I often get lost while thinking about beginning of a post so this time i thought it would be about the confusion itself, hehe.. coming to this post, i went to rangashankara again and this was my fourth play there (or perhaps i should say third only because i wasn't let in there because of being late for the third one; i appreciate their discipline though, atleast there are couple of guys serious about things they do). I've few friends who are not in bangalore but want to know about the plays i see at times so here i go with my interpretation of "Creepers". I prefer going to theaters to movies because everytime i find some message in the play deep inside; the abstractness at which they present their idea is overwhelming. You wonder where it is going until it reaches the end and you suddenly find relation between what all was performed so far. Its a nice experience, let me tell you :)
"Creepers" is a story about a bangalore couple. The guy is one of those netaholic s/w engineer who spends a lot of time on his laptop writing blog notes, checking orkut scraps and emails and wandering the cyberspace for what you could easily guess.. the girl is an art enthusiast as she says in one of the scenes with pride that she has a BA in arts and going for Masters soon. Both are trying to depict a story, a story about "bangalore-the city" that it was and that it is becoming. They have different perceptions about the changes that are happening. The guy likes the changes the IT revolution has brought in but the girl wonders where it is all going, why everything is becoming so complex. She wonders about the change in culture, change in people's attitude and the big crowd that has suddenly grown beyond what the city ever expected to host. The play starts with comedy with the funny arguments between the two but slowly brings the play into its context. For half of the play the writer probably tried to show how consumed we are today in our online life than the offline/real life doing things that probably don't make much sense (checking email even if there are none, checking scraps even if there are none, watching online videos etc instead of spending time with your friends and family and many similar thoughts). In the beginning itself the play questions you "what will happen to your email when you die? expire? ohh well but what about your online presence in orkut/hi5/facebook?" In the second half play shows the changes of life in bangalore through the eyes of this couple as they go through different phases of life. I loved the way the play shows how they have grown up from one stage of life to another (youth to older and older). They don't say much directly but there conversation itself makes you think and feel whats happening. Dialogues are mostly repeating but the body language of the actors on the stage speak what they wanted to convey. Just loved this part of the play. At the end they relate to Madhuvanti and Lavanya story of "Vikram Baitaal" in current context of bangalore and all those who love the city. In one line they tried to say "the city is dead but i live with its bones and ashes because i love it". This is something i've heard time and again from people who have spent time in bangalore say some 5 years ago from now. They just wonder when they visit here now, is this is the same city they once knew. The infrastructure has not been able to keep up with the growth that IT sector brought in here. Perhaps the rate of growth was too fast for the infrastructure growth to catch up with. I'm not a native of bangalore and have spent some significant time of my life in Calcutta and hyderabad but i must say i love bangalore the most. I would end this post with the note that the play probably wanted to leave "The city is dead but i live with its bones and ashes because i love it"
