Fourth Corner Productions

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Welcome to Fourth Corner Productions! This production house took form in 2000 after many years of planning and conception. Our members are directors, actors, technicians, designers, writers and producers who are also part of the theatre scene in Bangalore. We believe in Two E's - To Enthuse & To Entertain. Experience and love of theatre has made its existence a fruitful truth. Keep coming back here for further announcements. If you wish to join Fourth Corner or want to subscribe to its newsletter just send a mail to pd@ivcorner.com

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Ammavra Ganda

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We are planning three productions for 2006-08...
1. Sherlock Holmes - Three Stories from "Solutions from Sussex Downs" in English to be staged in Bangalore and Hyderabad
2. "13" - Homegrown idea in English to be staged in Bangalore to start with and plans to take it on a tour
3. The Happy Apple by Jack Pulman in English
Apart from these, we also do "Stand-ups" in English, Kannada and Hindi. Would do corporate productions on request. Altogether, we have done more than 500 shows in all performing art forms. Contact Us or mail pd@ivcorner.com

Holmes Festival Details

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The scope of comedy is not restricted to laughing its wide open and could be offered as a therapy to people in today's high speed world.  The tension we have seen and the race to be the best stresses us not only physically but also emotionally.  Comedy is one stress reliever which works with any target audience.  Comedy is our specialty and entertainment is our middle name. Do look at the following offerings and let us know if you want us to carryout any of those for you. So please Contact Us or mail pd@ivcorner.com

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The Storytellers who used to narrate us the stories like in most of our cases the grand parents laid the foundation to stand ups. It's a good bet that the first joke was a combination of schadenfreude and toilet humor. The first inter-action was probably mimicry - them pointing at him and laughing, and him excitedly pointing back at them and imitating their laughter. Well there was an African pigmy tribe called Danga who performed in the Pharaoh�s court in ancient Egypt dating back to 2000 BC. We all know the importance of Vidooshaks in our kings and kingdoms and the Birbals and Tenali Ramans.

We have custom made and unique standup scripts made to order in most of the cases.  Our stand-ups change like the summer of 69, we keep refreshing our acts and keeping it trendy.  Our artists vary from very famous Sihi Kahi Chandru to Iti Rawat.  These are the soul of our Standup team and on board we have RJ's, MC's and Theatre personalities adding variety and talent to all our shows.  Our USP lies in the fact that localization of our Standups has helped us to Globalize our brand stand of comedians.

Our stand-ups are customized to suit the audiences.  We also localize the Standups adding a lot of city flavor and lingo making it more close to heart and easily understandable.  Key to our Stand-up's success mainly goes to the research we do post stand-ups with our audiences.  They are our scale and performance awardees.  Due to our audience based stand-ups we have ended up in doing stand-ups without a single below the belt or double meaning joke. And sadly people really enjoyed that show.  Please bear in mind that stand-ups are vulgar because they are made out and practiced like that, well we learnt from our exercises that even without below the belt humor we still can pull out good laughter.  Like the saying goes Boys will be Boys, we normally do get shows where below the belt is preferred.

We do not charge like the following celebrity comedians but we consider them Guru's of Standup Comedy.  The hall of fame: Jim Carrey, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Jamie Foxx, Benny Hill, Drew Carey, Ray Romano, Tony Allen, Jerry Lewis & Dean Marrin, Woody Allen, Steve Martin, Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Cosby, Steve Allen, Tim Allen.  And we also admit that we are definitely inspired by them.

For further information please contact us at pd@ivcorner.com

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Overall Description: The "BroaderWay" Theater Workshop is intended for individuals over 10 years of age. Any individual interested in acting; regardless of skill level, experience or artistic goals. Each session is specifically geared towards a discipline in theater and will give the actor an opportunity to explore areas that they have not had a great deal of exposure to or would like to have a greater understanding of - in a relaxed environment. The main goal of this workshop is to help actors improve their skills and make themselves more marketable on an amateur or professional level.

Part Two: The second part of the workshop is a production, which would help all the participants to take up their interest to test. We would stage a full length production and put it up like any other professional theatre. This would also encourage working as a team and working for the same goal.

Programme By: This programme itinerary and content has gone through professional scanning. Professionals from theatre, music, art and administration have put in their valuable time into the programme and it has been simplified to assist all participants.

Note: Training lasts for 15 days and the other 15 days would be worked out for the actual production. Minimum time per day should be two hours and maximum 4 hours. Most of the time it hovers between 2 to 4 hours a day.  We have successfully executed this workshop for individual enthusiasts, interest groups, educational institution and working professionals.

For further information please contact us at pd@ivcorner.com

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M C Preetham aka MCP came in with this brilliant concept of old stand up comedy mixed with comic acts. We put together acts and stand-ups and opened it up for the first time in 2005.  Keeping its original quality of being in your face people including Ranga Shankara could not digest it.  We were banned from performing in Ranga Shankara after our second show! Call it freedom of non expression!
Mr. Funny Man has traveled across the country and we are soon planning to make it a regular feature of Bangalore's beaming socialite life.  The cast and crew of funny man are...

P D Sathish Chandra: Who directs the show and also brings in the vernacular element.  His stand-ups are more news based and which are on the stands right now.  Being a big man and a big laugher he succeeds in getting smiles all over the audiences.  He has rich theatre background of more than 15 years and also has acted in TV soaps and films. 

M C Preetham: As his initials state he is an MC (Mike Compere) by profession.  An engineering graduate by education his passion for the performing arts brought him closer to Mr. Funny Man. His initiation saw public performances and now Mr. Funny Man is traveling nation wide with shows from college students to corporates.

Iti Rawat: She is a model, artist, visual merchandiser, brand analyst gosh the list is end less.  She works with Arvind Brands and has associated herself with Mr. Funny Man (ask MCP why a girl is in Mr. Funny Man!!) from the very first show.  Her wit and presence in all the acts have helped us in a big way to create special costumes and garments to make it look good.

Prithvi Vishwanathan: MC by profession he is known for his daily breakfast show on Radio One FM 94.3 .  The Bakra Prithvi pulls out every day is the highlight of this show.  His rich experience of understanding and getting people to understand him verbally attracted all his audiences.  A charmer by birth he has this uncanny talent of true physical humor.

For further information please contact us at pd@ivcorner.com

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Hasya Ranjini (Comic Entertainment) is a group formed by professional Theatre, TV and Film artists. From Nov. 1, 2005 till today we have performed more than 70 shows all over India under this banner. The show has the uniqueness of lasting for a duration ranging from minimum 60 minutes to a maximum of four hours. It has pleasant combination of songs, skits and stand-ups to put a laugh in every mouth watching us.  Unlike other stand-ups we do not reach below the belt and cautiously maintained to be a FAMILY ENTERTAINER.

We will present eight people on stage viz.
1. Srinath Vasistha (Theatre, TV and Film artist)
2. Venkatachala (Professional Theatre, TV and Film artists)
3. Anand Tenali (Theatre, TV and Film artist)
4. Tabala Naani (of Matha fame)
5. V N Ashwath (Director of Hasya Ranjini)
6. P D Sathish Chandra (Theatre, TV artist and stand-up comedian)
7. Nagaraj Thowthy (Theatre, TV and Film artist)

For further information please contact us at pd@ivcorner.com

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From the inception of Fourth Corner our expertise and USP was in taking theatre to people who love it.  Most of us want to be a part of it most of us even want to be on stage.  We make that possible but at the same time we do not compromise on quality.

This has been favorites with corporate circles and individuals who are interested in plays. We will train and nurture the theatre guy in you to bring your quality to performable standards. With the invent of new performing spaces like Ranga Shankara, Alliance and many private spaces opening up for performances we have a lot of scope to stage productions and also earn back from it with help of sponsors. Our productions would give a sense of belonging and involvement to all our participants.

For further information please contact us at pd@ivcorner.com

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Fourth Corner saw its inception with support to other performing groups in their production. This has been our USP and have undertaken this task with many national and international theatre groups. We give single window solution to any production house from ticketing to promotions. We have tie ups with organizations to give us promotion support which has been helping many groups in Bangalore.

The lean and mean structure at Fourth Corner bends the theatre way since we understand it as well as a theatre professional do. to put it in other words "we work professionally but we don't charge professionally". Also we do not take it as any of our other commercial projects and handle with optimum care since its our first love.

For further information please contact us at pd@ivcorner.com

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The Happy Apple by Jack Pulman

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About The Play

Freddie, Arthur and Murray have started their own advertising firm but things are not going too well. As Murray talks to the important client, Porter and Kenilworth are stripping his office of unpaid-for goods. Kenilworth seems a strange sort of removal man, unusually acquainted with classical music and literature.

The partners suddenly discover in Nancy, their young secretary, an ideal person on whom to build advertising schemes - a perfect 'median type'; i.e., average. Kenilworth is also pressed to service to bring culture to the very philistine Murray.

The firm prospers, but unfortunately the "culture drug' has unexpected side effects on Nancy, who is also chased by the important client for other reasons. Eventually she explodes in a bombshell. The play has been big hit in London.

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Auditions opening shortly

Remember you don't have to BE that age you just have to LOOK the character!!

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About The Author

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Source: www.screenonline.org.uk
Often referred to as 'adaptor-extraordinary', Jack Pulman brought a quality of literary and historical integrity to the task of adaptation. He wrote his first play for television, 'You Can't Have Everything' (ITV tx. 2/5/58, for Television Playhouse), a slice-of-life drama about the miseries of a young couple living in a bed-sitter, in the evenings while by day training as a lecturer in economics. (Pulman's play was later bought by American anthology series The US Steel Hour and adapted by James Yaffe)

Later in 1958, he contributed three episodes to the ABC/Ziv Television crime drama series Dial 999 (shown in various ITV regions from May 1958) starring Robert Beatty as a Canadian detective assigned to Scotland Yard. Pulman's episodes were 'Night Mail' (ITV London tx. 18/10/58), 'Barge Burglars' (ITV London tx. 17/1/59) and 'Deadly Blackmail' (ITV London tx. 29/3/59), the latter two written under the credited name of 'Paul M. Jack'.

Returning to the TV play format, he followed with the Sunday-Night Theatre presentations 'All You Young Lovers' (BBC tx. 21/6/59), exploring the awkwardness of adolescence, and 'Echo from Afar' (BBC, 13/12/59), in which a German refugee's past catches up with him. His 'Nearer to Heaven' (BBC tx. 1/1/61, for The Sunday-Night Play) dealt with hope and despair in an old people's home, and A Book With Chapters In It (BBC tx. 8/12/61) observed the complications of adult life as seen through the eyes of a lonely young boy. The last of his sequence of original plays for television was Still Life (BBC tx. 15/3/63), a show business drama featuring Elizabeth Sellars, Peter McEnery and Peter Vaughan.

Revealing an unexpected flair for the comedy field, Pulman wrote a try-out episode (under the name 'Paul Jackman') for a possible sitcom series to feature actor David Kossoff called A Little Big Business (ITV tx. 8/8/63). Kossoff, who had concentrated on stage work and films since (temporarily) finishing his run in the popular ATV sitcom The Larkins (ITV, 1958-60; 1963-64), was tempted back to television this time as a sagely Jewish furniture craftsman who is continually at loggerheads with his commerce-concerned son. A 14-episode series followed (ITV, 1964-65), all written by Pulman for producer Peter Eton at Granada Television.

With his remarkable facility for catching the style of some of the world's leading authors, Pulman was engaged next on perhaps his most ambitious project, the 20-episode serialisation of Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace (BBC, 1973). While most contemporary TV critics were at first apprehensive about television adapting such a colossal classic for the small screen ("the danger of condensing a book crowded with character and incident"), the viewers' expectations of the serial were met with some fine performances (Anthony Hopkins, Morag Hood) and with some colourful and exquisite battle and ballroom sequences.

Returning to the comedy field after some thirteen years, Pulman created the marvellous six-part Private Schulz (BBC, 1981), starring Michael Elphick as the sympathetic Schulz in a delightfully screwball plot based on an actual Second World War German counter-espionage plan to flood Britain with forged £5 notes. In 1983, Keith Waterhouse adapted Pulman's first stage play, The Happy Apple, into a seven-episode sitcom of the same title for Thames TV (ITV, 1983). Pulman's play, revolving around an advertising agency secretary who is discovered to be the perfect embodiment of the buying public, was first performed at the Hampstead Theatre Club in 1967.

Much of Pulman's spare time was devoted to the work of the Writers' Guild as a long-serving member of its executive council, and as chairman of its film committee. He died on the 27th May 1979 of a heart attack. His last screenplay, Private Schulz, was filmed after his death. In May 1982 Pulman's widow, actress Barbara Young, accepted a posthumous writers' award from the Royal Television Society for her husband's series Private Schulz.

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Directors Note

The Happy Apple is set in the office of an Advertising agency, Murray, Maine & Spender (MMS) set up by three ex employees of Dobson & Dobson Advertising Agency. The fortunes of the company is on a steep decline. Murray - the business brain is desperately trying to save his only customer - Bassingtons Ice-cream, who is constantly threatening to get back to Dobsons.

Porter and Kenilworth are emptying his office of the unpaid furniture. These two partners with the technical know-how are not making the situation any better for Murray. Kenilworth seems out of place (the right man in the wrong place) with a flair for classical music and literature. The young and sexy secretary Nancy gray, who single mindedly saves the company and helps them make fortunes.

Though ill-educated, she possesses great or rather "median" mental powers to determine which products or ad strategy the public will find most attractive. of course her bosses exploit her ability to the fullest. the company no doubt prospers but Kenilworth spoils the show by trying to make "somebody" out of the "everybody" that Nancy is. The spark of realization in Nancy's mind leads to bursting of the bubble for Murray and MMS.

Rib tickling lines and humor spread evenly thorough out the play and the characters made this my choice for the comedy which I dreamt of staging in 2000.  Every time I read the lines in the script they make me laugh my guts out.  Look forward to seeing a house full of audiences falling from their chairs on this one.

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Acknowledgements

About The Director

This is Sathish's Fifth production under Fourth Corner banner.  He has been working with different theatre groups from India at different times.  After his hibernation or disappearance for three years, the Ranga Shankara festival 2004, put him back in line with active theatre.  He still is known for his theatre columns for newspapers and with special reference to Sunday reviews at Times of India.  He still continues to write for newspapers on theater and related issues.  To find two such articles CLICK HERE.  For his other theater ventures on and after 2005 CLICK HERE. For his personal profile CLICK HERE & Artist Profile CLICK HERE

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