S Shivpprasadh, actor RS Manohar’s nephew, is all set to stage the well-known plays of the yesteryear dramatist and film personality in the coming months. And for this, he has attempted something novel — live trailers for the plays! Shivpprasadh says, “I’m a film distributor and producer. I have created trailers for many of the films that I have dubbed and released in Malayalam, which helped those films get a good opening. So, I was thinking why not a trailer for drama? I decided to put this thought into action and implemented it during the 92nd birth anniversary celebration of
RS Manohar
, held earlier this month.”
His daughter, S Sruuthi had performed a vocal concert and a Carnatic keyboard concert during the celebration, and these trailers were staged in-between these concerts.
Unlike movie trailers, he says, a drama trailer need not be a video cut as a trailer. “These trailers that I did were live versions, where we performed a scene or said dialogues from the upcoming plays during the event,” he says and adds that once audiences see the trailer, they will get an idea of what the play is going to be about. He elaborates, “We acted out a teaser of 'Chanakya Sabadham', and in that, we showed a scene where Chanakya justifies why he had to resort to treacherous means to put Chandragupta Maurya on the throne. We also provided teasers of 'Dhronar' and 'Thirunavukkarasar'. The actors playing these roles were on stage and the dialogues of the other characters who would be in these scenes were recited offstage.” While Shivpprasadh himself appeared as Chanakya and Dhrona, Sruuthi enacted Thirunavukkarasar.
Shivpprasadh claims that when he had spoken to veterans in the theatre field, they were unaware of such an attempt being made in the past, barring an instance by K Balachander. “I talked about this to all the senior dramatists like Kudanthai Mali, KSN Sundar, Kovai Padhu, Augusto, M Bhoogavarahamoorthy, who are in this field for 50-plus years. No one seems to remember if trailers were ever created for dramas. The only person who told me about something similar being attempted years ago was N Rathnam, son of veteran Koothapiran. He said that
K Balachander had attempted to create trailers for a couple of his plays, but somehow, the idea did not catch fire then,” he says.
He feels that trailers like these, which can last between three and five minutes, would help create some word-of-mouth publicity for the drama ahead of it being staged. “With TV serials taking away the audience for dramas, it is only through word-of-mouth that we can hope to bring them back to theatre, and such efforts can help in this aspect,” he concludes.
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