The second weekend of ‘Remembering Veenapani’ festival opening on Friday will kick off with an eclectic range of stories and music in Adishakti near Auroville.
The festival this weekend will begin with Jannal and Sithai Mark Seeyakai Thool , two short solo plays in Tamil. The 40-minute duration play is based on the stories written by Sundara Ramasamy. Directed by N. Muthuswamy, Chennai-based theatre artist Anandsami will perform. The music for this play is composed by Vedanth Bharadwaj.
A Koothu-p-pattarai production , Jannal play is about the experiences of a fourteen-year old boy sick and bedridden in his house. It depicts the relationship the child develops with the characters appearing at his window during this time.
Sithai Mark Seeyakai Thool is the tale of an artist’s uncompromising rendition of Seetha, a character in the epic Ramayana, for an advertisement. Comical, yet poignant, this story revolves around three wonderfully etched characters, the proud artist Subbiah Achari, his wife Subbamma, and the worldly wise merchant Panicker. Actor Anandsami said: “It is a solo performance and we have done 40 shows since 2010. Last year alone, we performed 10 shows at various places in Chennai.” The two plays will be staged on Friday and Saturday at 6.30 p.m.
This will be followed by ‘Blue Rhythm,’ a live music concert by Kirtana Krishna and Abhishek Prakash at 8 p.m. on Friday. Kirtana says that this event would be different from that of last year. “There are around 12 jazz-inspired soulful songs. This is going to be special for us because half of the songs and music are going to be original compositions,” she said.
The audience can enjoy another music treat on Saturday too. Oxygen - World Music Band from Chennai, formed in 2003 which conceptualises live music and blends world genres with an array of Indian elements, will perform on Saturday at 8 p.m.
The last day in the second weekend of ‘Remembering Veenapani’ festival will have two plays staged at Adishakti. Cheruvannur Diaries- Typewriter Tales , directed by Rajiv Krishnan, will be performed by Paul Mathew from Chennai. The 45-minute play is a narration of the experiences of a typewriter salesman in North Kerala in the ‘80s. It is also a tribute to a grand old machine that became a nerve centre in offices and other institutions.
This festival will end with the famous play 7/7/07 by Faezeh Jalali at 8 p.m. on Sunday. The play is based on the detailed accounts of an Iranian girl Reyhaneh Jabbari, who was imprisoned on July 7, 2007, for defending herself against the man who tried to rape her. Created over six months, the piece uses physical theatre to provide a visceral and engaging retelling of her story.
She was hanged in October 2014 after a seven-year-trial in which she was put through brutal torture. During the last year of her life in prison, Reyhaneh wrote intimate and detailed accounts of her experiences and the unjust trial and verdict. It is an ensemble piece devised by the company, from Reyhaneh’s written accounts.
Faezeh Jalali told The Hindu that the first thing she decided when invited to be part of the ‘Remembering Veenapani’ Festival, was to stage the play 7/7/07. Her association with Veenapani dates back to 2006, when she did a seven-week residential rehearsal in Adishakti. “It was my first residential rehearsal and I never felt this space is foreign. I chose to stage this play because Veenapani festival is the celebration of the spirit of creativity. It took six months of hard work to create this play,” she said.
