By Rita Advani
LEXINGTON, MA–For me, theater is meant to entertain, to provoke questions, to challenge current beliefs and to draw out emotions. It is art, it is declamation, it is timing in delivery, chemistry in the interaction between the actors on stage, and above all, it is the engagement with the audience.
I still recall plays that I saw at the National School of Drama at Bhagwandas Road in New Delhi in the early 1970’s and some of the excellent productions put on at the A.R.T in Cambridge that set the bar high. The plays presented by Natyaranga (a theater production company founded by Madhu Nene), in support of the Learnquest Academy, on Sunday, November 17, at the Diamond Middle School in Lexington, delivered on all those attributes in spades.
While English is the primary language for most of us living in the area, it was an utter delight to spend an afternoon immersed in Hindi. What a great way to encourage a culture we love.
“Lucy”, directed superbly by Madhu Nene, brought forward the dilemma of “serious artistes” competing with “social media”. What starts out with a man on a mission to get some papers signed, gets derailed by a lady whose dogs are social media influencers. The chemistry between the actors (Eesha Ingle and Gaurav Kulkarni) and the very quick repartee between the characters had the audience in splits. The tight script (concept and dialogues by Eesha Ingle, Madhu Nene, Shubhankar Padwal and Script by Shubhankar Padwal) kept things interesting. Beyond the hilarity were serious questions about the role of social media in promoting the arts.
“Court-Martial”, a play by Swadesh Deepak, also directed by Madhu Nene, took us into an Indian Army’s court-martial courtroom and into the complex relationships between the officers and jawans, caste and class tensions emblematic of many sections of Indian society, domestic violence, expectations of behavior, and army regulations and protocol. So much to contemplate. The script worked all of these in deftly and the tight direction kept the action flowing. After the show, Madhu provided the audience insights into the time that was spent in consultation with Indian Armed Forces officers to incorporate detailed Army protocols into the script and movements on stage.
The result was a realistic adherence by the ensemble to army courtroom procedures and protocol. Outstanding performances by Arup Dey as the Defense Lawyer, Ajay Jain as Captain B.D. Kapoor, and Ujwal Wasekar as the accused, transported the audience into the proceedings of the court-martial and kept us guessing as to what the final verdict would be. While the sets were simple, the attention to production detail was impressive, including the way in which uniforms met army standards of being starched and ironed, and name badges that were in both English and Hindi.
Quality productions like these elevate the level of theater in the South Asian community and we can’t wait for more productions of this standard from Natyaranga and other theater groups.
