NATAK NAKO play review

Rehearsal rooms have become extremely abusive -- that's the first thing that comes to mind while watching NATAK NAKO. Yes, rehearsal halls have always had a charged atmosphere. In fact, some directors believe that the more high strung the actors are during rehearsals, the better their performance will be. Whether that really works is debatable but essentially the young group behind the new Marathi play, NATAK NAKO, thinks hurling abuses at each other will make their fictional lives on stage easier.

While the audience settles in, the actors are already in their positions and are seen miming their parts under four dim tube lights. A couple of the impatient audience members mumbled rather loudly about when the play would start or if it had started already. Soon enough,a scene from a play within a play is enacted and the uninspired (quite literally) director goes across the stage spewing expletives. He suggests the group repeat a theatre exercise they'd done the previous day so that he may chance upon a way forward. The four lead actors concede, reluctantly. The workshop requires the actors to improvise scenes based on their own experiences. One after the other, the actors reveal their dirty secrets.

The play reaches a crescendo when marred by the cathartic, numbing experience, the actors turn on their director. They protest being treated as guinea pigs in a lab experiment only so that the director is inspired. The director is overpowered and forced to go through the exercise too. The resulting anarchy is a tad too dramatic but then the group doesn't take very long to move on to the next and final victim -- the most bullied and vulnerable actor in the group.

Playwright Dharmakirti Sumant states that the play is inspired by members of his own theatre group and that the idea is to let the members be more "frank and forthright with each other". The trouble with such an inspiration is that the play seems self indulgent. The in-house jokes (of a frustrated actor listing two ads and 15 short films as his career achievements, for instance) seem too repetitive. We know these cliches. At the same time, it's interesting for the audience to watch what goes into the making of a play. The light design is very interesting. Pity, the lights designer does not get a mention in the brochure. Watch NATAK NAKO for a behind-the-scenes look at theatre. Don't expect much else from it though.

*Aditi Sharma enjoys watching theatre and writing about it.