Out of the lab

Quasar Thakore Padamsee applied a laboratory-style process during the rehearsal of Project S.T.R.I.P.

Quasar Thakore Padamsee applied a laboratory-style process during the rehearsal of Project S.T.R.I.P. The outcome: doing theatre was equal to a regular job. I demanded the cast and crew to devote eight-nine hours every day to the plays rehearsal. It was like a proper working day for them that stretched from 2 pm to 11 pm, Padamsee explains. The rehearsal for the play started on May 1. For the first time,we adopted laboratory-style working. The writer,designers,actors all are resources out of which the story and play has emerged. This way of working,we hope has resulted in an incredibly intense,honest and bizarrely funny piece of theatre, he says.

Its in the rehearsal room that the script was actually developed though Ram Ganesh Kamatham had been working on it since February. It was exciting to have the playwright during the rehearsals. We kept improvising the script with the entire team taking part in the process, the director says. The play is opening on June 16 at Prithvi Theatre. After the Juhu theatre hub,the run of the play will continue at Sathaye College Auditorium and NCPA till July 5.

Padamsee returns to direction after five years. This period had seen him travel regularly to the UK,Italy,Australia,the USA and Canada as the assistant director of Tim Supples The Midsummer Nights Dream. This globetrotters experience and observations have become the basis of Project S.T.R.I.P.,a satire.

While travelling,I noticed the displacement of native people in the pursuit of economic development. I mentioned this to Ram,who started working on the script in February, says Padamsee,who is at the helm of Q Theatre Productions. His observations struck a chord with Kamatham instantly. I could connect this to what I had noticed during my trips to rural India, says the young playwright,who injected humour into this serious topic. The play is the result of a cold,hard look at the activities carried out in the name of development, he adds.

As they started working on the script,the first scene turned out to quite humorous. That set the tone of the play. However,Kamatham feels that the audience would go back with some serious questions in mind. The play is set in a fictional island on the Bay of Bengal. The discovery of the islands native community and their contribution towards the progress and trade of the modern world forms the crux of the story.

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