Often I receive requests from many of my friends to give them an opportunity to watch some of my plays which they had missed. Repeat performances of our plays happen few and far between, hence many a times, a missed show implies a missed opportunity. I have never liked watching plays on video screen, especially when it is captured from stage using a single stationary camera in an auto mode. Hence I have always been reluctant to share our show video archives with my friends.  Theatre is something that is enjoyed best in a live theater setting, along with the other viewers. It is a community event. However, recently I had to succumb to the demands of my friends and released the video of our play “Rajar Chithi” on YouTube, and here they are in two parts. The play was staged earlier in 2011 in celebration of Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th Birth Anniversary and  I have written earlier about it in a previous post. So if you have missed the show, here is your chance to get a glimpse of the production. Just a note of caution: The play will demand your attention as it is a long one (approx duration 1hr 50mins).

Part 1:

Part 2:

Last Saturday (June 15th, 2013) at our EBC Drama Club show, we had three very distinguished representatives from  three different New Jersey Community Theatre organizations as our guests. Patrick Starega from the NJACT (Perry Award) organization representing its member theatres (more than 150), Lluana Jones from Villager’s Theatre (Somerset), and Rich Monteiro from Edison Valley Playhouse (Edison).  The discussion started off with a recent article from Huffington Post by Howard Sherman titled “Theater the Theater Community Disdains!” I asked, why is it that such a negative attitude exists amongst the theater community? And the discussion rolled on, from the objectives of community theatre to the role it plays in our community, to the sensitive issues of ethnicity and diversity in community theatre, the variety and originality of content, and the overall quality of production and talent. Listen to this exciting discussion in the podcast below and join the community theatre movement that is thriving in New Jersey all around us.

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Sharad Sathe and Shriram Devre

Sharad Sathe, a playwright and director of Marathi Theatre in New Jersey , was at the EBC Radio studio on June 1, 2013 as my guest to the EBC Drama Club show. He was accompanied by one of his actors, Sreeram Devre. We had an long chat on Marathi Theatre, its history, its evolution and the state of Mararthi Theatre in New Jersey and North America in general. Sharad talked about his inspiration in translating and adapting western plays for the Marathi stage and the challenges he had to face in staging Marathi Theatre in USA. During the conversation, he and Sreeram also read few snippets from some of his plays. But before we started the conversation, we remembered the recently departed  film maker Rituparno Ghosh by listening to a clip from his film “The Last Lear” where Amitabh Bachhan recites from the play “King Lear” by William Shakespeare.  The audio podcast of the entire conversation is given below.

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