Saturday, July 21, 2012

10 minutes drama fest

Was at a '10-minutes drama' festival by Prakriti Foundations @ Alliance Francaise last evening. The concept is like dynamite - what all you can convey on the stage in 10 minutes, like 140 letter-limit Twitter micro-blogging.

Watched 11 plays and none of them was second grade. We can excuse not caring for conventions like entry from left of stage (facing the audience) is entry from outer space to inner space and entry from right is like going from the kitchen of the house into the main hall. A tad confusing at times, have to admit.

Observed a spark in the performance of youngsters like Ashok Selvan.

The best performance award goes to the solo performer in Manjula Padmanabhan's 'The Hidden Fears'. As a shop keeper 'narrating his experience and justification as a perpetrator of violence and through that underlines the mindlessness of it all and makes his statement against violence' (shades of KH's UPO there?), the actor gave a thrilling performance - voice, body language, use of space wise..

His name is Yog Japee. Yes, 'Ranjith', Billa's comrade-in-arms in Billa 2.