A theatre festival of monologues, gives young talent a valuable platform
Nachiket Joshi
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| Tushar Gunjal |
“Every monologue sooner or later
becomes a discussion.” Graham Greene’s line keeps lingering in your mind while you
watch SOLO. The four-day theatre festival, from March 24 to March 27, showcased
courageous attempts of eight young actors at monologues. The audience at
Sudarshan Rangmanch was abuzz with discussions after each performance.
The event was a product of ‘Going
Solo’, a competition held in November 2013 by Expression Lab. Founded by
renowned theatre personality Pradeep Vaidya, Expression Lab is one of the most
organised attempts in the experimental theatre scene in Pune. From 22
competitors, eight were selected for this unique opportunity that aimed at
giving these young talents a professional exposure.
“Aim behind arranging it is only to
give platform to the actors to showcase their enormous talent,” says Vaidya. An
interesting aspect of the format was that most of the actors had to manage
every aspect of the art – from scripting to direction to costumes. “They have
off-beat directorial qualities. Different subjects have been handled in
different languages,” Vaidya adds.
A look at the topics and forms of the
plays elaborate Vaidya’s point. A mute solo act Story of a Man (Aanand
Kshirsagar), a bilingual play Awazein (Lakshmi Birajdar), an English
play Tale of Tiger (Vinayak Lele) and 5 Marathi acts speak for
the lingual variety. As for topics, there was a P. T. O. (Tushar Gunjal)
which portrayed a young man’s disturbed conversation with himself after he is
detained for no reason, a poetic based MA.M.HO.MAA (Harshvardhan
Shrotri), a young man’s journey in Hodi (Ghanshyam Rahalkar) and a
Gulmakai (Amruta Deshmukh) which spoke about women education. Karve...by
the Way (Abhishek Deshmukh) was also one of the participants.
The actors seem to have evolved
during the preparations of the play. Narrating his experiences, Gunjal gives an
inside view - "I had many ideas for the script but could not reach an end.
I gave up. Pradeep dada told me that only when you limit your
alternatives, will you find a way out. I kept no other option for myself
but to complete the drama.” For Rahalkar, who usually is in the capacity of a
writer in a drama, it was a different challenge. SOLO was his first attempt in
acting. “It was a test of our imaginative capacity. Reaction, a major part of
the acting process, was absent here,” he says.
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| Ghanshyam Rahalkar |
An important help at the rehearsals
were renowned theatre personalities like Sarang Sathye, Atul Pethe, Kiran Yadnopavit
and Alok Rajwade. Their expertise seeped in the performances of the young
actors. As many as 15
run-throughs were carried out to get the act pitch perfect and dress rehearsals
were organised, wherein people from the industry provided feedback to the participants.
The fact that the performances were
to be “commercial” gave the actors a completely different outlook towards the
execution. “People had bought tickets to watch us. We could not give them a
feeling that this was some amateur attempt,” expresses Rahalkar. The key here was to take responsibility, as
Gunjal puts it – “When you do shows professionally, you cannot give reasons.
You have to make every small detail available on your own; you cannot say I
used a cream coloured cloth because red wasn't available.”
The actors are now full of energy and
confidence as the audience response has been positive. “There have been
suggestions for improvement by those in the audience that belong to theatre. For
the common audience, the experience was that of enjoyment,” says Rahalkar.
Concerning the future prospects SOLO creates for them, the actors react
cautiously. “It has increased my confidence level, I can now approach people
for work now,” says Gunjal. For Rahalkar, this was like a “riyaaz” of
acting. “It keeps you in the habit of acting. The best exposure for me was the
joy of doing it,” Rahalkar summarizes.
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