Urban Legend

Bust combines history with adventure as the three women characters—who are looking for ancient artefacts buried beneath a 1,000-year-old temple— are seen trying out spelunking. “They will be seen dangling from a height,giving the play a Lara Croft feel,” the director says. He also draws on a number of local legends and myths as he captures the clash of cultures and timelines to present a cocktail of nostalgia,intrigue,zany humour and mad-cap adventure.

The previous two plays of the trilogy focus more on the transformations the city has undergone in recent times. Kamatham calls them “stories of the city” which talk about the “unique predicaments the city is encountering”. The 2004 production,Dancing on Glass is an exploration of a rapidly changing city— as the call centre culture booms,the play’s central characters try to deal with the death of a close friend. Creeper highlights the heavy toll that the IT sector has taken on the city. Adopting a framed narrative,inspired by the Vikram and Vetal stories,it straddles cyberspace and poetry,exorcism rituals and social networking sites,the terror of an unknown future and nostalgia of the fading past. “These plays explore the grungy underbelly of the new world,” he says.

The trilogy is being staged under the banner of Actors Ensemble India Forum (AEIF),which Kamatham formed with Mallika Prasad in 2001. The forum,dedicated to supporting new writing and innovation in theatre,presented the plays in Bangalore earlier this month and in Delhi this weekend. At Prithvi Theatre,Dancing on Glass,Creeper and Bust will be presented on Tuesday,Wednesday and Thursday respectively. Even though these three plays are being staged in Mumbai for the first time,Kamatham is quite a well-known name in the city’s theatre circuit. His play Crab,a product of Writers’ Bloc,has been much appreciated by Mumbai theatregoers. Last year,he collaborated with Quasar Thakore Padamsee on Project S.T.R.I.P.