In 1979, Basu Chatterjee made Baaton Baaton Mein and unobtrusively brought to us the dating and courtship rituals of a community that was till then either caricatured or just overlooked in Hindi cinema. Nancy Perreira and Tony Braganza…
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Matriarchal manipulation in a patriarchal world is depicted unsparingly in Usha Priyamwada’s Pachpan Khambe Laal Deewarein (Now playing on Prasar Bharti). The mother resentful of her lecturer daughter’s comfortable life in her college residence because the younger daughters…
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“Start with hope..always start with hope. We went from being a shitty team to become one of the biggest dynasties in the sport and all it needed was one match to light this fire,” says Michael Jordan at…
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In 1947, my grandparents brought three children and the remains of an uprooted life from Pakistan to India in a train. One of those children was my mother. I grew up hearing a lot of stories about the…
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Three documentaries streaming right now show the ultimate culmination of the Bois Locker Room culture. And what happens when one gender is taught to mistrust its instincts of self-preservation and the other does not even learn something as…
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In Sudip Sharma’s Paatal Lok (Now streaming on Amazon. Co written by Sharma, Sagar Haveli, Hardik Mehta and Gunjit Chopra. Directed by Avinash Arun and Prosit Roy), India’s disowned inhabit the headlines we turn away from. A young…
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In a packed Ranga Shankara auditorium (with producer Nimi Ravindran conscientiously paying auto fares to all those who could not get tickets and had to go home) on a Sunday afternoon, the second last show of Ajay Krishnan’s hit play Butter and Mashed Banana induced tears of laughter. And then some thought. And how is this for a […]
Gulshan Devaiah’s big moment is here. And if he does not become one of the breakout stars of his generation, it will be because the world is askew. He was one of the few reasons why an underwhelming Dum Maro Dum had its moments. As a manipulative, street smart recruiter of the unsorted young in […]
A few years ago, when I met one of India’s youngest and most promising playwrights Ajay Krishnan at the Ranga Shankara cafe, he was sitting casually on a bench, one knee peeking out of torn denims. For a writer and director whose play Butter and Mashed Banana had freshly won a slew of awards, had been short listed […]
Freedom of speech is increasingly becoming an anomaly in India, especially in the creative arts and like theatre personality Nadira Babbar recently said about the absence of collective liberalism, “Sab bura manne ko tayyar baithe hain.” Or as the catchline of the play says, “Don’t you dare say that!” We at Unboxed Writers are proud to announce a web […]
This piece was written by Sunil Vishnu K, the founder (along with actor Karthik Kumar), of one of India’s most vibrant theatre groups, Evam, as a personal tribute after the demise of theatre legend Badal Sircar. Badal Sircar passed away recently. Disillusioned, alone and unknown to the world. On the day the assembly election results were on page 1, […]
The heart of Ranga Shankara is unusually quiet except for the insistent pulse of “Akbar bhai? Arre, lightwale Akbar bhai?” The auditorium is empty in the hours preceding the second show of Dayashankar Ki Diary, a play from the bouquet that Mumbai’s iconic theatre group Ekjute has brought to Bangalore for the first time. Unlike people who go to an auditorium to only watch […]
It is a calmer day than usual at Jagriti, Bangalore’s youngest theatre space. Squares of sunshine fall on the floor from the glass insets in the roof, two trees shoot from the floor to the ceiling, prints of Rabindra Nath Tagore’s paintings watch you with eyes full of many deeply lived lifetimes from a softly […]
Draupadi: “It’s begun. They are already preparing, they have decided on war, they know there will be war. But why, then, did they not tell me that? Why did they make me believe it is my decision, my doing? Why? Kunti: “Five splendid sons. The sons of Pandu, that’s what they called them. Pandu’s sons! […]
Badal Sircar remained, in many ways, the outsider in Indian theatre. He was a prolific playwright, author of more than 50 plays, and the winner of several awards, including the Sangeet Natak Akademi award and the Padmashri. Ebong Indrajeet (Evam Indrajeet, ‘And Indrajeet’, 1963) and Pagla Ghoda (‘Mad Horse’, 1967) are undisputed classics of the […]
A decade into the new millennium, the two names at the forefront of Indian writing in English for stage continue to be Girish Karnad and Mahesh Dattani. New and old plays written by these veterans are grabbed by well known stage directors and the audience is almost always fortunate enough to find their latest works […]
Acting is flirting with schizophrenia – someone said that, I don’t know who, but I believe in that just the way I believe in God. And I believe in God completely; after all God is the ultimate Creator and I believe that as an actor/writer, I am creative! How do I give birth to the […]