Something to think about

As someone who has, unfortunately, been rarely exposed to good theatre, I walk towards National School of Drama's Sammukh auditorium to witness Kirti Jain's play, Sab Kuch Chakachak. By the end of the show, I'm fighting back my tears. And even though I don't judge myself as a theatre critic, there's something that all of you reading this piece should do.

Pray hard for the play to return and watch it. It's a must, not only for the way it has been written and directed, but also for the manner in which the actors (each and everyone of them) have simply sunk into their respective characters. And therein lies the oddity, especially as one sees some of the characters from the "village" suddenly turning up as "swish Page 3 city dwellers". Another slight glitch is the wrong accent ("waxing" for instance, became "vexing"), a characteristic one doesn't easily associate with public school children.

That said, the story of this one-and-a-half hour long play grips you from the very first scene. It is the story of another Singur- and Nandigram-in-the-making (something that we read about in our morning papers) but told in a contemporary style, through the eyes of a group of friends.

Studying in a public school (given that some of the students essay characters of young boys and girls from well-to-do families), the play focuses on these friends, their families, their dreams, their aspirations, their attempts at understanding their own sexuality but most of all, their overall camaraderie. In other words, while the play looks at the other face of modernisation, along the way there's a remarkable garnish of the issues that confront youngsters in the age group of 12-14 years.

Considering that Indian films are invariably reviewed and highlighted in the media (there was not one review of the play in any of the newspapers, or on the Internet), some of the initial scenes of the play did remind me of Mansoor Khan's Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikandar. And as the play proceeds with equable flourish, I found myself, at times, brushing with the Rang De Basanti-effect. No, the scenes aren't lifted from any of these films. Far from it.

Instead what Jain and her team has done is to present the play that's not in-your-face. "I did not want the play to look and sound preachy," says Jain, who began working on it in December 2006 with script writer Vibhawari Deshpande. And while several improvisations were made ("I thought, at first, we were trying to tackle too many issues at the same time"), Jain also had a lot of discussions with her family members at home. "A lot of interesting suggestions come from the younger generation," she says, explaining how her niece asked her not to make desperate attempts at becoming too funny.

Jain is readying to take the play, complete with its 12 members from Sanskaar Rang Toli, to different public schools in and away from Delhi. "The target audience is really the children and I am actually waiting to get their feedback," she says.

For now, the feedback, we assure her, is positive.