Staging experiments: What to expect from the Vinod Doshi Theatre Festival 2017

If there’s one reason theatre connoisseurs keep coming back to one of Maharashtra’s few experimental theatre festivals every year, it is because of its
interesting repertoire of plays. While Tamil and Punjabi plays were presented for the first time under its banner last year, this year’s edition of the

Vinod Doshi Theatre Festival

has only broadened its offerings of experimental work by talented theatre makers, bringing on board plays from Pune, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Imphal too...

A fictional town, with a real-life problemFebruary 27: Muktidham | Hindi | Bengaluru
The festival flags off with this play by Bengaluru-based Abhishek Majumdar. Taking us back in time, when Hindus were a minority and Buddhism was at its peak in India, the play is set against the backdrop of a Hindu monastery in fictional Beerpur. What happens when the temple head decides to retire to the Muktidham, to attain salvation, and a successor must be chosen? It starts a debate between two priests residing there; one who believes that including the lower caste in the system is the way forward, and the other, who wants to create resistance to Buddhism. The anti-intellectualism that ensues is what Abhishek tries to dissect.
In past interviews with the media, Abhishek has mentioned that the play (backed by historical research) was conceptualised at a time when the intolerance debate was a burning issue, and protests at JNU and FTII had come to the fore. The play is like a call for some soul-searching in the midst of all the clutter today.

In the footsteps of a reformerFebruary 28: Samajswasthya | Marathi | Pune
With this festival, Pune’s Natakghar group premieres it latest offering, Samajswasthya, a two-act play about social reformer Raghunath Karve, who pioneered initiating family planning and birth control among the masses in 1921. According to

Atul Pethe

, the director, it aims to highlight the often-overlooked struggle of Karve and the war between the orthodox and the progressive.
Though there is already a biopic on Karve (Amol Palekar’s

Dhyaas Parva

), Atul promises that this play is different. It touches upon a very different aspect of the social reformer’s life. “We chose to open the play at this festival, fully knowing the response we’ll get from its audience. We are still nervous though, about how the play will be received,” says Atul, adding that there are plans to take the play to different parts of Maharashtra later. You’ll also see actor Girish Kulkarni, who essays Karve, in a very unusual avatar.

Journeying with intimacyMarch 1: Still and Still Moving | English-Hindi | New Delhi
The city has seen several pieces that have beautifully expressed dissent at the archaic Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Yet, Neel Chaudhuri’s Still and Still Moving stands apart. The love story of two men, a writer in his forties and a young college student, it plays across two ends of the National Capital Region (NCR) area. There are extremes, such as the difference in ages of the men, or the distance between NCR’s ends. Neel however mentioned that it was the world of the Delhi metro, running in between, that piqued his interest. Society might choose to conveniently give such narratives a miss, but here’s a piece that closely observes the short-lived, often intimate conversations that take place between men on the metro. We can hardly wait to see how the conflicts, arising out of the differences in the aforementioned extremes, will be played up to the fullest.

Dancing for freedom
March 2: Nerves | Non-verbal | Imphal
A woman throws herself to the ground, only to be prodded by a group of men holding sticks. Her non-receptive body is steered the way they please, and she is left to teeter into the darkness. Replete with haunting visuals, this is a scene from Nerves, a non-verbal performance conceptualised by Imphal-based choreographer Surjit Nongmeikapam. A response to the constant state of conflict in Manipur, the discrimination that people of the area face suggests why the piece is fashioned as non-verbal. Suresh Khundrakpam, aka Tomba, from the crew, says, “More than a theatre performance, this is a dance act emphasising on movement.”
But, how will the audience here identify with the story of people in conflict-stricken Manipur, one may ask. “Although the piece is rooted in Manipur’s struggle for freedom, this struggle is universal,” Tomba responds. In his director’s note, Surjit says, “While creating this, the first thing that came to mind was Manipur’s youth — dancers, non-dancers and musicians — as my performers. Rather than focusing on technique, the idea was to focus on shedding light on the disturbed sense of the inner self.”

Whose role is it anyway?March 3: Akshayambara | Kannada | Bengaluru
This experimental Kannada play, written and directed by Sharanya Ramprakash, explores feminine representation through the prism of Yakshagana, an ancient, male-dominated folk form of Karnataka. The play is a meeting of research and Sharanya’s personal experiences as a student of the form at

Yakshagana

Kendra in Udupi.
Akshayambara imagines a reversal of roles in the popular ‘Draupadi Vastrapaharana’ plot from Yakshagana. It looks at the interpretation of gender when a man (Prasad Cherkady) plays the ‘stree vesha’, while the ‘purusha vesha’ is played by a woman (Sharanya), exploring conflicts in tradition, gender, power and morality.
Sharanya says there are two kinds of people who’ve really connected with the play, “The real practitioners, who understand the form and recognise its politics; and those who have no association with the form or the language. The latter tend to watch the play more closely. So, in that sense, I’m excited about the responses it’ll get in Pune,” says Sharanya.

The ninth edition of the annual Vinod Doshi Theatre Festival will be held from February 27 - March 3, at Yashwantrao Chavan Natyagruha. Timings for all plays is 7.30 pm.