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(On Shraddha’s staging of Azhwaar, Silicon Vaasal and Ezhuthukkaarar 15th Nov onwards at Naradha Gana Sabha)
With 8 more days to go, the rehearsals are becoming increasingly engaging. The actors are at ease with their dialogues as well as those of others sharing stage with them. Coordinated movement on the stage, emoting just right and voice modulation are being perfected.
Something in me makes me believe now all these three plays will fly. The Shraddha team is -pardon me for the cliché.. they sum up amply sometimes, like this – leaving no stone unturned to bring my characters out exactly as I had conceived them for the stage.
If you are tempted to ask me whether shaping a character for stage is different from creating it for screen, my answer is a a resounding YES. To those who are still sceptical, my suggestion is – try converting a successful movie or telefilm into a successful stage play.. you can’t.
As I have already mentioned in one of my previous diary postings, the veteran Mr.T.D.Sundarrajan as the protagonist Azhwaar of the first play and Nelson Elango as the young stranger having a chance meeting with him do ample justice to their roles with 10 days of strenuous rehearsal behind them . Shalini Vijayakumar as Vaidehi and the youth-pack of Venkat, Rohan and Prasanna as bachelors enjoying their ‘mansion’ life in Chennai of 1980s have joined them to enhance the stage experience through the team work.
Had you asked me about Ezhuththukkarar a week ago, I frankly would have admitted I was not sure as to how it is progressing. The Deepavali
weekend had spelt its magic charm on the play it seems. Kavitha Sivakumar as Nandhini listing condition after condition to her professional letter-writer has all of a sudden assumed a commanding presence like Dame Judy Dench (remember her M16 chief’s role in the Pierce Brosnan starred James Bond movie ‘Golden Eye’?) reeling about casually the winding stream-of-conscious dialogue, rather an interrupted monologue, with a clear, no-nonsense yet a kind voice. Bravo, Kavitha. Like Judy winning laurels even now at 78, this time for her new release ‘Philomena’, Kavitha is sure to add a feather more to her cap (cliche again! never mind) for this role. We all are well aware the director Krishnamoorthy is the one instrumental for all her success.
And who else except the veteran Mr.Chandrasekar (Chandru sir) can give such a convincing performance of the elderly letter-writer whose dialogues could be written within a tweet with still more space for a hash tag #Chandrusir_rocks. By the way, how many of you know he is the dear dad of the noted young Carnatic musician Sikkil Gurucharan?
Nudged by TDS and Krishnamoorthy who is directing Azhwar too, I wrote in flat two minutes the closing dialogue for Azhwaar. Thanks my friends… it was eluding us for quite long.
What else except waiting anxiously for stage craft, lighting and music scores (I miss the orchestra pits in British stage) to get organized and settled?
And more about the third stage play ‘Silicon Vaasal’ (directed by TDS) in tomorrow’s posting..