=91Black Coffee=92 brewed afresh

=91Black Coffee=92 = brewed=20 afresh

In=20 the backdrop of the City=92s theatre movement gaining strength, = theatre=20 group Black Coffee held a festival of plays that were a different=20 experience.

Black Coffee, the city-based theatre group = spearheaded by=20 Preetam Koilpillai has always enchanted audiences by bringing in=20 productions that stand out, not just for the choice of content and = script=20 but also for good performances.
Last week the group presented=20 =91Festival of Theatre=92, that saw some new plays which broke off = from the=20 tradition and the baggage of working to a known and available = script.=20

The festival opened with =91Body catcher=92, a play with = fable-like=20 treatment. The character of Body catcher played by Raza Hussain = was one of=20 a stoic with a heart for the dead but a paradox for he has to = catch their=20 floating bodies to eke out a living. Badra, played by Ajit Hande, = gave a=20 synchronising contrast to the Body catcher and best captured the = innocence=20 of the play.

The play had the rustic innocence of an = Indian=20 countryside life and a moral no less relevant to any city dweller. = The=20 stage, the props and the ambience were created aptly to this end. = And the=20 much popular Raghupathy Dixit of Antaragni fame scored applause = with some=20 original music.

The second play Khel, probably the first = in Hindi=20 for Black Coffee, was based on a story carried by a national daily = about a=20 gruesome murder of two Dalit youths by the upper caste. While one = falls=20 prey to the vengeance of some upper caste Rajputs over a lost = match of=20 cricket, the other gets brutally murdered defending his innocence = inside a=20 prison cell under the clutches of two merciless policemen who see = no way=20 but to tow the line of their superiors.

The play brings = forth the=20 glaring gaps between what our leaders promise and the harsh = reality one=20 faces as a lower caste. The realistic portrayal of the incident = saw some=20 scintillating performances by Raza Hussain as Inspector = Chaturvedi, P D=20 Satish Chandra as constable Ratan Lal and Sanjeev Iyer as Sanjeev=20 Ram.
=93This new experiment has been a challenge, as we had to = build the=20 content from scratch, and at the same time it meant a lot better=20 involvement on the part of cast and crew as they were physically = involved=20 in forming the script through improvisation=94, said Preetam who = believes=20 that by bringing in original plays, each of which are entirely = different,=20 audiences in the city will get an altogether new experience.=20

BALRAJ K N =