Bhopal: Welcome to the tea party!

Bhopal: A non-verbal ‘Under Construction,’ play was staged by DAVAI Group Israel at Ravindra Bhawan on Thursday- the ninth day of 15-day the 8th Theatre Olympics.  The one-hour-ten-minute play is saga of three strange men who wake up in the morning and slowly head in one direction – towards the kettle – the magic key for the new day. They press the button and wait, cups in their hands. But the world is unpredictable, and nothing can be taken for granted. Just when the tea is about to be poured, all phones and gadgets start to ring at once. Then a huge cockroach jumps out of the kettle.

Then it turns out that there was no water in the kettle to start with, and a trip from the bathroom can be quite complicated if one follows the GPS… Once the water is in the kettle, men start to boil instead of the kettle; pipes burst, flat fills up with smoke, mosquitos attack… And the kettle seems to be dead. But these gentlemen want to have tea, and they will have it! In the pursuit of their modest desire, the heroes of the play gradually destroy their apartment, and finally discover that the kettle was unplugged! Happy end follows and everybody is welcome to the tea party.

“The show was written and directed through the collective work of DAVAI group. Our genre is physical theatre, or non-verbal comedy. In our shows, it is important for us to tell a simple story -like this one. Three lonely men, each one with his bizarre character, wake up in the morning and want to have a cup of tea, and they have to go through an entire odyssey to get it. Using such a minimal plot helps our concentration during the show’s creation, and provides a steady base for the flight of our imagination,” said Losha Gavbielon , an actor of the play.

“The atmosphere of the show is reminiscence of our Soviet childhood. Three of us were born in the former USSR and moved to Israel when we were teenagers. Throughout these years, we have preserved a sense of belonging to another culture, and we still feel “aliens” in our country of residence. In this show we invite the audience to join our “alien” capsule, get carried away in our daydreams and laugh together with us at the absurdity of our life,” he added.

Another Bengali play ‘Code Red’ was staged at Bharat Bhawan. Written and director by Dr.IndudipaSinha, the two-hours-ten-minutes play presented by Project Prometheus. The whole story of the play runs parallel to the journey of humankind and their ever-lasting quest for leadership as depicted by Rabindranath Tagore in Sishutirtha.