From the Desk of: Quilluminati Pundits, Ashoka’s One-Stop Guide to Campus Culture
The inaugural collaborative theatrical endeavour between The Green Room and Kalinga, titled “I Don't Like This”, attempts to be a witty amalgamation of self-projection and self-awareness. Is it also a badam ad? Was it written with the intention of being profound and thought-provoking, or did the play turn out to be a visual and auditory delight by accident? The analysis below tries to negotiate with my thoughts and feelings on the play.
The play begins with an ominous surprising scene – two men at loggerheads, ready to kill for love and hate. The illusion is shattered when the lights reveal a small writer’s table at the back, with fictional Kalinga writers struggling to find a premise for their new play, produced in collaboration with TGR. Even in fiction, it appears as if Kalinga is desperate for their love and affection. This struggle forms the basic premise of “I Don’t Like This”. (Footnote: The genuine writing team from Kalinga neither confirm nor deny their struggles about the same.)
Like Alia Bhatt playing Shanaya in Student of the Year, it was very easy to fuck this up, but thankfully, the play pulls through. From facing adversities like writer’s block to listening to unnecessary ideas and pitches, the trio of writers in the play – Aadrita, Maya and Karan – suffer through a range of challenges with only one question in mind: how does one write a good play? Is it easier to pander to people or to actually make an effort towards genuinity? So what if that isn't a real word? Unlike our University producing a reel on diversity within the campus, these student actors have gone down the latter route.
“I Don't Like This” gradually turns into an ironic tale of a couple’s love life gone awry, life coming in the way and no one knowing what to do. Years before, Gabriella and Troy suffered the same fate. Will this new generation of woke, smart, know-it-alls also face the same fate, or will they crumble under the pressure of their self actualisation and lose important people along the way?
The artistic genius of the directors – Siddharth Siju, Sayona Chachra Pahwa and Nandini Bhattacharya – is evident in their liminal use of silence in the production. The music crescendos when it should and decrescendos when it should. Their vision seems to capture exactly what the characters want from their lives. Maya is given chic western clothes to portray her arrogant and untamable temperament, whereas Aadrita is dressed up in Indian traditionals to convey her understated elegance.
Actors playing Ahaan (Neel Vaidya) and Mayank (Ayaan Dutt) kill it with electric chemistry, second only to Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in La La Land. Maya (Taco) and Aadrita (Aanya Malik), on the other hand, are second only to Kelly and Ryan in The Office. Rahul Rahulson (known to the uncool as Shaunak Sawant) finesses the poignant personification of the bag that represents unresolved baggage in the play. Mom and Dad, played by Kshitija Desai and Abhishek Kumar respectively, are mirth-inducing in their own right.
The Black Box was brought down by laughter at the intellectually stimulating almond quips and rowdy ‘Romeo’ roars. It was evident that the play was the sweet result of hard work put in by everyone involved with the production. The writers and directors’ visions glowed throughout on stage, alongside the melancholic lighting.
When approached near the campus mess, the co-director Mr. Siju captured the feelings of the audience, TGR and Kalinga members in the aftermath of the play quite wistfully: “We really, really needed this.” He proceeded to stare off into the distance as I slipped away from the dal counter, leaving him to reminisce on his fantastic production with Ms. Pawha and Ms. Bhattacharya.
The humour comes across like a well-ironed pair of trousers – nice to look at and touch; neither too hot, nor too dry. The comic relief character, Karan (played by the brilliant Aryan Mathur), embodies the common notions Ashokans have about themselves – ostensibly knowledgeable, desperately intellectual and critical thinkers who implement their vocabularies in the most unproductive endeavours. They present themselves as more worthy of being listened to than the average chump on the street, and use metaphors and turns of phrases that don’t mean anything if you think about it for more than a couple of seconds. Thankfully, I’m not a critic of such arrogant standing. Thank you for reading this review – I’m supercalifragilistically excited to be Kalinga’s new cultural arts critic.
One can only hope that the other plays in production, both the ones organised by The Green Room as well as the independent productions put up by theatre enthusiasts, are nearly as entertaining as this one was. Every play has something unique – some make you want to hurl out your insides, while some make you want to gouge your eyes out. Hopefully, upcoming ones will make you want to believe in the dying art of being a theatre-enthusiast.
It’s something that shouldn’t be as un-ubiquitous as it currently is. I want the arts to thrive at this University. Honestly, I think I’ll quite like writing these reviews with the pure passion I have towards theatre, and not because it’s a last-ditch effort to get some clout and attention from the ones who rejected me from TGR.
(If you’re reading this, can you please, please text me back, Puru?)
By Maitreyi Sreenivas and Abhijato Sensarma
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