Picture this you come home tired from work, sit down with a cup of tea and relax by watching a play being enacted right inside the comfort of your home. That is exactly what Sandbox Collective, a theatre group from Bengaluru is doing bringing theatre to your home. The group was in the city on Sunday, to perform the play Trivial Disasters at a cafe.
Nimi Ravindran, co-founder of Sandbox Collective and the director of Trivial Disasters says, “In today’s world, everyone is running. Even getting home from work is itself a tiring activity, so not many want to go and visit an auditorium and watch a play. So we thought why not take the theatre experience to the comfort of a home.”
The theatre group travels across the country and performs at auditoriums, office spaces, living-rooms, dining rooms and kitchens, making theatre very intimate.So, how does the group adapt to the small spaces? Do they have to visit the place where they perform well in advance? Nimi says, “Our script is written in such a way that it can be performed anywhere, including a huge auditorium. But when the performance is scheduled in somebody’s home, then all that we do is visit the home a few hours ahead and plan accordingly.”
The group has performed in front of an audience of 11 to 170 people in a house. “While performing at home, the experience is very personal. The audience is more involved in the entire act says Vinod an actor.But, working with a small audience in a small space can have its own challenges, and Vinod adds, “The space between the audience and the actors is hardly a few feet. So you also have to keep that in mind while acting. Because, while acting on a huge stage, the feeling is very different, the set is much bigger, but here we have to perform better because space is limited.”
