Prutha Goa

When the Day Was Young is The Mustard Seed Company’s latest serving of amateur English theatre, much appreciated by those who feel the dearth of English language plays in Goa. The play that was performed at Gomant Vidya Niketan, Margao, and in collaboration with Sunaparanta, Goa Centre for the Arts, Panjim, at the Sunaparanta amphitheatre, dealt with the age-old problem of seniors being relegated to homes for the elderly. The playwright, Isabel Vas, delves into the deeper concerns that affect the golden years with a touch of magical realism. The story begins with Bonita, an old woman, having a conversation with herself, and attempting to cheer herself up with some entertainment to keep her sanity. There is a supernatural being she communicates with who is not revealed to the audience. Sushila, the caretaker, or supervisor, of the old age home, is extremely ‘by the book’ and brooks no rule to be broken. A future political aspirant, Sushila is an uptight personality who is governed enti

The 7th and 10th of October 2016 saw a production of George Orwell’s Animal Farm staged by The Mustard Seed Art Company. Audiences who caught the play adapted from the famous novel at Gomant Vidya Niketan (Margao) and Kala Academy (Panaji), were fortunate indeed. Those acquainted with Orwell’s novel, written in 1945, will certainly make connections with its allegory which retells the political scenario of the time, with communism hailed as the answer to society’s problems. The novel mirrors the events that took place from before the Russian Revolution of 1917 to the rule of Stalin. The satirical novel, by his own admission, is Orwell’s first deliberate attempt to use literature towards a political revelation. The play produced by The Mustard Seed Art Company was adapted for theatre from the novel by Peter Hall. The play opens with old Major, the boar, fomenting the spirit of rebellion among the farm animals with his tirade against humans. After old Major dies, the younger pigs Napoleo

Goa has a new reason to be proud, as the Hauns Sangeet Natya Mandal, Ponda, has pioneered the staging of an adaptation of Raymond Smullyan’s dialogue between man and his Maker on the dilemma of possessing free will. The play is called Is God a Taoist? and is based on Smullyan’s book The Tao is Silent . Raymond Smullyan has had a singular career course that has ranged from stage magic to authoring books on Taoism. The nonagenarian polymath is acclaimed for his manifold talents as concert pianist, logician, Taoist philosopher, mathematician, puzzle maker, and magician. In his book, published in 1977, Smullyan gave an understanding of Eastern philosophy to the Western world for the first time. It is Smullyan’s surmise that the Taoist is one who enjoys what he has rather than looking for that which is not in his grasp. The dialogue begins with man urging God to take away his free will, which he sees as the bane of his existence and the reason for his sinfulness. Through a pattern of reaso

Many a times we are held back from achieving our dreams because we permit our fears to overcome us. We stew in the hell our minds fabricate and sabotage our own ambitions. All Those Pipe Dreams is a reminder that surmounting the perceived obstacles in our path can be achieved by confronting our fears. The play opens with typical banter between husband and wife, with Caitu Soares playfully teasing his wife about her obsession with make-up and ‘high fashion’, while Veena harangues him to get the pipes fixed so that water will flow into the sink again. The scene seems innocuous enough to belie the prospect of anything untoward occurring or having occurred. We learn that Caitu has purchased this huge mansion in the hope of starting a restaurant but does not seem to have made a go of his dreams as yet. Sonali is Caitu and Veena’s daughter, we learn, who has not visited home in a long time and is designing furniture in Chennai. Both parents yearn for their absent child. Meanwhile Caitu sets

There have been claims that Konkani (Devnagri) and Marathi theatre seems to lose out to the tiatr every time. Whether it is negligent advertising or a bias in favour of the Romi script tiatrs is not absolutely clear. Calculating the worth of a play on the basis of language, script or dialect seems rather unfair to the art form as a whole and the participants: actors, directors, producers, set designers, etcetera. Each has its own virtues to excite artistic sensibilities. Prayog Saanj is an initiative of the Directorate of Art and Culture, Goa, to provide a suitable platform for experimental theatre without any discrimination on the grounds of language. The last Saturday of every month sees the unveiling of original plays by talented playwrights which are presented at the Multipurpose Hall of Sanskruti Bhavan, Panaji. The last Saturday of June saw the Konkani drama Chakra , a one act play written and directed by Gopal Bhimber. The cast included Ugam Zambaulikar, Saurabh Karkhanis, Preet

Goa has talent bursting at its seams, and this is no secret. Unfortunately, in the sphere of drama enough of it has not been tapped. The reason for this is not a dearth of avenues, but rather the unwillingness of parents to permit their children to explore this area as a career option has been a stumbling block. In 1987, Kala Academy decided to start the School of Drama, initially called the Theatre Art Faculty, under the direction of S B Josalkar. The motivation was to secure talent in theatre and mould it according to its capabilities. The Director of the School of Drama, Mrs Padmashree Josalkar tells us, ‘Kala Academy invited my husband and me to come here. Before that we were in Delhi. My husband was in the Repertory Company of the National School of Drama and I was teaching at the Sardar Patel Vidyalaya as a drama teacher.’ S B Josalkar, a Goan by birth, had received a scholarship to the National School of Drama. It is no surprise then that he returned to his home state to give Go

‘One of my father’s and my mother’s greatest gifts to me was our home in Goa,’ said Sanjna Kapoor at the theatre seminar organised by the Hauns Sangeet Natya Mandal, Ponda and the Directorate of Art and Culture, Goa. Recalling childhood experiences of coming here since the age of three, she said, ‘My first earning…25 paisa…was from selling fish in Mapusa market.’ The progeny of the illustrious Kapoor family was happy to be in Goa to talk about why theatre matters to her. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanjana_Kapoor#/media/File:SanjnaKapoor.jpg As time goes by and society is transformed, the reasons for the existence and significance of theatre change too. As she addressed an audience mainly composed of teachers, Sanjna expressed her dream of finding theatres in every neighbourhood and seeing teachers upheld as heroes alongside film stars and cricketers. This would truly be a result of our culture that we can take pride in. Geoffery Kendal, Sanjna’s grandfather, came to India during Wor

The Mustard Seed Art Company draws in crowds to its dramatic presentations merely by the mention of the name of the production company. As amateur theatre, it vies for a billing similar to that of one of the better theatre production companies, thanks to the skilled writing of playwright and director Isabel Santa Rita Vás. The latest play, Whistling in the Light , revolved around thought provoking themes. The year is 2030 and the world has undergone a monumental change since 2020, the commencement of the Age of Light. Most countries, with the exception of France and Brazil, have shielded themselves from the natural light and are illuminated through artificial lights called LEDX. The programme is called Fiat Lux and the State dictates times when you can venture outside and the nature of the light you will experience. For all intents and purposes, it seems like a utopian world, as the move was brought about in an attempt to protect the people from the ever expanding hole in the ozone lay

It was right from childhood that Vaishali Lall, a visualiser cum graphic designer at International Centre Goa, Miramar, had an affinity towards doodling mandalas. At the time, she had no idea what they were called or what they might stand for. ‘The process was soothing and beautiful,’ she says. Mandala is the Sanskrit word for ‘disc’, ‘circle’, or ‘completion’, where a design is created within a circle. It goes back to ancient times when yantras were depicted on mandalas. Yantras are mantras, or chants, invoking the name of a particular deity. To create a yantra mandala, one had to study mythological texts for a number of years and detach oneself from the allurements of the world to work in perfect silence. The mandala has been found to be an essential part of major religions. Western history shows us churches with representations on stained glass windows; there is the Celtic cross with the circle in the centre; and there would be a maze like structure, where the centre contains an ene

Twenty years of celebrating World Goa Day are nearing successful completion, and a global cartoon contest is being organised with the theme of ‘Goa’. This event is open to the Goan diaspora irrespective of age and gender. Your cartoons can be uploaded to the World Goa Day Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/WGD-2019-Cartoon-Contest-296427724639421/  until the 30th of June 2019. World Goa Day was first celebrated on the 20th of August 2000 with a special emphasis on the date as it is when Konkani, Goa’s native language, was included in the 8th schedule of the Indian Constitution by the Indian Parliament in 1992. The date varies in countries around the world for the reason of practicality but is always celebrated around the original date. The cartoon contest for 2019’s World Goa Day is of particular significance because it sees a collaboration between the founder of World Goa Day Rene Barreto and Goa’s own socio-political cartoonist Smitha Bhandare Kamat. The focus of this competitio