THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kannan Unni, an alumni of National School of Drama, is in high spirits. Teaming up with a few theatre enthusiasts, he has come up with a theatre group in the city, which is staging its first independent play on January 19, 20 and 21 at Vyloppilly Samskruthi Bhavan’s open air theatre here.
The play, titled ‘Unidentified Flying Object’ or ‘UFO’, was recently staged in Lenin Balavadi as well. Kannan, the director of the theatre society said, “ Though we had been an active team for around four years and had done three other plays, they were all produced under different banners. Our first play, ‘Thevarude Aana’, based on a work done by the noted poet Omchery, was staged under the banner of the theatre group titled ‘Abhinaya’. The other two plays were ‘Jaiva- a tale of 2 trees’ and ‘2 Machines’.”
Kannan, who has come up with the group, feels that it is high time that the terms ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ be stopped when it comes to performing arts. Adding that there has been a blur in lines, he said, “It is wrong to demarcate someone as amateur or professional when it comes to theatre. For instance, I believe it is more of a livelihood for professional theatre enthusiasts while amateur performances are more about exploring and experimenting. Creating a difference with both terminologies is not right.”
Exploring the themes of fundamentalism, Idealism and Humanity through its first play, ‘UFO’ will have a duration of one-and-a-half hours. Humanity becomes an element of animosity through the play, while culture becomes the predominent topic of discussion through one of the sequences based on Fundamentalism. According to Kannan, from two lovers passionately discussing the topic of love to two dogs speaking of their owners’ apathy towards them, it explores a variety of situations and themes. He adds, “There will be a number of sequences in the play, which seek to explore these three topics. It portrays and dwells on what I would call a sarcastic tragedy. For instance, humanity is in fact more of a racist concept as it concerns only human beings.”
Elaborating more on concepts which the group looks at working on, the NSD alumni states, “There is this idea of nature and that of humanity, while there are a number of unidentified or unexplored things in between. While this is what we explore through UFO, the major idea of the theatre society is to understand how to deliver experimental plays which are more convincing to the public.”