This Sunday, a team of newly trained theatre enthusiasts will take to the stage to present two plays — Hindi one-act comic play Bahut Bada Sawal written by Mohan Rakesh and the Telugu play Evvaniche Janinchu set in a rural backdrop, written by Divakar Babu. Both the plays of 50-minute duration each will mark the culmination of a two-month long theatre workshop conducted by Samahaara theatre group.

At the helm of this workshop is theatre director and acting trainer Pejjai Nagaraju. During the workshop in which he trained enthusiasts in acting, theatre production and stage craft, he had observed that some of them were comfortable speaking in Hindi but were not conversant in Telugu while it was the other way around for a few others. “So I chose a Hindi as well as a Telugu play that would give everyone in the team a chance to present their work,” says Nagaraju.

Many of the participants, as in the case of Samahaara’s previous workshops, informs Nagaraju, are employees of IT firms and participate in the workshop driven by the urge to do something creative. “Some of them are truly keen on theatre, and a few others look at it as a stepping stone to cinema. In fact, some of the actors trained by Samahaara are in the Telugu film industry, but until one makes it big, it’s a tough call to survive only on theatre and small film acting assignments,” says Nagaraju.

The cast rehearsing for Bahut Bada Sawaal  

Talking about his choice of the plays, Nagaraju states that both Bahut Bada Sawal and Evvaniche Janinchu are relevant in contemporary scenario. Bahut Bada Sawal is a satire that looks at the seemingly never-ending circle of conducting meetings and discussions for clarifications and proposals, which often lead nowhere. One such meeting is in focus and the lack of interest and seriousness among the participants triggers a chain of comic exchanges. This one-act play, Nagaraju hopes, will entertain the audience with its witty lines.

Divakar Babu’s Telugu play Evvaniche Janinchu, on the other hand, takes a hard look at how superstitions are driven in the name of religion in a rural set-up where simple folk who look up to higher forces get exploited by cunning people. “This play is dialogue-heavy and the actors speak a North Andhra dialect with a Godavari slant. The actors trained to fine-tune their diction and show their prowess. This is a play where the actors get ample time on stage and can make an impact,” says Nagaraju, who adds that the play was written nearly 40 years ago, and it holds relevance today, “We still have situations where we deal with superstitions and it’s the poor that bears the brunt, since conducting rituals involve money.”

Evvaniche Janinchu is pitched a social satire and emphasises on the importance of social revolution, and questions the blind belief system.

(Bahut Bada Sawal and Evvaniche Janinchu, directed by Pejjai Nagaraju and produced by Rathna Sekhar Reddy, will be staged at Phoenix Arena, Madhapur, Hyderabad, February 9; 8 p.m. Tickets at the venue)