{"id":3311,"date":"2023-12-14T12:29:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-14T12:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/?page_id=3311"},"modified":"2024-01-05T11:59:57","modified_gmt":"2024-01-05T11:59:57","slug":"the-square-circle-1999","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/the-square-circle-1999\/","title":{"rendered":"The Square Circle 1999"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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THE SQUARE CIRCLE 1999<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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(Leicester Haymarket Theatre)<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I adapted\nmy screenplay to the stage and directed it<\/o:p><\/b><\/span><\/p>

Sita:<\/b>\nParminder Nagra. Lakshman\/Lakshmi: Rahul Bose. Vinny DhiLlon, Nitin Ganatra,\nHarvey Verdi.
<\/span>Producer:<\/b>\nVayu Naidu. Sponsor: British Council, Chennai.<\/span> <\/span><\/b><\/p>

A swift and shocking rape is at the heart\nof this play, written and directed at the Haymarket Studio by the author of the\noriginal screenplay, Timeri N Murari. Sita, a young village girl kidnapped for\nprostitution on her wedding eve, escapes only to be violated as she tries to\njourney home. She is befriended by a travelling actor dressed as a woman, who\ncoaches her in dressing and behaving like a man to get her revenge.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>

Shakespearean\nelements of cross-dressing and the exploration of sexual identity sit easily in\nan Indian context where love has nothing to do with marriage and sex has little\nto do with love. And despite the centrality of the rape, it is a funny and\ntender play in parts.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>

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Bollywood actor\nRahul Bose gives a wry, beautifully arch performance as Laksmi, the would-be\ngreat artist, and Parminder Nagra movingly portrays the abject terror of a\nchild, the growing sensuality of a woman and the absurd posturing of a man.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Sometimes, as dusty day changes to ominous night, you could be watching a timeless Indian folk tale on Kamini Gupta’s spare and evocative set. But 20th century reality is ever-present in the revving of motorbikes and headlights of passing cars, and in the jeans-clad rapist (all the more chilling for the circling, silent hand-springs he performs before the assault).<\/p>

The supporting cast of Vinny Dhillon, Nitin Ganatra and Harvey Virdi create a colourful microcosm of Indian society, further authenticated by Paul Jacob’s original score. The Square Circle; Theatre review Leicester.by Pat Ashworth for The Stage<\/strong>.

Timeri Murari\u2019s tale of gender roles and preconceptions which won acclaim on the big screen is now making its world stage premiere at the Haymarket. It follows the story of Sita, an illiterate Indian villager, who is kidnapped on the eve of her marriage, escapes but is raped trying to find her way home. She is befriended by a transvestite who earns his living as a travelling entertainer and together they make the journey back to Sita\u2019s home \u2013 he dressed as a woman, she as the man for her own safety. What is entertaining for British theatre is undoubtedly a challenging and controversial one for Indian culture, as cross-dressing men, a harsh questioning of gender roles within Indian society and the appalling treatment of woman as submissive objects are not subjects to be dealt with lightly.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Murari manages to create a pacy story which is full of humour and pathos without treating his issues irreverently.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Indian film star Rahul Bose excels as the cross-dressing Lakshmi\/Lakshman, womanly without being effeminate yet always maintaining a hint of maleness, and Parminder Nagra\u2019s Sita blossoms with increasing maturity as she struggles to encompass the masculinity she despises in her quest for revenge on her attacker and a way home. –\u00a0 Lizz Brain, LEICESTER<\/strong> MERCURY.<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I wouldn\u2019t call Leicester a city; it\u2019s a county town with few pretensions. Except it must have more bars than shops.\u00a0 On Friday and Saturdays nights, Leicester\u2019s white youth pack them to the rafters, competing to be drunk and bedded first. The girls are skimpily dressed Barbie dolls and the Barbie men are in their Gap uniforms \u2013 jeans, shirts hanging out, and ugly shoes.\u00a0 For a town with a sixty- percent Asian population, on those nights, there\u2019s not a brown face visible among the sea of white kids.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Surprisingly, Leicester has a major theatre – The Haymarket, a 1970s red brick building perched on top of a shopping mall in the town centre.\u00a0 It is, along with Manchester, Birmingham and others, one of the Big Eight regional theatres.\u00a0 More surprisingly, the Haymarket had commissioned me to write and direct a play with an Indian setting for it\u2019s Asian Theatre initiative, Natak.\u00a0 The play will be a rare original production for The Haymarket and it\u2019s meant to draw the Asian population into the theatre\u2019s fold. I\u2019m not so optimistic; expat Indians are very conservative and the India they want are the masala films, not a controversial play about women. I now believe a play about Friday night drunks would be more socially relevant.<\/p>

My producer, Vayu Naidu, the Artistic Associate of the Haymarket, is a tall elegant woman.\u00a0 Vayu is a force in herself \u2013 a wonderful storyteller, a playwright and an actress.\u00a0 We began with a grand tour. She flung open the doors of the main house \u2013 it was magnificent, a 725 seater with a huge proscenium stage which would be the perfect setting for my play. The doors closed with finality. It wasn\u2019t my stage.\u00a0 The main house reserved for the Haymarket\u2019s major productions; it\u2019s huge musicals, which are their money-spinners. I went up another flight into the studio theatre. It was dark, tiny and the lighting rig pressed down like the brows of a Cro-Magnon. The 120 seats were raked and the first row was on the stage floor. My play, The Square Circle, was a road story set in the huge Indian landscape.\u00a0 This stage had more width than depth \u2013 diamond shaped with blunted edges- and I panicked at the thought of compressing my play and India into such a claustrophobic and eccentric space. All my stage directions would have to be re-written. I\u2019d already had done one re-write when told that the Haymarket could afford only five actors for nine roles. Three of them would be doubling or tripling. Now I\u2019d have to squeeze further. My play had over 20 locations and I would have to use lights, sound effects, and the audience\u2019s imagination, to transport my players across the landscape.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I had wanted Nirmal Pandey, a fine actor, who\u2019d played the male\/female role in the film. But he wasn\u2019t available. My brief was to cast that role in India. There wasn\u2019t a vast choice of stage actors, apart from Nasrudeen Shah and Roshan Seth, both too old for the role.\u00a0 So, I sent the script to Rahul Bose, having seen him in a film, who was also known as a stage actor. He responded in 24 hours, accepting the role.<\/p>

However, the most important role was the girl \u2013 she had to look around 17, play the male at times, evoke huge emotions and be physically agile.\u00a0 I had to cast her and the three others out of London.\u00a0 Where to find them? Spotlight, of course. Spotlight<\/em>\u2019s virtually the size of an encyclopaedia Britannica of actors and actresses. I spend days turning over the glossy photographs, looking for the few Indian faces. I culled out 25, male and female. Their agents sent me their photographs and their credits. All were impressively professional actors.\u00a0 I called them for an audition in June and it was held in a small room at the Drill Hall in London.\u00a0 I had staggered them 15 minutes apart but they turned up at the same time.\u00a0<\/p>

I was mainly looking for my Sita. I heard of a good actor, Parminder Nagra, and was relieved when she did show up for the audition. She was petite, quiet, hidden under layers of baggy clothes and looked right of Sita. She convinced me further by her acting a short scene. Auditions are brutal- in 10 to 15 minutes the actor must convince the director he or she is right for the role. It must be a depressing but necessary part of an actor\u2019s life. It\u2019s equally difficult for the director, sifting through the talented for the right one. The wrong choice can ruin the play. After a long day of seeing actors acting short scenes from the play, I was drained. But I had Parminder, Nitin Ganatra for the male roles and Vinny Dhillion for two female roles. I still needed another actress.\u00a0 Vayu suggested Harvey Virdi but as she couldn\u2019t make the London audition, I arranged to do it in Leicester. She was good and having agreed my cast, their agents told me that none of them would commit to those dates \u2013 just yet. June to October was an aeon away and I\u2019d have to wait until September to get their \u2018yes\u2019 or \u2018no\u2019.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I had to live with that but more important was my set designer. I had my ideas for the set \u2013 a hint of landscape to be more evoked than built. But how could I explain \u2018India\u2019 to an English designer more familiar with a gentle English landscape. The Haymarket suggested Kamini Gupta. Kamini was elusive. I had a dozen numbers for her and finally tracked her down to an answering machine in a Buddhist retreat in Devon. I left the message and waited. She called on the weekend as she\u2019d taken a vow of silence!\u00a0 I saw problems with a silent, retreating designer. I trekked down to Devon on the train for a lunch meeting. A low key, gentle woman met me at the station in an antique-ish MG and took me to her retreat.\u00a0 We walked and talked and I told her what I imagined. Thankfully, she had worked in the Haymarket\u2019s studio before and knew the space. And, as she was half-Indian and had lived in India, knew what I wanted evoked. We agreed to work together \u2013 through the Internet.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I spent the time in India doing a re-write to fit into the studio, blocked the moves, commissioning the music (Paul Jacob, a talented composer in Madras), recording the sound effects and buying costumes and props. This would save the Haymarket a lot of money compared to English costs. I was grateful that both The Hindu and the British Council in China came in with some financial support.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Kamini set up a web site for me to look at and we too\u2019d and fro\u2019d across seas and continents in seconds, through our computers, discussing changes, colours, moods of her drawings. I liked what she had done \u2013 a Banyan tree divided at the trunk with outspread branches and roots upstage, a blue sky and terracotta \u2018earth\u2019.\u00a0 It was simple yet effective enough to evoke an India and the tree was three dimensional instead of on a flat.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 England in September was cool. We had our first production meeting on the 10th<\/sup> and I should\u2019ve guessed we were in problems when the production manager, John Page, confessed there wasn\u2019t a budget. We were a month away from rehearsals and no budget!! What about the set, lighting designer, marketing? Without a budget, the Haymarket hadn\u2019t thought my play through. Also, Vayu, my link to the Haymarket, wasn\u2019t present. She was rehearsing her own play, writing another, producing another.\u00a0 I was facing a table full of strangers. They were the in-house team \u2013 stage manager, painter, lighting, sound, set-builder, costumes. Kamini and I were the outsiders. She unveiled her model and gave her pitch. The Banyan would have to be built outside and as there wasn\u2019t a budget, they couldn\u2019t put down a possible figure. The costume department also didn\u2019t have its budget. I discovered later that costume hadn\u2019t even read the play.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Studio was the poor cousin to the main house.\u00a0 All the resources, financial and technical, were at its command. They were opening Stephen Sondheim\u2019s \u2018Sunday in the Park with George\u2019 and had no time for The Square Circle. And later, when \u2018Sunday\u2019 closed, they\u2019d be gearing up for \u2018Oliver\u2019.\u00a0 I\u2019d be lucky for any crumbs.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The one consolation was I had my Sita, Parminder. She had finally agreed.\u00a0 I had seen her in a play and she had enormous stage presence. We meet over a lunch and she admitted her role was intimidating, emotionally and physically. She would be on stage from start to end \u2013 dancing, kidnapped, raped, changed to a male, kills her rapist and is nearly killed by her own father.\u00a0 She told me after her first reading she just stared blankly at the wall for two hours worrying what she\u2019d let herself in for.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The other male actor had to play three roles \u2013 father, kidnapper, rapist- apart from the father; the other two were unsympathetic. I wanted Nitin from the moment he\u2019d walked into the audition but again I couldn\u2019t get the commitment before we began rehearsals. I spent days auditioning and meeting other actors, none of them quite right. A week before rehearsal date, Nitin agreed.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 By this time, having moved to Leicester and spending days in the Haymarket I began to meet others who fell like skeletons out of the closet. Kathleen Hamilton, a slim, pretty woman was the Executive Director, Kim the finance director, Paul Kerrystone the Artistic Director.\u00a0\u00a0 My own crew was Farlie Goodwin, my ASM who\u2019d keep the book, Karen on costumes and Andrea my stage manager. Through Kamini, I had found a very good lighting designer in Doug Khurt. Doug really liked the play and we huddled together discussing how we\u2019d have to recreate roads, dhabbas, temples, forests, rivers, cars, motorbikes and houses through the magic of lighting, and my sound effects.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I had a three week rehearsal; schedule \u2013 never enough time- 10 to 6 5 days a week and a half day Saturday. The Haymarket\u2019s rehearsal rooms were a 5-minute walk away in Short street. We had the top floor, full of skylights and huge windows. Fine during summers but in autumn with the sudden cold spells, we all nearly froze. In the main rehearsal hall downstairs, they were rehearsing the children for \u2018Oliver\u2019.<\/p>

Rehearsals are a time of intense meditation, intense intimacy. The world was excluded, wars, famines, floods, elections were distant whispers from another world.\u00a0 From ten to six we lived together, ate together, talked of little else but the play. Working with such professional actors as Parminder, Nitin, Vinny and Harvey was a challenge, a learning experience and a delight.\u00a0 Why do this? How to say that? Why, who, what, where? Questions that constantly need answering, problems that need to be solved instantly and the right answers too.\u00a0 Part of the problem was also that none of them had ever been to India.<\/p>

Actions that work on paper don\u2019t work on stage, clever lines fall flat or the actor finds them difficult to say and had to be re-written.\u00a0 It\u2019s a complex play of sexual identities, love, revenge, humour, seduction, and tragedy.\u00a0 It has to be played right, paced right.\u00a0 I have a fear of boring my audience, even as I have been often bored in the theatre.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As there are two violent scenes in the play \u2013 a rape and a revenge- I used a fight choreographer. Rennie is a tall, calm English actor specialising in theatre fights and he choreographs, step by step, in slow motion at first, a quite graphic and horrific rape scene. I have to admire Parminder; she does it but twice breaks down in tears after the emotional trauma of the make-believe rape. Nitin the rapist is also disturbed and upset by it. Thankfully, Parminder and Nitin are close, almost brother and sister, and she accepts his brutal mauling.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I get a budget finally, two weeks before opening night. There\u2019s not enough for the full Banyan tree so Kamini has to lope off the branches and make do with hanging vines. Doug is having problems getting all our lights. Rahul is having problems with his Indian wig and costume can\u2019t afford a new one. I\u2019d like \u2018blood\u2019 for the revenge scene, but as that\u2019s not in the budget either, Doug and I plan to use lighting effects to evoke that. Despite these minor setbacks, the experience of staging the play is exhilarating.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On Monday of the last week, rehearsal is \u2018tech week\u2019.\u00a0 The Banyan is moved onto the stage, the floor painted and Doug and I focus the lights. We begin our tech rehearsals with my actors and work for three gruelling days. We start at ten and finish at ten. Doug has fed a hundred lighting cues into the computer, along with my music and sound effects. A full dress with tech takes place Wednesday evening and another one on Thursday morning and again at two in the afternoon. In costumes, with all the effects and on the stage, the play comes to vibrant life. I couldn\u2019t have asked for a better, hard working talented cast.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The play opened on Thursday November 11th<\/sup> at 7.45 in the evening. The audience is sparse but important \u2013 the Haymarket staff who\u2019ve witnessed a hundred plays. I\u2019m especially pleased when Kathleen and Paul say they love it -\u2013and they\u2019re not being polite.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Press night, five days after we open, is the night and we all dress up, the cast is excited. But it turns into a damp squib. Apart from the local press, the Haymarket can\u2019t entice the national critics up to Leicester. The critics are notorious for never leaving London, if they can help it.\u00a0 All the regional theatres complain about their indifference. The Leicester Mercury does give the play a good review. But even without the review the box office, through word of mouth, is picking up.\u00a0 It rises to 60 a night and on the last two days we have full houses. As I expected, 85 per cent of my audience was English. The Leicester Asians weren\u2019t about to embrace theatre.<\/p>

The play closed on Saturday 27th<\/sup> November, the performances gone forever, as theatre is so ephemeral. It could be transferred but that exciting experience will never be the same again for me.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE SQUARE CIRCLE 1999 (Leicester Haymarket Theatre) Writer\/Director I adapted my screenplay to the stage and directed it Sita: Parminder Nagra. Lakshman\/Lakshmi: Rahul Bose. Vinny DhiLlon, Nitin Ganatra, Harvey Verdi.Producer: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3311","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3311"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5183,"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3311\/revisions\/5183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}