Playtime Tales

Bijoy Gupta

Siba Prasad Maitra

There are plays and there are plays. But every play has a story. And every story has a text. Some plays also have a sub-text to the story… But that is all for public consumption.
What is not ever revealed or staged are stories behind the story – the many machinations, intrigues, plotting and goings on in the run-up to staging a play. Ask any theatre professional and you would realize that there cannot be a play without instances of budding romance, ego clashes, bitter-sweet tales of envy, defiance, obstinacy, hurt, frustration, etc. during the rehearsals.
We are going through that phase right now. There are two one-act plays to be mounted on the Annual Day function (ref previous posts) and already, director Bijoy Gupta and chief organizer Siba Prasad Maitra are at their wits’ end, tearing their hair over keeping the flock together.

Razia Khan (r) introduces her daughter, Shafiqua (in red) to the Club

As it is, we face a severe dearth of talent and there is even talk of people having to play ‘double roles’. Worse, memory lapses have become a cause for concern as nobody is able to remember his/ her lines. Improvisation and tweaking the script are not helping. And then there is the eternal challenge of getting members of the cast together at one place to rehearse.
In between, someone walks out in a huff over some issue. Another person, who had been dropped earlier, is brought in as a replacement. But she puts forth her conditions. With time running out, all conditions are accepted. After all, there are bigger issues still to be resolved – of scripting, casting, dialogue delivery, enunciation, coordination, etc.
But then, these behind-the-scenes challenges make for all the fun and games there is to staging a play. These long drawn out, yet fascinating tales are the biggest takeaways which shall remain forever in our memory – not how an audience responds to the performance on a particular evening.