Unboxed Writers has an amazingly detailed review.

Have you noticed, how for every point, life offers a counterpoint? As if to remind you that for every ‘this,’ there is a ‘that?’  And for every Delhi Belly, there is The Blue Mug?

Read the full review – Memory is a Blue Mug.

I was sore about being quoted out of context in this Indian Express article, but my complaint seems trivial after reading Bijoy Venugopal’s experience with a "hack" from Mid-Day.

What we did not say about The Blue Mug – a very well-written, funny piece with the bonus of a comment by Vinay Pathak on it.

Online magazine The NRI writes about the Apr 2010 New York show of The Blue Mug:

…the play provides a unique insight into the lives of the actors and provokes a debate over how we construct ourselves based on the memories we choose to share, or choose not to share. It also becomes a telling exploration of middle-class Indian identity, with precious details that any nostalgic NRI can relate to.

Read the full review here.

And then someone not so impressed by The Blue Mug:

The cast was from film and TV and the scene seemed quite happening. Rajat Kapoor was the star I knew. That said, I didn’t really understand the play and fell asleep during parts of it. Near the end I had about 5 minutes of what felt like lucidation, but I’m not sure.

Read the full review here.

I was initially thrilled to see something about an Indian play on the Guardian’s blog. By the end of it, I was rather disappointed.

The article makes statements like:

Bollywood is notorious for churning out vast quantities of films that take pride in being entertainment and nothing more. Young playwrights like Kamatham are stepping in to fill the void.

Ignore for a moment the sweeping generalization about Indian films, just consider: when writing of a play, why has the Guardian theatre blog chosen Bollywood as its yardstick for comparison? Apparently, the audience at New Delhi’s Habitat Centre were gasping at the profanity in this play because:

In a cultural climate dominated by escapist Bollywood  narratives, where a song-and-dance routine is never more than a few minutes away, the concept of realism can be every bit as shocking as the swearing.

How realistic a description is this of the cultural climate to which Indian theatre-goers are exposed? Is it credible that the audience at IHC were shocked over Dancing On Glass because they had not seen anything but escapist Bollywood narratives, and not watched a dark, song-less play before?

Indian theatre and Indian films are entirely different kettles of fish. Unlike our films, song-and-dance routines in our theatre are a rarity – ironically, the musical genre is far more popular on stage abroad.

This is not to knock the praise off Dancing On Glass, but just to point out that candyfloss is not a defining characteristic of our theatre. It’s nice that critics overseas are noticing Indian plays but I hope they will do more in their evaluation than recycle stereotypes about Bollywood.

[Read the DramaDose review of Dancing On Glass.]

The recent spat between actor-playwright Leslie Jordan and theatre critic Elisabeth Vincentelli has been rather ugly, and it has raised many such questions about the nature of conversations between artist and critic, between artist and artist.

The Indian theatre scene is bereft of all such wars. I wonder if that is something to be pleased about or worried about. Better rows over well thought-out criticism than verbatim reproductions of the play’s promotional text, I say!

Head over to the Guardian Theatre Blog for their take on the issue:
Noises off: Sense and sensitivity to criticism

After the play was over, members of the Tahatto troupe mixed with the audience, thanked them personally for coming to watch the show and asked them for their feedback with humility. That was enough. It takes care of the rest.

This does happen – we are swayed by how nice the actors were to us, sometimes more than by how well they acted. She mentions another experience of the actors narrating personal stories in between set changes. "That was surely the moment that decided that the audience would applaud in the end, no matter how the play turned out."

The question is: should off-performance courtesies be enough?

A Boston-based theatre actor touches upon this subject in a fascinating article Why They Don’t Come Back.

I think it’s in our interest to be a lot harder on theatre-making. How many of your friends are working on a bad show right now? Why are we surprised when the audience is made up of mostly actors’ friends? Why do we profusely thank the audience for coming?  Why does everyone compliment each other on a lackluster show? Enough with the pity party/circle jerk. Either try to blow the audience away, or don’t bother. Be harder on your friends. Save your glowing praise for work that deserves it.

The best feedback I got for this role was that the audience can’t make up their minds who the victim is and who the victimiser. I am pleased with that because Girish (Karnad) has built in enough ambiguity to make it a shifting equation.

She also talks of the unique predicament of rehearsing for this role, for which her sister-in-law Tanvi Azmi came to her rescue by playing the other part.

Read the full piece here: In her own image.

Girish Karnad speaks to LiveMint about the challenges of translating plays into other languages.

“I like to translate my plays into English because it also facilitates their translation into other Indian languages”, he says, pointing out that an Assamese translator is likely to refer to the English version of a play, not its Kannada or Hindi version. At the same time, he admits that a Hindi translation can be closer in spirit to the Kannada original. “For a word like aarti, there is no English translation.”

He also touches upon the reasons why a production house chooses to stage a particular play, and why they would rather stage Broken Images than Tughlaq.

Read the full piece here: The play of languages.

…there is a growing interest in theatre that embraces difference. Here, individual performances go further than being mere variations; not only is each a one-off event, but its status as such is made perceptible. You see the gaps deliberately left open for choice and chance, and accordingly you become aware of what else might have been.

The trend applies equally to theatre in India. At a smaller level, it exists in the actor-audience interaction in plays like Hamlet the Clown Prince or Five Grains of Sugar. The plot does not vary, the details do – a quip about someone’s name, a question posed to a couple in the front row, jokes based on where the play is being enacted.

Evam brings in a lot of variety in their performances. In a recent contest, the winner was awarded a part to play in their show of Five Point Someone. With Urban Turban, their USP is "No two shows are the same". The cast is shuffled, the stories are improvised.

Then there’s Yours Truly theatre which specializes in productions that let the audience decide the ending. The Common Man is one such, and Bhagwan Dhundoo that Ranji mentions here, is their latest.

Read more about unplanned scripts and extemporized twists on the Guardian theatre blog.

John Clancy, an Obie award winning director, shares three principles to follow when performing Shakespeare. A must-read for anyone associated with theatre.

To quote:

The first thing to hold in your mind when working with Shakespeare is that he wrote for the stage, not for the page. The Globe was open to the sun, half the audience was standing and the reverent, hushed atmosphere of today’s audience was something a player had to earn and fight to keep against great odds, not something assumed. For the actor, this translates simply to making the primary focus and scene partner not your fellow actor, but the audience immediately in front of you.

Read the full piece here: Making Shakespeare Dull.