Chennai Based Theatre Group Perch Comes to Mumbai...Watch Delightful Staged Adaptations of Basheer's Stories...
December 11, 2009 6:06:25 PM IST MTG editorial
About Perch, Chennai
Perch is an active theatre group based in Chennai gaining in recognition in the last two years. The idea of Perch came into being in 2006 when it organised a fortnight long festival called 'Angloscapes' that focused on the Anglo-Indian community and included a play, a food festival, film screenings, a photo exhibition and a music concert. Perch was formally registered as a society in 2008. It organised an ambitious three week long festival called 'Under the Mangosteen Tree' to commemorate the centenary year of the great Malayalam writer Vaikom Muhammad Basheer in January 2008. Since then, parts of the festival and the two plays Moonshine and Skytoffee and Sangathi Arinhya! (have you heard!) that were part of it have travelled to Rangashankara, Bangalore, Ninasam, Heggodu, the Basheer festival organised by Mathrubhumi in Kozhikode and National Theatre Festivals in N. Delhi and Trivandrum.
About Director Rajiv Krishnan
Rajiv Krishnan is a theatre director and actor based in Chennai. He started his foray into theatre with the contemporary Tamil theatre group Magic Lantern in 1991 as an actor. A defining role was that of Alwarkadiyan Nambi in Magic Lantern's production of Kalki's magnum opus 'Ponniyin Selvan' in 1999 (In Tamil). His first play as a director was the comic satire "Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Dario Fo)' in 2000. In 2004, he formed his own group, Moonoverstillwater productions. In 2007 he organised a fortnight long festival called 'Angloscapes' focused on the Anglo- Indian community for which he co-adapted and directed a play inspired by Tennessee Williams 'Glass Menagerie' in English., set in an Anglo-Indian family in Perambur, Madras, immediately post-independence. It was with this festival that the theatre collective Perch informally came into being. Perch commemorated Basheer's Centenary in 2008 with a festival called 'Under the Mangosteen Tree'. Since then it's plays based on Basheer's short stories have been travelling widely.