Hills are Alive with Plays

About 40 Delhiites are getting ready to ring in 2009 not with dance, drinks and a DJ, but with a play. Swathed in woollens and shivering in the chill of Camp Redstone near Dehradun, they will be part of a workshop called Theatre in the Hills, a concept of travel agency Zice Holidays that saw business potential in “an offbeat holiday idea” in which the fun of acting combines with freedom from the usual New Year celebrations.

“We have Cathaayatra’s Sameer Thakur to conduct the workshop,” says Ravi Dabbiroo of Zice Holidays whose three-day camp comes for Rs 6,000. “Within days of the workshop being announced online, we got 40 confirmations. Only 10 vacancies are available now,” he adds. Thakur, who will be accompanied by fellow stage professionals Arushi Singh and Sukhesh Arora, says he is charging less than usual as “we are looking at making Theatre in the Hills an annual year-end event”.

Meanwhile, Theatre Garage Project is an intense three-day workshop held at the beginning of the year in the Himalayan forests near Ramgarh, Uttarakhand. Conducted by Ashwath Bhatt, an alumnus of the NSD and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, the workshop is all about physical exercises, clowning techniques and acting nuances. “It’s free from the distractions of city life and its attendant traffic noise and cell-phone beeps,” says Bhatt. The green surroundings and the distance from Delhi are enough to assure participation of budding actors, he says.

If First City Theatre Foundation dipped into its production fund to take its 11-member cast on a workshop in Landour for its new play, city theatre director Rudra Deep Chakraborty (who directed City of Djinns and Karna: Warrior of the Sun) is planning a “theatre adventure” in the Dooars in North Bengal with actors and directors from across India. Chakraborty spent the last fortnight doing a recce in the region. “The area is rich in folk theatre, music and dance,” he says about ingredients that can inspire city-based theatre people.

Neel Chaudhuri, creative director of the First City Theatre Foundation, says his new play A Brief History of Pantomimes wouldn’t have been the same without the three-day workshop in Landour. “We had been practising for several weeks in Delhi. Finally, we decided to go to the hills on a special workshop in which we lived in self-imposed silence, like our characters. The play deals with a special community of people who communicate only through signs,” he says. Some moments of high drama for the hills.