Theatre Time with Shravan - Lysistrata @ Jagriti Theatre
Hi
I went to Jagriti Theatre last friday with my wife Nisha and our Friends Lynn and Praneeth. It was a last minute decision to book and go. We had a great time thoroughly enjoyed the play "Lysistrata" followed by a good dinner at "The Fat Chef"What follows is the backdrop of the play and a note from the Director. The info below includes the stellar theatre acting crew who did a wonderful job and even Ashok Djembe with the Percussion. This was the modern adaptation of the classic Greek play Lysistrata
Lysistrata – a play written by Aristophanes, the father of comedy, first produced in Greece in 411 BC! Lysistrata is a young woman who is tired of seeing the young men of her village go and die in ‘useless wars all the time’. She gathers all the women of her village as well as those of neighbouring tribes and holds them to an oath – as long as the men keep on warring, as long as women keep losing lovers and husbands and sons, no woman in Greece will willingly have sex.
What follows is a hilarious retelling of an age-old story – the war between the sexes. The men say that women don’t understand war so they should merely stay home and tend to their husbands and the women say that if it’s left to the men, they’ll have no husbands left. And so on…
Adapted, designed and directed by Jeff Teare (UK), Jagriti’s production of Lysistrata uses earthy humour, a neverending stream of double entendres and plenty of current, topical Bengalooru references, to make it’s point - Make love, not war.
Playwright: Aristophanes | Adapted, designed and directed by: Jeff Teare | Company: Jagriti
Deepika Arwind as Lysistrata | Arundhati Raja | Ashiqa Salvan | Kanchan Bhattacharyya | Pritham Kumar | Rajyashree Dutt | Raza Hussain | Sukhita Aiyar | Vinod Ravindran
Percussion: Djembe Ashok | Costumes: Sonali and Himanshu of Grasshopper | Crew: Adit Abraham and Shiva Pathak
Working on the Bangalore Lysistrata
When I started adapting Lysistrata for Jagriti earlier this year back in a chilly UK (in my tiny Theatrescience office in the Black Mountains of Wales actually), I soon decided that most of the 5th Century BCE Greek references had to go and that the play had to be set in modern day India. After all, it’s about sex, war and the war of the sexes, all subjects that India knows a good deal about.
I’ve been to India many times over the last six years, especially Bangalore, but this didn’t mean that I had enough cultural references to make this work immediately. So, as soon as I got here in October (to devise a play about Ayurveda, performed by students at NCBS for Theatrescience) I began talking to people about Bangalore life, state and national politics, films, tv etc. I also read as many newspapers as I could. Then, when the cast finally read a draft script, they suggested both changes to the language and social and cultural references.
For me this is the only way to approach Aristophanes’s radical two and a half thousand year old play in 2011. He was writing for his times and we have to perform in ours. His audiences knew the events and people he was referring to and so should ours, at least in general terms.
Of course the ‘proof of the pudding’ won’t be known until we stand the thing up in front of an audience. The play is meant to be a comedy after all. Now there’s a thought to keep me awake at night for the next few weeks!
- Jeff Teare, Director
So Folks , This play is on Till December 18th. To book tickets and watch it , log on to http://jagrititheatre.com/how-to-book/
