The Hindu MetroPlus Playwright Award carries a cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh for the best new English script. A panel comprising eminent theatre persons and members of The Hindu have recently chosen Neel Chaudhuri's Taramandal as the winner for 2010.
Neel Chaudhuri is a playwright and theatre director. This has involved spending much of the last three years in a basement with actors, watching them improvise over and over again, then stealing the best bits and taking most of the credit. He was formerly the Artistic Director of The First City Theatre Foundation (2007-09), with whom he ‘wrote’ and directed four plays – Positions (2006), Mouse (2007), Good Hands / Godspeed and A Brief History of the Pantomimes (2008). He moonlights as a film programmer and critic because he has qualifications that cost money, and he is a proud, propelling member of The Stiff Kittens’ Medicine Show – an irreverent late-night variety programme.
Taramandal extends Patol Babu, Film Star by Satyajit Ray of a little ambition suddenly mounted on a huge platform. The play constructs parallel narratives that set up and mirror Patol Babu's story in younger versions of himself or people just like him. All of these stories of failed ambition in the theatre, movies or television culminate in his one single walk on opportunity.
Neel Chaudhuri is a playwright and theatre director. This has involved spending much of the last three years in a basement with actors, watching them improvise over and over again, then stealing the best bits and taking most of the credit. He was formerly the Artistic Director of The First City Theatre Foundation (2007-09), with whom he ‘wrote’ and directed four plays – Positions (2006), Mouse (2007), Good Hands / Godspeed and A Brief History of the Pantomimes (2008). He moonlights as a film programmer and critic because he has qualifications that cost money, and he is a proud, propelling member of The Stiff Kittens’ Medicine Show – an irreverent late-night variety programme.
Taramandal extends Patol Babu, Film Star by Satyajit Ray of a little ambition suddenly mounted on a huge platform. The play constructs parallel narratives that set up and mirror Patol Babu's story in younger versions of himself or people just like him. All of these stories of failed ambition in the theatre, movies or television culminate in his one single walk on opportunity.
