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Chinmay Shukla is trained at the Doncaster College (UK) in Music Production and at Georgia Southern University (USA) in Music Composition. He holds sound knowledge on Indian Carnatic Music and Western Classical Music and has composed music for various television programmes and albums. He is currently working on an album with Hariharan, Shivamani and Lalitya Munshaw.

DakhlaTarike goes to Natarani - 4th performance.

Dakha Tarike will be staged at Natarani as an extension to "The Sunday to Sunday Festival".

Date:  19 October 2012 (Friday)
Time:  8:30 pm
Entry: Tickets at Rs. 100/- available from the venue (Please call: 079 - 2755 6669 / 2756 0971
             Free for Natarani Members

25 September 2012: वाचिकम - "यन्नेहास्ती" (Yannehasti)

"Jaagine Joun To - Rangabhoomi Jhage!" by S. D. Desai

Maaro Piyo Gayo Rangoon vibrations had not yet subsided when Fanatika’s Jaagine Joun To caught the imagination of its viewers and they gave it a spontaneous standing ovation – a rare gesture to a mere vachikam. Add to this, glimpses of the verve of yore coming back to plays by Chorus, Gujarati theatre seems set to rise again with vigour – a development that invigorates theatre-lovers like this writer.

As for the intrinsic worth of the play on Narasimh Mehta in elegant Jhulana, playwright Sitanshu Yashashchandra with his characteristic modesty gave credit to the poet’s verbal power and his indomitable revolting spirit. He termed his intervention minimalist. This minimalist approach in fact comes across to the audience exhilaratingly!

Ante to hemanu-n hema hoye! With the paarasmani touch of poetry, its rhythm and resonance, the aadi kavi embraces Krishna, the all-pervading divinity. So does the contemporary poet. Of imagination and creativity are both compact! At one end of the spectrum we have an artless description of creepers and flowers and humming bhramaras. At this end we have a disarming contemporary touch in taahara baapanu-n shun-y jaaya? besides the basic interpretation of the unassuming poet and his great work.

For theatre, the most heartening mentionable is the appreciation of these subtly beautiful aspects and their audible, visual (read joyously pleasing) and soulful transfer to theatre that has the audience humming, clapping and being palpably responsive in silence. The director has the run-on lines dramatically divided and distributed for the daring and dedicated dozen players now to sing, now to interject as in real life, now to render them with fine modulation - getting gestures, facial expression, and sparingly the harmonium in support.

Let us look forward to a full stage version of the verse play with a little more attention to verbal and rhythmic precision and innovative resourceful action. Challenging but not impossible. If they could scale this height, why not a notch higher?

S. D. Desai

Ahmedabad, 30 August 2012

वाचिकम - "જાગીને જોઊં તો.."

Playwright: Sitanshu Yashaschandra

Director: Nisarg Trivedi

Tuesday, 28 August 2012     I     7:00 pm     I     Gujarati Sahitya Parishad

Language: Gujarati

This is a play that presents a new Narasimh Maheta, as also the timeless one, the “Adi Kavi’. Written by Sitanshu Yashaschandra, this verse play is a tribute that modernity pays to its origins. Presented in two acts, the play enquires into the poems and the personality of a great poet, rebel and lover.

The Lover Narsimh: To love God has never been easy. The play brings out ecstasy and agony of it all. Narasimh’s superb and eternal pada-poems of love blend gently with Sitanshu’s affectionate and ironic narrative, written throughout in Jhulanaa Chhand (a meter dear to Narasimh), and variations in its panch-kala maatra. Young actors, trained in classical and sugam Indian music sing it all live on the stage.

The Rebel Narsimh: To rebel against a rigid culture is equally hard. Narsimh lived his life dangerously, taking on hostile forces of family, society, religion, economy and the State. Through creative hermeneutics, the playwright interprets each ‘Kasoti’/test in the poet’s life: hundi, haar, maameru and so on.

The Poet Narasimh: Matchless in Gujarat, amongst the immortals in India, an equal to any in World literature. The play presents the intense beauty of his poems, its texts and contexts, sung and enacted alive on the stage. 

A brilliant Modern poet-playwright pays warm tribute and salutes the Greatest of Gujarati Poets and laments his absence amongst us today. Don’t miss.

Check out the dates of Dakhla Tarike's next performance.

Fanatika Theatre Club's most recent and very well-received play Dakhla Tarike (Gujarati, દાખલા તરીકે) goes to Rangmandal Theatre Festival on 29 July 2012.

Dakhla Tarike's calendar:

29 July: Ahmedabad
Rangmandal Theatre Festival

11 July: Town Hall, Gandhinagar 
Organised by Sangeet Natak Akademi, Gujarat Government

10 June: Gujarati Sahitya Parishad, Ahmedabad
Première mondiale (World premiere)

More shows lined up in Ahmedabad, Baroda and Surat.

For organising a show, please write to fanatikatheatreclub@yahoo.com
or call (+91)97.23.45.24.25