The Writers’ Bloc Festival of original Indian plays, comes to the Ranga Shankara this weekend.
For young playwrights in Bengaluru, it is also an opportunity to meet and discuss playwrights, a growing trend in the city. Original productions are slowly replacing adaptations of classics, and theatre lovers couldn’t be happier. We speak to youngsters who are leading the way by penning their own scripts.
Chanakya Vyas, who started writing plays while training with the Indian Ensemble, tells us, “I feel that sharing your work and getting feedback is the best way to learn and explore yourself as a writer. I had that support from Abhishek Majumdar and Sandeep Shikhar.”
Chanakya’s first play, Tales of Kutty won the first runner-up prize at the Sultan Padamsee Awards. “ToK had four successful shows at The Basement and is opening at the Ranga Shankara today,” he adds.
His second play, The Prelude also opened recently at The Basement. Another young playwright, Avinash Daniel has had 15 shows of his original play, Orgasm.
“It’s a thrilling experience to write your own play and put it in front of an audience. We’ve done adaptations before and unless you Indianise them, the audience can’t connect with these plays. There are also copywright hassles with foreign plays and the price tag could be as high as Rs 15,000, which is our whole production budget. With an original play, there is the challenge of drawing the audience into the theatre, but once they’re in, they enjoy it much more,” says Daniel.
“As human beings, we are always eager to hear new stories,” agrees Ramneek Singh, another award-winning playwright. Ramneek’s The Cage of Sparrows won the TFA Award for Creative Writing in English as well as the Shyamanand Jalan National Youth Theatre Award.
“This is my third full length play after The Death of Dreams and Shedding Petals, Frozen Wings. I think it’s very important for us to have original plays that reflect our society.”
