Written & Directed – Arun Kuckreja /Performed – Sohaila Kapoor
The author/director Arun Kuckreja has written a book on “Rati”, the Goddess of Love. Sohaila Kapoor read excerpts at the Amphitheatre of Habitat at 7 pm on 16 November, 2012.
The program started with a film on the “costume” designed by Arun Kuckreja. The costume happened to be a terribly long and inconvenient white, powerloom, artificial silk cloth that was used as a saree with a train (like in an English wedding dress – an overdose of the wedding scene in “Sound of Music”).
The film was sheer torture. In the film, Sohaila Kapoor seemed to walk up and down the stairs trying her best to not to trip on the saree’s floor sweeping pallav. This went on for atleast 15 minutes – there was nothing in the saree that could captivate an audience’s attention span for full 60 seconds. Moreover, the editing/image mixing/ sound mixing were shoddy and amateur.
Then came the narrative which was long and boring. The script leant on the crutch made of borrowed Hindi film songs. So much for creative expression! Sohaila Kapoor’s stylish reading notwithstanding, the dull and repetitive writing was beyond salvation. Additionally, one wonders if the film songs were procured appropriately from the copyright holders.
One felt like tearing one’s hair / choking on the tongue and commiting harakiri while watching the performance. I do not want to die yet. So, will steer clear of Arun Kuckreja’s work in the future.
The rendition was severely flawed at muliple levels.
Awesome is a word for Arun Kuckreja’s cine-stage experiment
RATI the feminist soliloquy premiered at The India Habitat Center on 16th
November 2012. Not only the production exhibited immense hard work undergone in
research of choosing film excerpts from the annals of Indian cinema since 1930s
to match with the powerful script but skilful light design by R.K.Dhingra took
ones breath away. No one was left out Satyajit Ray, V.Shantaram, Raj Kapoor,
Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy every important celluloid work of the masters was successfully
blended in the production.