The Plays
The 39 Steps | March 1, 2012, 7:30 pm, Kamani Auditorium
Nominated for: Best Play, Best Director, Best Lighting Director, Best Innovative Sound Design, Best Costume Design, Best Supporting Actor (Female), Best Choreographer, Best Ensemble
Produced by: Karthik Kumar, Radikaa Sarath Kumar
Directed by: Bhargav Ramakrishnan
Language: English
Duration: 1hr 40min
The 39 steps is a comic tribute to Alfred Hitchcock and his cult spy-thriller. It’s a take on the genre of larger than life Hollywood heroes of the nineteen thirties and forties. The play is set in the context of four actors trying to recreate the entire movie, scene to scene using nothing more than four trunks, a lamp post, a door and a window frame. They play 140 roles, recreating train chases, car chases, aero plane fights, dark moors, evil mansions and more, with lightning, fast set changes, special effects, and theatrical devices with their tongues firmly in their cheeks.
Director's Note
The show plays to the strengths of the stage. There are no fast cuts or fancy edits in a live performance and hence to try and recreate time and again the movie on stage is all about being quirky and clever. The lightning fast scene changes are a risk, where so many things can go wrong. Hence when everything goes right, it makes the show look like a cross between a play and the circus. It keeps the audience going 'wow', smiling and at the edge of their seats. A cheeky tribute to Hitchcock, his style of film making, spy thrillers and even to theatre and the devices it employs.
Nominees:
Bhargav Ramakrishnan Best Director
Bharagav is an engineer by qualification, but he chose to move into the sphere of arts and arts’ management instead. The executive head of Evam Entertainment Pvt. Ltd., he co-starred in Five Point Someone, which toured nationally across 22 cities. He debuted as a director with The 39 Steps and is currently dabbling with film-making and stand-up comedy.
Renu Abraham Best Supporting Actor(Female)
A young and vibrant individual, who isn't new to stage performances, started off as a dancer and by an act of fate was introduced to theatre and has grown an immense passion for the Art. She has played lead roles in stage adaptations of movies like Chicago, Moulin Rouge and played Cinderella in a modern adaptation of the fairy tale. Her latest attempt is playing three characters in Evam's rendition of The 39 Steps.
Pritham Kumar Best Lighting Design
Pritham Kumar is an independent theatre practitioner whose primary areas of work lie in acting, design, direction and teaching. He started his experiments with theatre as he began his law degree (which he completed) but chose to pursue theatre instead. In the 12 years of his practice, he has worked extensively in Bangalore and has toured nationally and internationally as an actor and lighting director. He is currently exploring scenography as a means to visually enhance his future projects as a designer and director.
Kritika Natarajan Dhiwahar Best Costume Design
A design and direction alumna of the National School of Drama, New Delhi, she has collaborated with various theatre designers and directors of national and international repute as costume/production designer and actor. After a successful four year stint in the Mumbai Television industry as a creative director for non-fiction programming, she is currently exploring the Chennai Theatre scenario with Evam along with conducting Theatre based campus and corporate workshops independently.
Manikandan Thirumurthy Best Choreogrpahy
A choreographer with over 16 years experience in the field of dance. His passion started at a very young age and he now runs Temple Dance Company, one of Chennai’s reputed dance schools. He has worked with Evam for 6 years. He has trained TV and film celebrities and he is a well known specialist in dance for children, where he blends life skills, values and attitude into character building.
Ved Shankar Sugavanam Most Innovative Sound Design
Ved is 22 years young music composer, qualified sound engineer and an aspiring live music artiste. He was a student of Maestro AR Rahman’s KM Music Conservatory and was selected for a music scholarship at Northeaster University at Boston. An accomplished percussionist, a topper in MBA at IIPM, Chennai, he is currently working on 5 Tamil feature films and one dance musical.
Cast & Credit
On Stage
Navin Balachandran
Renu Abraham
TM Karthik Srinivasan
Sunil Vishnu K
Off Stage
Asst. Director: S Aravind, Vignesh Balaji
Stage Manager: Vignesh Balaji
Production/Costume Design: Krithika Natrajan Dhiwahar
Lighting Design and Execution: Pritham Kumar
Music and Sound Design: Ved Shanker Sugavanam
Sound Execution: Lakshmipriyaa C, Pavithra Ramaswamy
Production/Backstage Team: Sudarshan Kaushik, Jolly Joseph, Shravan Karthikeyan, Ashwin Ramesh, Samyutha Balasubramanian, Paul Maththew, Sambashiva S
Choreography: Manikandan Thirumurthy
