Curtain Call

Bard’s magic
THE 27th Prithvi Theatre Festival in Mumbai and Bangalore was an ode to the Bard. Local workshops on Shakespeare at Prithvi prepared Mumbai for the final curtain call—British group Complicite’s Measure for Measure. Although some felt technical finesse somewhat overwhelmed the story of Lucio, Mariana and Barnardine, it was an original work of art and outshone everything else at the annual festival.

Celluloid stage
VIJAY Tendulkar’s 1974 play Sakharam Binder—banned when it was first staged and acclaimed worldwide later—released on DVD with a digital narration. Marathi stage producer Mohan Jawde and director Sandesh Kulkarni recorded a stage version with Sonali Kulkarni and Sayaji Shinde in the lead. This scathing comment on marriage and sexual hypocrisy is a collector’s item.

Free speech
HABIB Tanvir’s Ponga Pandit has invited the Sangh Parivar’s ire time and again, although it isn’t a play the thespian wrote himself. This year, a slice of the theatre fraternity, including Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Nadira Babbar and Ashok Pandit took up the cudgels for Tanvir, and for free expression on the stage.

The O-factor
EVE Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues created quite a stir across the country last year. Adapted by Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal, the play completed its 100th show this year and had Bollywood siren Mallika Sherawat enacting one of the monologues. Quite surprisingly (or not so), there wasn’t much brouhaha about tickets this time around.

Dance drama
IT was one of those years when Astad Deboo performs in India. Back from an Australia run of his new show with students from Chennai’s Clarke School for the Deaf, Deboo took Contraposition—a group show with live music by Amit Heri—to many Indian cities.

Fringe benefit
THESE two festivals celebrated the experimental. A festival of puppetry, performance art and dance called The Fringe Festival—inspired by the Edinburgh Fringe Festival—brought a number of cutting-edge artistes together in Delhi. So did Chennai-based dancer Anita Ratnam’s annual The Other Festival.

Bolly bonanza
AFTER Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bollywood Dreams had a successful run on Broadway last year, another Bollywood-themed musical of similar scale opened in Australia and New Zealand. With a cast of 30 dancers, Merchants of Bollywood is the story of veteran choreographer Jailal Merchant and his grand-daughter Vaibhavi Merchant, who also choreographed the show.