JOIN USTheatre always finds itself innovative themes and formats to work with, a fact that is even more apparent with the latest event to hit the City – ‘Zip Zap Pow! Flash Theatre’, the annual all women’s one-minute theatre festival presented by The Tortilla Entertainment Company.
During the event, over 40 women from Bangalore and Chennai will take the stage to showcase 55 pieces showcasing a gamut of human emotions, be it sorrow or joy, anger or delight. The scripts for the same have either been written by themselves or will be a rendition of another’s work. Explaining the format, Anita Mithra, who has conceptualised the event, says, “A couple of MCs will take the audience through the 55 plays. We have divided them into sections and between each one, there will be audience games and activities to keep them involved and avoid them from getting tired watching so many plays. The idea is to make people savour the viewing experience and add to the recall value because each play is unique.”
She explains that these theatre competitions can work either by giving participants a common theme to work with or let them decide it themselves. However, she chose not to keep one as it would be boring for both the performers and audience. So how does Anita, who also runs the 10-minute format ‘Short and Sweet’ festival, expect the Bangalore response to be? “Bangalore never disappoints. Getting 55 entries for the first edition including an active participation from Chennai has been encouraging.
Anything being done for the first time works for me and this is a new property to highlight women because in theatre, the strong women actors are either too busy or too hard to find. This will hopefully give them the voice they deserve,” notes Anita. The festival will be held at Opus, BFlat, Brewsky, Sanctum and The Humming Tree on June 27, 28, 29 and July 3 and 6 respectively. Each participant will have to perform at each of the five shows and the cumulative scores by the judges will find the top 20 women, who will compete in August with their male counterparts, to be selected in the all men’s round in late July. For details, call 9986884372.