The ensemble prepares

The shows at Jagriti start at 8pm each night and the actors go down to the theatre at 4 every day. First a line through, where people pair off and run their scenes. Paul alone has a deluge of monologues that he diligently goes through in his favourite chair.
After this a group warm up happens. The seven member cast form a circle and each day a different person leads the body warm up.

Today it was Paul's turn and the cyclical movement of the suryanamaskaram done in a circle was mesmerising to watch.
Next up is the voice warm up. Aparna lead the group in a new one that doubled up as a group massage.

Each actor by turn gets to lie in the centre while the other six give a synchronised massage while synchronising breath hand movement and voice. The massage looked amazing! I seriously considered abandoning the sketchbook to sneak in there somehow.

Jagriti Season 2014

For a second year in a row, Perch is at Jagriti's season. The second of five plays, we're here for two weeks. One week has flown past in all the frenzy and anxiousness of set up, lights, tech and getting an old play revived with some new actors in the cast. But with 4 shows and a rest day now under our belt, I finally pulled out my sketchbook.

One of the nicest things about performing at Jagriti is the studio apartment where the troupe stays. Its a large two storey apartment on the 7th and 8th floor with all the balconies overlooking the theatre. Today's show starts in 3 hours and the luxury of not having to commute but just take the lift down is indescribably amazing. Anyone who has ever been in Bangalore traffic will know what I mean.

6 more days and 7 more shows to go. 

A typical week at Rangashankara

Across the road from Rangashankara is Adithya, a typical Bangalore fast food joint. It opens early for breakfast and dishes out simple and delectable food all day through. Real value for money, there's regular stuff like idli and dosai, heavenly benne masala and some Karnataka specialities like neer dosai, open dosai and ragi dosai for breakfast. Full and hearty meals for lunch and in the evening when we're all feeling peckish before the show there is Paddu (kuzhi paniyarams), akki roti and kottakadubu.
The coffee at Adithya is pretty good stuff too and needless to say we spent a large part of our extra time (and money) there.
Another regular fixture in our week in RS was a sleeping Vedanth.

Okay, granted, that does not look like him but Vedanth had just become a father 10 days earlier and little Ameya was keeping him up on night duty so literally whenever he could get a few extra minutes he would use it well. The first half of the week was less hectic, we had single shows of Giraffe every evening but over the weekend there were shows of Jujubee in the morning and two shows of Giraffe after lunch. 

Sachin and Vedanth were the musicians for Jujubee and the first show on Friday morning, that had over 250 children in the audience was dedicated to little Ameya.

The Giraffe moves into Rangashankara

One of the biggest changes to the play in this run of shows was a scene inserted into the middle of the prawn factory. That had to be rehearsed and blocked before the first show on the 22nd. It came out really well and I won't say more - do catch the show whenever you next can and see for yourself.

We did a total of 8 shows from tuesday to Sunday and every morning we would assemble for Rajiv's feedback session. The backdrop for this was invariably the same - the set in the configuration of the last scene from the previous show with Rajiv taking centre stage and enthralling us with the most "outstanding moments"  from the previous day.

John and I usually toss a coin at the start of a run, to decide who lights the first show. Frome there on we alternate shows. This had become a sort of ritual that the group looked forward to as we would fight about it and make it a best of 3 tosses, and then a best of 5 and finally a best of 7. But this time, much to everyones' disappointment we had made our decision on the train!

So I got to sketch Muddanna's light booth on the eve of the first show while J had to prepare.

Touring with Perch

After a quiet 1st half of 2014, these last few weeks have been a lot of travelling and all of it with Perch. There's still more to come in the next few months and so I decided to dedicate a sketchbook/journal just for my travels with Perch. And I'm already half-way through the book!

John and I travelled by the Shatabdi to reach the rest of the cast who were already in Bangalore a few days earlier rehearsing for "How to Skin a Giraffe".

We reached in time for lunch. The cast were rehearsing at Play Practice, a new space near Bangalore university and we were looking forward to catch a run-through to brush up on our lighting cues but when we reached we found them like this :)

Just kidding. That was a short nap after lunch.... as always. But we did catch the run through and there were several small changes and edits to the play making it crisper and helping with the flow of the narrative.

The next morning we would move into Rangashankara for tech and more rehearsal.... sketches of that to follow in the next post.

One hell of a Bangalore Weekend

I must have been to Bangalore a gazillion times but last weekend, for the first time I went with a group of close friends with no agenda - no specific family or friends to meet, no function to attend and no play to stage. All my friends had done this before, it was a first only for me so when we started saturday morning off with breakfast at Koshy's they all nearly fell out of their chairs when I said I had never been there before. It was decided then (though actually it was probably the agenda anyway) that we should spend the entire weekend visiting as many such cool hang-out places - pubs, restaurants, breakfast joints etc etc and we covered eleven over two days!!

I initially had grand hopes and plans of sketching in each place, but the second place where we went to was Hard Rock cafe and because I took a while painting there all the others were forced to buy a second round of drinks and there was much Tsk-tsking and genial pulling of my leg all around so I desisted from then on. The waiter at hard rock who waited at our table was a Sandeep who was a happy chirpy chap. If you asked him to turn up the music volume he would do so and then dance all the way down the aisles between all the tables and he was most intrigued by my sketch and then my little painting kit. Soon a bunch of waiters came and huddled around our table and as soon as the sketch was done (the paint was still wet) they asked to see my sketchbook and gave me many smiles. Altogether a happy place.

But our schedule was ambitious, we had to move on; I won't bore you with a list but we covered a lot of area and Tarun, Uk and John are planning to get a whole lot of bragging mileage out of last weekend. On Sunday we had a superb breakfast at this place in Indira Nagar called Daddy's Deli. It's a Parsi joint and the Akuri and different side orders and waffles were yummy. Big thank you to Sidey for not just putting us up at his place but for taking us to this scrumptious breakfast. From there we moved to a new place called Toit that everyone we bumped into was talking about and when we got there we realised why.

Its really beautifully done up. The resto-bar occupies four levels with staircases and mezzanines and bridges and double heights all within three stepping up pitched roof volumes. I decided long ago not to blog any photographs here and my decision still stands so I'm afraid all I can show you is one sketch but this was the top-most level where we sat in these deep-set divans at low tables. This level opens out into a terrace garden but the best part is the roof. You know the sky-light tile in the mangalore tile system? Well the entire roof here has only the slylight tiles so it forms a lovely waffled light-and-shade pitch roof and in the splendid Bangalore weather that light filtering down as we sat there was just amazing.

Disclaimer to all Bangalore relatives who read this blog: really sorry I didn't call you but it was a group pact, none of us were to call our relatives this weekend. But hope to see you in October :D