Midsummer night innovators

You won't complain about lack of originality in theatre if you see some of these new productions.

This weekend, if you love theatre, or at least the "drawing-room" variety, you could catch up on some rather unusual action. Count Dracula will be in town scouting for a new bride "" in the midst of a Delhi fashion show!

The Comedy of Terror is a new play written and directed by Sohaila Kapur, who is staging her "Hungry Heart Festival of Comedy" for the scond consecutive year: "hungry heart" not because gothic romances are going to be the staples, but because, as Kapur says, "the heart is always hungry for more, new relationships."

The festival is aimed at bringing forth more "women-centric" productions "" last year it had the likes of Deepti Naval and Seema Biswas taking the stage "" and this year the theme is the institution of marriage.

Dracula apart, Kapur's fest includes four other plays, all adaptations, including of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, all directed by Kapur, who regrets the lack of original scripts in English and says she would "love it if someone walked up with an original".

Everyone in the theatre world, of course, bemoans the lack of originality. And rightly so. Particularly when it comes to productions in English "" dominated usually by bedroom farces; the kind us consumerist, elitist types are said to ostensibly appreciate.

For a change this year, the Bard is in fashion. Even as curtains go up on Kapur's modest effort, In Mumbai, the biggest (and slickest?) production of the year, is going to make a grand opening this Sunday: Alyque Padamsee's Macbeth "" produced by his daughter Raell "" is a tantrik interpretation of the tale.

Team Padamsee is said to have even roped in a "tantrik conultant", Shubhojit Dasgupta, a "teacher of vedic sciences" (who apparently was also part of Subhash Ghai's Kisna team), to help in the interpretation.

In the transposed setting "" twirling dances and tantrik sounds (the music is by Louis Banks) create a suitable atmosphere "" the three witches are tantriks and Lady Macbeth (played by Delhi-based Lushin Dubey) goads her husband into turning a killer, not merely through her famous speech as has always been believed but as part of a dark ritual.

Padamsee has always been associated with Shakespeare productions that invariably get talked about. (Last time, he attempted something like this was a couple of years ago with Romeo and Juliet, which he set in in Mumbai "" in the middle of riots).

In Delhi, Faisal Alkazi put up his own Romeo and Juliet, the original version, recently with children of the Cambridge School at Kamani. But one production that is likely to make sticklers for "correct" language (Padamsee, for instance, notoriously takes actors who can speak Shakespeare) squirm because of its experimental nature has been the mega British Council production, A Midsummer's Night Dream.

The play recently concluded in Delhi and Mumbai and is to tour Chennai and Kolkata next. Directed by Tim Supple, the Indo-UK production, two years in the making, is famously going around with its "seven languages, 23 characters and one play" USP.

Supple says he was requested to do something that would not just be another English production in India, but take the interaction ahead by several levels. Hence his decision to bring together an Indian (and Sri Lankan) cast.

He auditioned hundreds of (not just) actors, to select the cast he required "" including dancers etc. The final lot was chosen as much for its agility as for its ability to perform.

And what a performance it has been. For starters, everyone was probably also trained as a gymnast (or were they coconut gatherers?) chiving up and down ropes and a bamboo frame, to reenact the forest scenes, delivering their dialogues completely naturally, as though they lived their life naturally mid-air.

It is also "" and this was attested by the members of the British Council "" probably the raunchiest, raciest version of A Midsummer Night's Dream ever staged anywhere.

The cast speaks in Shakespeare's formal 16th century English alongside colloquial Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam and Sinhala "" the premise being that most of the audience would be familiar with at least two languages, and some perhaps more, and indeed continuation was never a problem, perhaps because the plot and dialogues are pretty familiar to the Indian aucience.

The costumes are brilliant (and often minimal), and Puch doubles up as a sutradhar who knots the whole play together, besides acting as handyman to put up and remove the props even as the play progresses. Perhaps a bit long, but here is one energetic experiment that has been indubitably successful.

Shakespeare apart, buzz is that NSD will be out with a theatrical version of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children this summer. Till then, however, the Bard rules.

A revival of storytelling

Long before formal stage productions, India had some vibrant traditions of oral story-telling. In order to revive some of these vanishing traditions, the India Habitat Centre has launched a series called the "Lost Art of Storytelling".

Already, two such performances have taken place. The first, in March, was a recitation of the entire dastan (story) of Hamza in Urdu. Then, last week saw a presentation of the popular folktale "Dulla Bhati", from Punjab, the story of Dulla Bhati who stood up against the emperor Akbar and was executed as a result.

The performance was by Meer Desraj Lachkani, a traditional ballad singer, proficient also in other folk narratives from Punjab (including better-known tales of Heer-Ranjha and Sohni-Mahiwal). The story was told by means of dialogue and songs. Similar artists from Bihar and UP are next on the agenda.

Says Vidyun Singh, programme director, "We shall first look at exploring and bringing forth the stories from states and regions where language is easy to understand and accessible to large audience. From there we intend to move into the realm of less-understood languages but wherein the power of narration transforms and takes the audience beyond words".