BENGALURU: If all had gone as per plan, Bangalore Little Theatre (BLT) would have been out with new volumes of their anthology of plays in September this year. The first three volumes, which were released in December last year, were to be followed by six more, to mark the theatre group’s diamond jubilee year. “As part of the celebrations, BLT decided to publish all the plays promoted over many years. The tentative idea is to release 2-3 volumes at a time. The next set should have come out by now. The pandemic has affected the printing-publishing badly – as with all businesses.
We can now expect to see the next few volumes early 2021,” says Vijay Padaki, one of the founder-trustees of the theatre group. Though withdrawn from all management responsibilities, Padaki is continuing as an invitee in an Emeritus capacity. He is also the series editor of the publications, which has been published by Vitasta Publishing. “The volumes were overdue. The whole world recognised BLT’s output from its play development efforts. We had not bothered to publish the plays. The Diamond Jubilee got us to act,” he adds.
The upcoming volumes will include plays by Sridhar Ramanathan, Dina Mehta, Alan Lightman and John Kotter, to name a few. The past three volumes featured plays by Padaki, Kavya Srinivasan and Ravi Chari. “The first three volumes had themes like the classics, children’s theatre, and the history of ideas. The upcoming volumes will also be grouped thematically,” says Deepak Mote, who is a part of the group’s managing committee. With editing for volumes 4-9 already done, Padaki explains what went on behind the scenes. “The play scripts were already there, most of them performed, carefully put together in fair copy. The publication project only meant uniform formatting and careful final editing.
We have had good team work between people in BLT and the publishers,” says the octogenarian. The plan, according to Abhishek Sundaravadanan, honorary president of the group’s managing committee, was to cover all the original plays and adaptations the group had produced in its 60 years. “We have a rich bank of texts and now these are available to everyone else as well. It feels great to be able to contribute towards that,” he says.
Currently, the group has taken to producing a webinar series, curated by Shatarupa Bhattacharyya and Archana Kariappa, as part of their 60th anniversary celebrations. The first session of the series, which aims to be public engagements curated around arts, was kicked off with Arundhati Raja, the founder trustee of Jagriti Theatre. Besides this, they have also launched digital performances of their Courtyard Theatre series (featuring a pair of actors) and video recordings of their older plays. In September, the group will also launch the Monologue Circle, which will provide a platform for anyone looking to try their hand at performing a monologue.