Today, Aadyam launches the final masterpiece of their digital edition — Bandish 20-20,000Hz — setting the tone for R-Day celebrations. Crusading through a musical path with a touch of humour, it tells the audiences how artistes have always been ‘bound’ and always faced bandish through social media trolls, threats, political bans or social exclusions.
The cast consists of Anubha Fatehpuria, Danish Hussain, Harsh Khurana, Hitesh Bhojraj, Ipshita Singh Chakraborty and Nivedita Bhargava, while Shubha Mudgal lends her musical prowess as the music director.
Aadyam is an initiative, helmed by the Aditya Birla Group, supporting the theatre space in India. “Bandish is a story of two singers — a nautanki singer and a baithak (classical) singer — who come face-to-face in the green room and relive their glory days, sharing witty anecdotes. Each anecdote is accompanied by a musical and a dance number, and is an exploration into time and seeing things with a revived and revised perspective,” says Director Purva Naresh. In a free-wheeling chat, she tells us:
Why call the play Bandish 20-20000 Hz?
Bandish means restrictions as well as a musical composition. 20-20000 Hz is the range at which the human ear can hear, and whether you can hear 20 Hz or not depends on the level of noise around you. The title represents the restrictions imposed on musicians and the level of ‘noise’ around determining whether we can hear this or not.
What’s the significance of staging the play on Republic Day?
R-Day is the ideal day. In the play, a character asks whether we achieved Independence when it was announced or when we got our Constitution. Because till then, we were considered a dominion state. He points out the relevance of the Constitution to India’s Independence. In the play, we have two very special songs composed by Shubha Mudgal that celebrate swaraj. She has also composed a nazm by Kaifi Azmi, which is about Gandhi and Jinnah’s meeting, and it is exquisite.
What makes you say it is a ‘figurative comparison between the lives of artistes from the pre-Independence era and the contemporary ones’?
Before Independence, freedom meant freedom from the ‘outsiders’, but post-Independence, it means many things, and at times asking for that freedom can ‘label’ you. Also, while technological advancement is about making things easier and more accessible to people, it can also polarise people. Things go awry at such times, and then we need to wake up and smell the bad news.
How is an online show different from a live performance?
It changes the performance. But then the camera brings another level of awareness and consciousness for the actor and that too changes the performance in a good way. For the director, the task of translating the play into another format is so absorbing that at times you forget but never for too long.
The audience is half the magic. We miss them. The power of the collective, the idea of arriving at a moment as a unit, many becoming one through an emotion or a thought... that’s the magic. But online shows have their own boons more so during the pandemic.
How was working with a doyen like Shubha Mudgal?
I have known Shubhaji since my student days, and learnt a lot from her lecture-demonstrations because she has a wholesome approach to music and does not compartmentalise it. She has immense knowledge. With this play, she didn’t just help me with the compositions but also with the research and the stories. She fully understands what the script needs, and doesn’t need much explanation.
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ON: January 26, 30 & 31