musical instruments and a Macbook
My background growing up, was as much theatrical, as it was collaborative. My mother (a freelance set and costume designer/educator) and my father (the creative director/writer for The London Bubble) have been working together and making theatre for over 30 years. I, nearing my 26th birthday and the eldest of two, have grown up witnessing a relationship carved from equal parts of working and parenting materials. Thus, it is easy to understand why collaboration is at the heart of my compositional method in and of theatrically performative environments. To me, art is a shared experience. It is in the process of production where we uncover the glorious fruits of the labour.
In my opinion, subtlety and empathy are paramount elements in each of these roles and it is these elements that I try to bring to my work. Silence and being brave enough to do nothing can often be the most powerful tool in any creative role. If I feel that a moment or a scene needs sound then I try to approach that composition thinking in minute incremental building blocks, working from silence upwards.
To work with this in mind can often help when dealing with those who don’t. We all have examples of working with brash, loud and controlling artists in collaboration but we should understand that the malleability of relationships of artistic practice is crucial when making Much of the joy of working in theatre those relationships productive. and dance has been bringing together Sometimes it’s okay to let someone a group of people who excel else take the reins, to drive the individually; lighting technician, project forward. designer, choreographer, actor, director, musician etc.
Understandably these relationships take time to develop and we don’t always have the luxury of the time required to develop them. When working under time constraints collaborative work can often resemble individual efforts crudely tacked together. However, time constraints can offer motivation, subsequently the resulting work does not have to suffer. I was recently given the opportunity to work with The Flanagan Collective
on two shows which were performed in Australia and London. One of the two pieces (Babylon) had to be devised within a two week window. The other (Fable) was a show that had been developed previously but was still new to the cast and myself. Fable was relatively easy to adopt, though there were some elements of the score which I had to alter to suit the new production. But having a score already written allows for a quick reimagining. The looming deadline drives everyone into action, no one wanting their artistic efforts to be sub-par. Babylon was a show still being developed even during its opening weeks in Adelaide. Joe Hufton, the director of both Fable and Babylon, was a wonderful example of someone who, even in the face of the foreboding first curtain, allowed for
necessary creative space by setting deadlines and realising that even though a show is up and running, that doesn’t make it a finished piece. One deadline he gave me was a very vague “you need to get us from this scene to the next, give me something by tomorrow”. This vague and reasonably pressured request offered two things; creative freedom and enough boundary to spur me into action.
The resulting piece of music, I believe, was one of the most memorable pieces of the show. Though this seems to have become a little piece of writing that has touched more upon working relationships than it has composition for theatre, I suppose it’s my fascination with these collaborative alliances that drew me to theatre in the first place. The possibility of working with someone who comes from an entirely different working background and thus brings a whole new perspective to making. This is why collaboration is a golden opportunity for artistic growth. This is why I love theatre.
You can check out some of Wilfred’s work here
Siddharth Menon is the co-founder of the Pune based theatre group Natak Company. He has performed many plays under this banner across the country. He has also been associated with the Pune based Aasakta and Mumbai based Akvarious Productions. He has acted in Hindi films like Peddlers (directed by Vasan Bala), and Loev (directed by Sudhanshu Saria). He’s been in several Marathi films like Happy Journey, Rajwade and Sons, Popat, & Zara Hatke and Poshter Girl.
Quick 8 Your first theatre encounter: Parka in BMCC college. It didn’t matter that it was an amateur production, it made me think, “Man! I should be doing this.” How has your journey been since then? The journey has been quite something. After seeing that play, I decided to just put this fear of the stage behind me, and I dove head first into the world of theatre. Now, I’m juggling film and theatre, which I’ve always wanted to do. One of your goof ups on stage: One major one was in a musical set in the early 1900s, called Sangeet Maan Apmaan, and is a Marathi classic, once performed by Bal Gandharva. It was in shuddh Marathi, and all of a sudden, I said an English word on stage. Everyone was in shock!
A theatre production that you would want to be a part of: Stories in a Song, Piya Beharupiya. Any directors/actors you hope to work with soon? Atul Kumar, Abhishek Majumdar, Makarand Deshpande, and Lillette Dubey. The best and worst part about being an actor: The worst part is trying to get work! The best part is the gift of empathy. Once you study a character without judgements, you can relate with any sort of person you meet. Your favourite stage: Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai! When I went to Prithvi for the first time, and saw the sign “Entry for actors only”, contrary to all the doubts thrown at me, I finally felt like it was a matter of pride to be an actor. Another aspect of theatre besides acting that excites you: Writing. I’ve tried really hard, but I struggle with it. Someday, I’ll write something great, too.
Shakespeare and the Theatre-Loving Millennial Meghana is an aspiring actor, writer and student and full time day-dreamer. She speaks of her waning distaste for Shakespeare, and how a new app has bridged the gap between her and the Bard.
A lover of theatre, a passionate reader, a grammar nerd, and full-timer at re-imagining every scene I have ever watched or read – I seem like the perfect candidate to be a Shakespeare geek, don’t I? Unfortunately, that’s not quite the case.
guzzler’s diet, and a formidable opponent. On the other side, there’s me; a Harry Potter obsessed millennial, with disdain for Enid Blyton’s English for being too “old-world”, determined to overcome every literary challenge thrown at me.
Shakespeare and I have met time and again, but far from the love at first sight that his work often reflects, we seemed to be the perfect antagonists. On one side we have the classic playwright; inventor of words, a staple in every literature
For our first tryst, the pitch was the book Tales From Shakespeare, edited by Charles and Mary Lamb. It didn’t seem to matter that this book itself was a classic, or that my teachers ensured we were reading what
flowery and it was a chore to get through the plays. The next time we met, it was a two year long battle, as my classmates and I struggled through a bowdlerised As You Like It. It was for my all-important ICSE exam, and there was no avoiding the Bard. If our relationship was rocky previously, now it was outright unsustainable. As a text that even his most forgiving fans find hard to digest, the play came across as amateurish, brash and not worth my time.
are considered some of Shakespeare’s best works, from Othello to the Merchant of Venice. The characters weren’t relatable, the writing seemed unnecessarily
Out of school and away from literature classes, I kept myself content by choosing what I wanted to read, and Shakespeare never made the cut. I went about my business, away from his words and work, until six years later, I got the opportunity to watch Richard III the film, directed by Richard
Loncraine, written and performed by Ian McKellan and even stubborn ol’ me had to swallow her words. The movie hardly edited any of the original dialogues written by Shakespeare, but replaced the setting with1930s England, where Richard III was now a power-hungry fascist seeking the British Crown.
The Tempest on Heuristic Shakespeare
All of a sudden, Shakespeare was engaging, entertaining, compelling, politically relevant, and – dare I say it – fun! It is with this thought in mind that Sir McKellan and professor Sir Jonathan Bate created a series of apps called Heuristic Shakespeare.
The first app has The Tempest, and the makers intend to release another 36 apps, each with a different work of Shakespeare with discussions on themes, writing styles, characters. The entire text is performed without the intermediate of a director. Merely actors performing the lines, with no make-up, costume or set. The words are on screen for us to follow.
The archaic, flowery and convoluted language, once read with appropriate pause and feeling is now imbued with meaning; that which a dry reading one does on their own cannot seem to accomplish. The words have life, the play comes alive in your mind’s eye, and Shakespeare is finally heard not read. This was, after all, how Shakespeare intended it, no doubt? I can hardly imagine young Shakespeare thinking that 500 years later, young children would ponder over every word he wrote, desperate to find meaning in the nth layer, never hearing it, never watching it performed. Technology, it seems, is the final frontier that has been able to provide a bridge between millennial me and archaic Shakespeare. No more is Shakespeare a dull read; now that I have something to help me understand him, he’s finally earning that classic stature in my eyes.
Thespo Recommends –
Mahesh Dattani is a playwright and director, whose work include the plays Final Solutions, Dance Like a Man, Bravely Fought the Queen, On a Muggy Night in Mumbai, Tara,Thirty Days in September and. He is the first playwright in English to be awarded the Sahitya Akademi award. He has also directed the films Mango Souffle and Morning Raaga.
“At the heart of theatre is the human condition, whether in the form of story or through dialogue, spoken or unspoken. Anyone interested in any aspect of theatre, especially actors, directors and designers, must master the art of reading a script; Mining it to unearth what is underneath the words. Here is my choice of must-reads.”
A brilliant study of myth, familial angst and the artificial constructs of theatre.
Suiting the word to the action, and the action to the word. Without overstepping the modesty of Nature!
A study in musical harmony created with prose.
Since 1999, Thespo has been a platform for everyone under the age of 25 who is interested in any and all aspects of theatre. Thespo firmly believes in including youth from all parts of the world, all fields, all language groups and all art forms who share a love for theatre. Over the last seventeen years it has grown from a one-evening event to a year round movement comprising of an annual Festival, monthly shows at Prithvi Theatre, theatre training programmes, workshops, site-specific performances and much more for young theatre enthusiasts.
Established in 1944, it is one of India’s oldest English language theatre groups whose members (Alyque Padamsee, Sabira Merchant, Gerson Da Cunha, Ebrahim Alkazi, among others) have gone on to become legends in theatre, radio and television.
QTP (based in Mumbai) is a theatre and arts management company, dedicated to create unique theatre experiences for audiences at home and abroad.
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A note on the cover “As the word we chose for this edition was 'compose' I took inspiration from the Rorschach or the ink blot test; a symmetrical composition. It can be viewed as both an abstract design as well as be related to a concrete object or image, which depends on who views it. I made it extremely colourful keeping in line with the previous Ink covers. Hence, I have filled in the spaces in random with different colours while keeping it symmetrical.” – Sahithya Iyer
Cover page: Sahithya Iyer Editors: Meghana Telang & Sahithya Iyer Designed by: Meghana Telang & Spriha Nakhare
A YOUTH THEATRE MOVEMENT
2016