BENGALURU: Over a year ago, Srinivas moved from Goa to Bengaluru. And the director’s first impression about the theatre space in the city was that “despite having a large number of English speaking and creative individuals from different spheres”, there was very little English theatre happening here.”
Which is when his partner, Sheeba Shah and he started theatre group, Imaya Shows. They will be staging their show Two Fathers, a play about two legends, Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi, who struggled at being the kind of parents that their children wanted them to be. A witty, intelligent exploration of the universal theme of the complex tensions between parents and children, it is meant to connect with every age group and every kind of audience.
“I happened to be discussing the concept of Two Fathers for a while with my friend and author Sundar Sarukkai from NIAS, Bengaluru. Since I realised that this would make a better play than a movie, I requested
Sundar to write it for us. With a PhD in Particle Physics and a respected philosophy scholar in the country, I felt that with his background, he knew Einstein and Gandhi quite intimately. The script that he wrote was so simple and elegant, it inspired us to start rehearsing it immediately and our first performance was at the Goa Arts & Literature Festival in December 2017,” he says about the play they have performed many times in Goa.
Srinivas feels that the play appeals to any age group owing to its universal theme of parent-child relationships. “It goes beyond just the personal stories of these two great men,” he says.
Sets, lighting and costumes are minimalistic since Srinivas believes that the “complexity lies in the words and ideas in the play.” “Most people dissuaded me from attempting a ‘serious’ play but I was confident that Two Fathers has an emotional appeal and sense of humour that would connect with the audience. At the end of the play, most people tell us that they were mostly thinking about their own families and friends,” he says.
After three shows that the group will be performing in Bengaluru at the end of the month, they will be travelling to Kerala and Chandigarh. The play is being staged at Ranga Shankara, JP Nagar on June 30 and July 1.
Tickets are on bookmyshow.com