Centre stage: A monsoon theatre calendar
Editor’s note: The splainer team has put together a list of the best theatre coming your way this season, from storytelling specials to adaptations to intimate interactive experiences. Check out our monsoon theatre calendar for performances you must catch in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Kolkata.
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MUMBAI
Rhyme or Reason (English)
‘Rhyme or Reason’, featuring some of the most exciting young names in theatre today, examines the absurdity of human connection, especially in mundane, familiar situations, and the language we use in order to build relationships with each other.
When: July 21, 22
Where: Rangshila Theatre
Dil Ka Haal Sune Dilwala (Hindi, English)
When: July 25, 26
Where: Nehru Centre
This man’s phone won’t stop ringing at a cafe. Asha Parekh, an actress of limited talents, finally gets up to answer it. The man, Max, is in fact dead. And Asha gets sucked into his complex life story thanks to this ever-ringing phone. From his wife and younger brother to his Russian mum and… the KGB. And through Max’s shadowy stories, Asha begins to somehow piece her own life together and move forward. Aadyam Theatre’s ‘Dil Ka Haal Sune Dilwala’, an adaptation of ‘Dead Man’s Cell Phone’ by Sarah Ruhl, is a fun, playful production featuring a narrator taking audiences through developments, and a live orchestra.
Purane Chawal (Hindi)
Neil Simon’s classic American Comedy, The Sunshine Boys, follows a comedy duo as they age, and as their relationship with each other changes—and sours.
In Purane Chawal, a two-act adaptation of The Sunshine Boys, Khushaal Mehendi and Vijay Das have performed together for 42 years. The problem is: they don’t really like each other. Now that they’re older, things have started to get worse in ways that their nephew, Ghanshyam Lalsa, is unable to resolve.
When: August 1
Where: Rangshila Theatre
Ottam: Born to Run (Hindi)
Sapan Saran’s new play tracks the life of Akai Amaran, a Paraiyar girl from Tamil Nadu, as she rises to become one of India’s leading track and field athletes. Faced already with the barriers of caste and class, she is then asked to take a gender test.
Akai’s existence becomes the source of the conflict in this play, highlighting the absurdities of gender discrimination in sports, and the hurdles people have to jump over to succeed.
When: August 1
Where: Artisan Coterie
The Greatest Show on Earth (English)
A show inside a show, this play is satirical and confrontational. When the Creative Head at a TV production house finds a post online about someone who died by suicide as a result of government negligence, she is convinced that they must buy the rights to tell this person’s story on screen.
This theatrical piece, with music and movement incorporated into the narrative, explores how capitalism exploits the already vulnerable, and how value for human life has taken a backseat in the current social and political system.
When: August 22, 23
Where: Prithvi Theatre
DELHI NCR
Seven Steps Around the Fire (English)
Centred around the death of a young hijra woman, this play shows us the world through the eyes of Uma Rao, who tries to uncover the truth. However, she finds herself up against the silences and injustices forced upon others by authorities.
This tragedy is written by Mahesh Dattani and directed by Faraz Zaidi, and it asks the audience to look injustice in the eye.
When: July 26
Where: Akshara Theatre
Park (Hindi)
Manav Kaul’s comedy brings three men together in a public park, as they fight to get a seat. Everyone wants space on the benches available, which somehow devolves into a series of strange and absurd arguments.
Bringing to light the lengths (and extremes) one would go to for comfort, the audience is confronted with comical, relatable moments and emotions.
When: August 2
Where: Alliance Francaise
Chokher Bali (Hindi, English)
Binodini’s complex relationships with three individuals lie at the heart of Chokher Bali, an adaptation of Tagore’s classic 1903 novel. She’s a young widow in an extramarital relationship with a man from her past, Mahendra. She shares a complicated friendship with Asha, his wife, and the two women are somewhat at odds when it comes to Behari, Mahendra’s childhood friend. The story, as with much of Tagore’s work, is richly layered, exploring societal taboos, patriarchy, repressed desires, betrayal, and more. In fact, this timeless story has been adapted multiple times in the past—for films, TV, and plays.
When: August 9
Where: Shri Ram Centre for Performing Arts
Equus (English)
In one dark night, Alan Strang, a 17-year-old boy, blinds four horses with a metal spike. Martin Dysart, a child psychiatrist, starts treating Alan, and in the process is forced to come to terms with the complex and intense internal turmoil of his own soul.
Alan’s desires and passions, extreme as they may be, reveal what’s missing in Martin’s otherwise monotonous life. An examination of human passion, obsession, and what we consider extreme, the play uses Jung’s lens of the ‘Shadow Self’—the unconscious desires we repress—to uncover unsettling truths about desire and ‘normalcy’.
When: July 26
Where: Little Theatre Group (LTG) Auditorium
Pinjar (Hindi, Urdu)
It is 1947. Puro is a young girl betrothed to a sweet, wealthy young man called Ramchand. Enter Rashid, a man whose family was rendered homeless by Puro’s family as they took over their property, and whose grand-aunt had been kidnapped and assaulted by Puro’s grand-uncle.
One day, Puro is out with her sister, Rajjo, when she is unexpectedly kidnapped by Rashid to settle the score between their families. But Rashid also clearly cares for Puro. When Puro escapes, her family turns her away for fear of further retaliation from the other family.
Returning to Rashid as her family continues their relationship with Ramchand’s family, Puro must come to terms with her life as it is and what her relationship to Rashid must be.
When: August 29
Where: Little Theatre Group (LTG) Auditorium
BENGALURU
Barefoot in the Park (English)
The original romcom by Neil Simon, written in 1963, was an instant Broadway success, with Robert Redford (as Paul) and Elizabeth Ashley (Corie) starring. The play was even adapted into a film in 1967, with Jane Fonda cast opposite Redford. Bangalore Little Theatre (BLT) brings this classic to the theatre, tracking the story of Paul and Corie Bratter, newlyweds finding their way around life in a ramshackle fifth-floor apartment with—horror—no elevator. And thus follows a sweet and uproarious portrayal of married life and the challenges it brings.
When: July 25, 26
Where: Jagriti Theatre
The Waste Land (English)
This German production brings the great TS Eliot’s words to life, through this experimental adaptation of his sprawling poem, The Waste Land, a modernist masterpiece. Disillusionment, despair, ennui, emptiness, inertia—the themes of the poem are realised here through a single actor shifting through the five sections and many voices of the poem, with performance, sound, and visuals offering an elegant interpretation of its many ideas.
When: July 30–August 2
Where: Jagriti Theatre
Jo Dooba So Paar (Hindi, Urdu, Persian, English)
The story of 13th century Sufi poet and musician Ameer Khusrao is at the heart of this powerful musical Dastangoi production by celebrated writer and actor Manav Kaul. The play takes us, via anecdotes and incidents as well as emotive live qawwali performance, through the story of Khusrao as well as his relationship with his guru, Nizamuddin Auliyaa. And running through the narrative are the messages of love and humanity and the word of Sufism.
When: August 15, 16
Where: Ranga Shankara
KOLKATA
Love, Bombs and Apples (English)
This play, exploring "the complex relationship between the Arab World and the West” is a journey into the lives of three men. An actor in Palestine navigates sex and desire in a conservative religious society. A wannabe writer from Pakistan, now living in London, is trying to crack his novel. And a third, a young British man unsure about his relationship. This particular production of Hassan Abdulrazzak’s critically acclaimed play is directed by Akarsh Khurana.
When: September 4–7
Where: The Urban Theatre Project
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