20-Jan-2016

The New Indian Express | Mad Scientist's Topi Goes on a Hilarious Soul-swapping Spree

This weekend city-based hobbyist theatre group Kalayan promises to make audience laugh with four shows of its Hindi sci-fi production Kayapalat.

 

Scene from a sci-fi comedy performed by a hobbyist group

Written and directed by playwright and retired scientist Mathura Kalauny, the comedy features an inventor as the protagonist. His latest invention – a thinking cap – becomes cause for much confusion, and amusement for viewers.

 

“The cap has a magnetic mechanism that activates the neurons,” says Kalauny, who has penned about 20 other plays. “In Hindi, the dialogues say, when someone puts it on, their aatma goes into the topi and returns to the wearer’s body after the thinking is done. So it speeds up the thinking process.”

 

But when a long-lost friend comes home to visit Dhruv the Inventor, the two try on the caps one after the other, and fall down, unconscious. The cap falls off and their aatmas get switched.

 

Meanwhile, a thief pays a visit to the inventor’s home lab and makes away with the topi.

Other characters include a servant who’s also a poet and another whom Dhruv uses as a guinea pig for all his experiments. A harried wife, a philosophical brother who sees the world through an alcoholic haze and a lovelorn girl-next-door make up the rest of the quirky lot.

The play was written over 25 years ago, and first performed in Chowdaiah Memorial Hall in 1991. “Those were simple times,” says Kalauny – times when a two-and-a-half-hour play wasn’t too long.

Last May, post retirement, the writer and founder of Kalayan decided to revive it, and ‘made it modern’. “The characters are the same,” he says. But it has been shortened to 110 minutes.

 

The sets have also changed a little – the living and lab areas is one space, and are distinguished by lighting. “In Chowdaiah, we had separate areas,” he says. “But in  Jagriti, space doesn’t allow for it.” Four shows were staged at the Whitefield performance venue last November.

Mathura Kalauny

The nine characters are essayed by hobbyist actors part of the loose group of about 300, who have been part of Kalayan’s workshops and scattered across different cities. “Three have been part of previous productions,” he says. “The others are new here, but also have acting experience.”

Kalayan presents Kayalapat, a Hindi science-fiction comedy, written and directed by Mathura Kalauny, at Jagriti on Friday and Saturday at 8 pm and on Sunday at 3 and 6.30 pm.

Cast: Sangeeta Panda, Faria Fatma, Sarbajeet Das, Abhitej Gupta, Vijay Sharma, Nikhil Manohar, Radhika Jain, Minakshi Sharma, Utkarsh Gaharwar, Shivanshu Mishra, Amit Suthar, Saishree and Sakshi Srivastava.

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