Masquerade (theatre group)
Masquerade - the performance group is a Chennai based English theatre group. It is one of the few theatre groups in Chennai that survive without financial sponsorship or funding, backed by public faith and smaller donorships.
Company history
The early years
'Masquerade - The Performance Group' was founded in June 1994 and debuted with its first performance at Sittrarangam (a little thatched-roof performance structure that existed inside the Island Grounds that overlooks the War Memorial), near Anna Square. Founded on the lawns of Max Mueller Bhavan (Chennai), at the Bhavan's Khader Nawaz Khan Road erstwhile premises, the group was a result of six individuals from various walks of society ranging from ballet dancing to accountancy, costume designing to teaching and research and their common passion towards live theatre art. In a city where English theatre happened originally among a few high-in-the-social ladder aficionado purveyors of theatre art then, Masquerade, in the company of a few of its ilk aspiring amateur English theatre youth groups, strove to erase an elitist view of English theatre in Chennai.
With inspirational support from Late Herr Klaus Schindler (then Director) and Herr Franz Xaver Augustin (then Language Dept Head), Masquerade's first theatre performance was an experimental adaptation of Austrian playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Elektra. To further foster Masqerade's theatrical vigour, under their artists support program, Masquerade's Artistic Director was sponsored to an internship at Oldenburg Staatstheater. In its early years during the 1990s, many of Masquerade's productions were German plays performed in English. Besides Hofmannsthal's Elektra (1994), the group had added Duerrenmatt's Romulus the Great (Ides of March 1995 production), Incident at Twilight by the same author (September 1994), A retro trip through modern and contemporary German Drama featuring seminal excerpts from Wedekind's Spring Awakening, Buechner's Leonce and Lena, Brecht's Arturo Ui and Both Strauss's plays (June 1995), Buechner's Leonce and Lena (1997), Guenther Grass's The Plebeians rehearse their Uprising (1998) and The Broken Jug (Kleist) to its German-based repertoire.
The Evolution
Through the 1990s and the early part of the New Millennium, the group had a staggering output of around 50 productions (200+ performances), story performances & performative story readings for children, a vast body of Poetry readings in conjunction with The Culture Cafe - British Council, Chennai as well as collaborations with virtually every single local English and parallel Tamil theatre group. Masquerade's members had then, also exhaustively lent their hands in support to travelling domestic and international repertories in technical as well as backstage capacity. In 2003. Masquerade hosted Curtain Raiser's Kandor (from Malta) featuring the duo of Patrick Vella & Claire Agius, who travelled to India from Edinburgh Fringe and performed in Chennai & Cochin.
The New Millennium
Later in 2004, 10 years after Masquerade's inception, when the group decided to found Chennai's first youth theatre group Landing Stage, Electra [1] was again to be the debut performance. Masquerade has currently completed 19 seasons and close to 80+ productions. The group has branched off into supporting the growth of teen and tween theatre activity in the city, with its Masquerade Youth Theatre (2009) and The Bear & Beanbag Children's Theater (2010).
Masquerade was instrumental in setting up and promoting "Natak" An inter-collegiate theatre festival. The first season of Natak was in 2000, which saw the participants from various city colleges, The following year saw entries from colleges across India. Students were given the platform to design, plan and execute the entire production. Students were provided professional support from the Masquerade team in areas of Light and sound design and execution, as well as with back stage support and planning. A stipend was paid to the teams to minimize the financial burden on the teams. A standard set of lights and sound equipment, paid for by Masquerade, was made available to the teams in designing their shows.
Performances are social and community-oriented.[2] Masquerade introduced "Three @ Twenty", a community theatre initiative to promote new writers in 2006.[3]
Selected Productions
| Year | Title | Author | Language | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Dystopia | adapted from The Twilight Zone | English | |
| 2009 | Charandas Chor (an MYT Production) | Habib Tanvir | English | |
| 2009 | JigSaw | Multiple Authors | English | |
| 2008 | The Truth | Mohan Narayanan | English | |
| 2007 | Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni | Poile Sengupta | English | |
| 2006 | Wood | Gautam Raja | English | |
| Parrots Lies | Andreas Marber | English | ||
| Deep Freeze | Gautam Raja | English | ||
| Pub Crawl | Gautam Raja | English | ||
| Damini the Damager | Gautam Raja | English | ||
| 2005 | A Midsummer Night's Dream | William Shakespeare | English | [4] |
| 2000-01 | Twelfth Night | William Shakespeare | English | |
| 1999 | Medea | Euripides | English | |
| 1998 | The Measures Taken & He Who Said Yes, He Who Said No | Bertolt Brecht | English | |
| 1997 | Leonce and Lena | Georg Buechner | English | |
| 1995 | Romulus the Great | Friedrich Duerrenmatt | English | |
| 1994 | Incident at Twilight | Friedrich Duerrenmatt | English | |
| 1994 | Elektra | Hugo von Hofmannsthal | English | |
References
- ↑ [A Classic Beginning]
- ↑ "Acting and delivery carry the show". The Hindu. 3 August 2001. Retrieved 2009-02-16.
- ↑ "Fresh talent at play". The Hindu. 21 September 2006. Retrieved 2009-02-16.
- ↑ "The Bard and Bollywood". The Hindu. 28 September 2005. Retrieved 2009-02-16.