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Keeping theatre alive

ROMESH CHANDER

Atelier’s Youth Theatre Week aims to rope in youngsters to pursue theatre seriously.

Defying the notion of theatre as a dying art, we are committed to the employment of those who are a part of us through the medium of theatre.



All SetA scene from a play staged by the Atelier Company.

In the last 18 months or so, Atelier Theatre Society has given us some outstanding plays. Apart from its regular schedule, Atelier has introduced a new event in its programme, “Atelier’s Youth Theatre Week” that opened at New Delhi& #8217;s Sri Ram Centre with an outstanding presentation of “Goodbye Blue Sky.”

. According to Kuljeet Singh, the Festival Director, the programme aims at creative and committed people who wish to pursue their dreams. “Defying the notion of theatre as a dying art, we are committed to the employment of those who are a part of us through the medium of theatre. We have started theatre clubs in schools and also training programmes . The focus is to channel “lost energies”, who after practicing theatre sincerely, could not pursue it because of various reasons.

The general impression is that even those interested in theatre after college leave it for call centres and other small jobs . Why?

“Quite true, we are trying to help these kids to earn their bread and butter with theatre. We have theatre clubs in schools and need resource persons to work with us there. At present, we are working for six clubs and hope to have association with more than 30 schools by 2009. We have started a scheme for young post-college students to train with us for one year and then make them competent to train school students. This year, we have three post-college trainees with us who get a regular stipend. Next year, when they are ready to take on the training act independently, they will be promoted financially and will work for Atelier as trainers.”

Coming to the festival, there were six plays at Sri Ram Centre.
Added characters

The opening play, “Good Bye Blue Sky” was excellent and went down well with the audience. It was followed by “Thunder From Down Under” in English, presented by Mac’s Theatre Works. It was informed that the play was first performed in Australia and then at Kamani auditorium in New Delhi before being repeated in Atelier’s Youth Theatre Week 2007. The director, Ravneet Kler in his note said that the play draws inspiration from a story by Vipul Vyas who has been writing and directing plays in Hindi and Gujarati for the Indian Society in Australia for the past eight years.

The original story has just two characters and the director has added at least 10 characters to give it a theatrical format . The story opens with Davinder (Saurabh Goyal) and his Australian girl friend Ingrid (Rekha Kalra) confessing their love for each other to their parents. The families objectto the marriage,but the children somehow manage their consent, but not before Davinder’s family put forward some conditions.. Even if the audience at times was in fits of laughter; after a while they got bored of the clichéd action and jokes but what they liked most was the sound track inspired mostly from popular “C” grade films. “Thunder From Down Under” was completely alien to Ateliers philosophy and one wonders how it was selected.

Apart from “Goodbye Blue Sky”, another excellent play that was shown at the Atelier’s Youth Theatre Week was “Aakaar”, written and directed by Sunit Sinha for a newly formed theatre group, the Actor Factor Theatre company. The original script was written by Anurag Kedryap and has been staged several times in its original form. The presentation was an honest adaptation of the original that had two characters, Aakaar and Manushya. Sunit Sinha has introduced nine new characters and a song to add to the dramatic appeal and a third person’s perspective. . The lighting by Rahul Rai of the Atelier Company captures the changing moods of the play as also of the characters. The music by Gajadhar Bharat is fantastic and lyrics by Rahul Chandra presented by the lead vocalists, Ragini Mathur and Gajadhar Bharat capture the mood.

The ensemble performance by the cast is well presented in which the director Sunit Sinha in Prakaar’s role supported by Shashwat Srivastava as Aakaar give an excellent performance.