About The Event
Ranga Shankara's 'Staged@RS' presents The Company's 'Black Box' - a play that explores the idea of home and the emotions that it generates, set against the backdrop of a lockdown that spared no one. Directed by renowned thespian Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry and featuring actor Vansh Bharadwaj, 'Black Box' premieres at 7:30 PM IST on Fri, 4 Dec 2020, and is available to national and international audiences as Video-on-Demand, till 11:59 PM IST on Thu, 10 Dec 2020.
Synopsis:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredibility, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us."
‘A Tale of Two Cities’, Charles Dickens
Craving food, a simple meal, but only managing a sandwich that perhaps was donated in a food packet. Humanity asserts itself, when the protagonist shares his frugal meal with a stray dog. Imagining the taste of home-cooked food as he munches on a sandwich, salivating at the memory of his mother's cooking, playing at eating his favourite foods, realising that everything is shut, and no one is spared.
A solo performance without text can be tough. Words, numbers, dates became the text and the running leitmotif of the play. Numbers created conversation that ranged from anger, to wonderment, humour, loss, helplessness, disgust - a language of numbers was created. “Let’s go for a walk”. “Hello, is anyone there?” were played and replayed, layered and stripped made to collate and collide with emotions of loss, desperation, yearning, touch, smell and sound. But within that the actor creates affirmations, sets up a stage - what else can an actor do? Storytelling - songs of kings and courtiers, of deals within deals, anything and everything to keep the imagination and sanity intact and alive. His audience is the dog and the sparrow. To touch the rain and feel it on his skin, he simulates rain, keeps sanity, insanity sanitised and alive. Survival, hope, and dreams, need to be constantly negotiated, no matter how dark the times.
