HYDERABAD: Cineplay is a cinematic experience inspired by a theatrical production. As a new language of storytelling, the film making process is used to convey meaningful stories, in collaboration with the theatre director’s vision.
Simply put, as the visiting company official - Sanjay Ram - told a curious audience at Lamakaan on Tuesday evening, it would be converting classic plays which otherwise would not be available for viewing for the later generations into cinema format. A brainchild of Subodh Maskara, spouse of noted actress Nandita Das, Cineplay has already found partner organisations in New Delhi, Mumbai and Washington to screen old plays in new forms at regular intervals.
Already five plays have already been converted into the digital mode which include plays by noted contemporary playwrights Mahesh Dattani and Mohan Rakesh.
Admitting they are not against the theatre genre in any manner, with the concept being a work in progress, as Sanjay announced that they only want to archive the unmatched performances of the artistes who have not been introduced to modern society.
Siddharth Kumar’s ‘The Job’ which was directed by Akarsh Khurana, originally as a play and later in the cine format was screened for the audience. Lasting all of 85 minutes, it is a close look at what happens inside the boss’s chamber where the interview is being held for a middle-management slot vacancy.
A crazy bunch of possessed characters are shown playing havoc with the applicant, forced to take all that because he needs the job for the money and also is challenged to take it on the chin, as part of the process.
It was a gripping tale for most part, as the performers in the form of the job applicant (Karan Pandit), the secretary with an attitude (Shweta Tripathi), the opinionated and arrogant boss (Kashin Shetty) and the insecure company official (Tariq Vasudeva) played their roles with feeling and conviction. The skullduggery which goes on in corporate world comes out forcefully as the interviewee is forced to accept the impossible conditions of the new boss who himself loses his lady love, owing to a rash cover up act by his fellow colleague.
Still, in hindsight, one is forced to wonder as to how the original flavour of the live performance, which would have been lesser lavish and digitally imperfect have been preserved in its entirety as the new format enables one to correct flaws and make it feature film almost! It would, of course be a pleasure to watch the works of known theatre world like Habib Tanvir, Prithviraj Kapoor, BV Karanth, Girish Karnad etc but it is still an attitude to be cultivated to acclimatise oneself to seeing them and their priceless works, glitzy and bright on the silver screen!
Digital re-mastering of old film classics in Indian cinema is currently, a work in progress. In the past decade, there have been many vintage ones like Mughal-e-Azam , Guide and Sholay to hits in other languages like Tamil which have been taken up thus for a repeat run among the young, new audience. The underlying premise was that it was too much to lose the films of the bygone era which were proud milestones of our cinema history. Sadly, the first talkie of our nation’s motion picture industry- Alam Ara has been lost forever as its last print in the film archives of Pune is destroyed forever. In this regard, it is early days yet for the drama lovers of the country to take up to technology and relive memories, one feels.