A day amidst energy, enthusiasm and efficiency

I spent one full day 8am to 8 pm watching 17 stage plays! I was the judge along with two others at the Chirst College festival "Darpan 2008" of which theatre is one category. BOY, was I impressed. These days kids get so many opportunities and they sure make use of it very well. There was class in all the performances. There was absolutely no slapstick comedy and the production quality was very good. I just did not expect PUC and under graduate students to come with such a fascinating show.

Even the themes were very interesting. None were frivolous. There were 4 comedies and the rest were all very serious topics. - rape, communal problems, seven sins, media madness, war, partition, romance, underworld...it was all there.

The underworld play was based on Ram Gopal Varma's Sarkar. Like a sequel to Sarkar Raj, they did a very slick job, I tell you! RGV should get the script from these kids :) I had agreed to be the judge very reluctantly, but I think it was a day well spent.

Of course we had trouble agreeing on who wins and who doesn't. The results will be announced in August. May be I'll write a review of the prize winning plays after that.

I also watched 3 street play performances (there were totally 10). Very good performances.

Typical TPK

Oh what an evening it was! Yesterday I was at Ranga Shankara watching TP Kailasam's Home roolu and kailasam nenapu presented by antaranga. And what a glorious evening it was :) The play opened to a full house and kept the audience in split for the entire 75 minutes!

What I liked was the little presentation they did to introduce TPK. It was a nice trip down memory lane for people like who grew up listening to his songs or reading his plays. And a good introduction to the genius of TPK for many who didn't know about him. They introduced him with snippets of his plays like sattavana santaapa and his ever so endearing songs kolike ranga, a spoof of the English song "Constantinople", namma thipparalli balu doora a spoof of the march song "It's along way to Tipparary" and the hilarious kaashig hOda nam bhaava. Saitejas, rendered these songs beautifully. You can listen to the songs here.

The play home roolu is as relevant today as it was when TPK wrote it probably in the 1930s! It was a fantastic experience. Be it the rules for corporators or the classic tug of war between daughter-in-law and the mother-in-law. None of the viciousness of the saas-bahu serials here.

Shruthi had done very nice post about him long time ago. It's an interesting read.

Wiki has quite a comprehensive bio of him here.

Aside: The title of the post is taken from a play of the same title. It was a play by CR Simha, a veteran theatre personality. You can read about it here.

Now I go singing its a long way to thipparalli (Hyderabad won't quite rhyme here will it?)