English, 70 mins
PW: Kuo Pao Kun
Dir: Jaimini Pathak

Watched it yesterday. The audience was given a small strip of pink color paper at the beginning of the play and the actors showed everyone how to roll it and make a rose out of it. Everyones was asked to write their names on it . Being an adaptation of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint , the director has made an attempt to some of the interesting instances in the book. A girl who wanted to become an artist was discouraged by the grown-ups who never understand anything beyond numbers. She was bored. One day she walked and walked which was when she met her Prince. He had a problem. There was 1 rose in his planet and he wanted to save it from the goat. He didn’t want to tie the goat because then the goat won’t be able to move around freely. He didn’t even want to fence the rose, because the rose would feel lonely. So the girl made a deal with the Prince that if she solved his problem, he would have to take her to some other planet. Both of them agreed to it and set off to find a solution to the rose problem. They just had 35 mins in hand after which the prince had to go back to his planet. They met a lot of people including a Geographer with a long beard. They asked him if he could find a solution to his rose problem. The Geographer said that he just knows the number of lakes and monuments in the world. So the girl asked him for the number of lakes in Bangalore city. The Geographers loosens his arms and a map rolls out. He is unable to find any. The girl is irritated. She asked him how was it possible for a Geographer to not know the number of lakes in his own city . The Geographer replied saying that it was not his job but the job of the explorers to report it and his job was to only collect the data. The Geographer asked the Prince about his planet. The Prince said that he had 3 volcanoes in his planet of which one is unusable and one is used to boil water. Prince and the girl set off again to find a solution. They finally land up a gardener’s rose farm. The old gardener whom they came looking for had died but there was a man looking after the farm who was watering the garden. The Prince asked how he could save his special rose. The gardener said that every rose was special.

So now the audience was asked to raise their hands and show their roses. That was the rose garden. Everyone of them is special. He said the Prince should water the rose and the roses were capable of protecting themselves from the goat. The Prince was confused, his rose had told him that she was the most special rose and here he found that every rose was special. The kids in the audience came out with answers on how the rose could be saved.Kill the goat, Take the goat away were some of the funny answers from the kids. But one of them said , The rose has a thorn. It can protect itself. The prince had found his answer. The Prince had to go back now and the girl realised that her planet is special and she didn’t want to go anywhere.

Three actors including one in multiple roles of a Drawing Teacher, Gardener, Geographer were fantastic. Their costumes were good too. I really liked the costume of the Drawing Teacher and Geographer. The Gardener used an long circular box which made the sound of water when moved upside down. The Prince did a few magic acts too which entertained the kids a lot.

Finally got to watch the awesome play “Ratnan Prapancha” at Rangshankara yesterday. It had been a long time since I watched a Kannada play at RS. I was amazed by the turnout , it was almost houseful full. I am impressed by the efforts put in by Rangashankara to promote Kannada and Company theatre.

Ratnan Prapancha includes interesting anecdotes from the life and works of G P Rajaratnam. A narration of his life story, a few poems and some short plays made it really nice and fun for the audience. I personally learnt a lot about G P Rajaratnam and his life. He is very well known for his humourous poems on drunkards and used to go around selling his books himself which made him a household name. Lakshmi Chandrashekar appeared in different roles; wife of GPR, narrator and others. Sundar played the lead as GPR. Performances of both these artistes were awesome. The music was very sweet too. The play ended with a short play of GPR, Kambli Seve and a few songs written by GPR.

Watched Bhikre Bimb today at Rangashankara. Easily one of the best plays I have every watched. Arundhati Nag was brilliant. Fantastic presence of mind and command over the language. I won’t be able to find the right words to describe her performance in the play.

Manjula Nayak is in a Television studio to give a lecture on her latest English Bestseller. She was popular as a Kannada writer until then. After the lecture in which she answers her critics boldly, the scripts moves on to reveal the inner self of Manjula Nayak; her parents, paralysed sister and her husband. Arundhati Nag as Manjula Nayak is brillaint. The play had Arundhati interacting with her inner self depicted by using a Television screen. The way she handled the timing with the conversations on the television screen is brilliant. It was a conversation and there were moments when Arundhati goes and gives a high five to herself in the television and the timing was perfect. I am impressed. And any more information about the story would be a spoiler.