"The first duty of a story teller is to tell a story..."

All the seeds of creativity were implanted in him from an early age and it was writing that became his first love...

The Pillowman is about a writer in a totalitarian state named Katurian K Katurian who is arrested with his 400 odd short stories confistcated. He can’t for the life of him see the connection between the arrest and his stories.

Katurian is played by Shyju Varkey. Shyju currently works at Radio One in Bangalore. He got back into active theatre in 2006, after a decade-long hiatus, with the Cause Foundation's 'Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat'. Since then, he has been a part of 'All Shook Up', 'Breaking up is hard to do', 'Grease', and more recently, the rip roaring 'Spamalot'. He has also been a part of Poile Sengupta's 'Samara's Song' as well as Tortilla's 'Together in the City'.

He maintains that more than being on stage, it is the stimulating environment of everything that goes behind the scenes that excites him, keeping his mind off from a sometimes-stressful media job.

This is his first play with the Renegade Arts and Theatre Society.

The Play The Pillowman will be held at Alliance Française on the 20^th, 21^st and 22^nd of April.

Tickets are available at all Barista outlets in Bangalore and Cafe De Liberte at the venue. Also available online at www.buzzintown.com, www.indianstage.in and www.zomato.com

The Poster

The Play The Pillowman will be held at Alliance Française on the 20^th, 21^st and 22^nd of April.

Tickets are available at all Barista outlets in Bangalore and Cafe De Liberte at the venue. Also available online at www.buzzintown.com, www.indianstage.in and www.zomato.com

Add us on Facebook for regular updates about the play:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Renegade-Arts-and-Theatre-Society/103301396464863

Ariel: Played by Naomi Menon

Ariel: A brutal and violent detective who is against anyone who harms children because of abuse during her own childhood.

In this production of The Pillowman, we’re doing things differently. Ariel is a character written to be played by a man; however, there isn’t a doubt that Naomi Menon fits the character perfectly!

Naomi is currently doing her masters in Christ University in Bangalore. She has been acting in theatre since she was eight. She has been a part of many plays since then. Naomi has been a member of the Renegade Arts and Theatre Society since its initiation in 2006. Since then she has been a part of several productions with the group including Kamala (2006), Unsuni (2007) and Bang Bang you're Dead! (2008).

  

In 2011, Naomi, along with the other group members came together with the idea to produce another play, they had several options and The Pillowman won the vote! This play really goes beyond anything RATS has done in the past. However, we are still doing the play for a good cause, like we always have. We are supporting a non-profit organisation called Stree Jagruti Samiti, which is a woman’s rights organisation.

  

In addition to being a part of the cast, Naomi is also incharge of sponsorship. In the interview below she talks about theatre, her character andthe sponsorship process.

  

The play The Pillowman will be held at Alliance Francaise on the 20^th, 21^st and 22^nd April. Tickets will be available shortly.

Interview with Geeta Menon

Stree Jagruti Samiti, and the Renegade Arts and Theatre Society first came together for the production of the play Kamala in 2006. Kamala, a plab by Vijay Tendulkar, is a naturalistic play based on the trafficking of women and the response of society to this issue. Funds raised by the play were used to support Stree Jagruti Samiti.

Geeta Menon is one of the founding members of the Stree Jagruti Samiti, an organization working for the rights of the unorganized sector. They strive to bring in labour rights like fair wages, dignified treatment, paid vacation, medical, social security benefits for domestic workers.

The Renegade Arts and Theatre Society is again partnering with Stree Jagruti Samiti for the production of The Pillowman. The funds generated from the production of The Pillowman, will be forwarded to the organisation. They will be concentrated on two women suffering from cancer who are unable to meet the financial demands of their illness.

In this video, Geeta Menon talks about her organization, her association with the Renegade Arts and Theatre Society and the great need for respect in our community.

The Little Jesus

Thought to be the second coming of Jesus Christ, the Little Jesus Girl could be one of the most controversial characters to be seen on a theatre stage. Playing this character cannot be an easy task. Yet, Minal Sukumar, one of our youngest actresses, seems to be fearlessly taking on the challenge.

Minal plays two characters from the stories written by Katurian, the protaginist of the play. The first one is The Little Jesus and the second is the Little Green Pig. Both the stories are on extreme ends of the narrative divide and are crucial elements leading up to the finale of the play. The story,The little Jesus is about a little girl who believes she is the second coming of Jesus Christ and who is ill-treated by her foster parents for this reason.

This story may be interpreted in several different ways; the theme of child abuse and the right to free speech are prominent in the play,and are magnified in the dramatic representation of The Little Jesus.

In the video below, Minal talks about how it feels to be the youngest member of the group, what her role is about and the complexities of it. Director, Siddarth Selvaraj, introduces Minal. 

The Pillowman - The Director's take

A director is primarily a visionary; he visualizes what he wants to portray and then strives towards working with a cast and crew to bring this vision to life. The director has the challenging task of bringing together the many complex components of a production—the script, actors, set, costumes, lighting, sound and music—into a unified whole.

Directing a play like The Pillowman in particular, can be tricky task. There are several hidden layers to each scene and the director has to ensure that the audience is able to journey with the characters through layered twists and turns.

Siddarth Selvaraj, the director of The Pillowman, is the co-founder of Studio 33, a production house in Bangalore offering media solutions in film, photography and design. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in communication studies and political science and a Master’s degree in Film Production from Boston University. In a career that spans a decade, Siddarth has produced over twenty theatrical presentations, sixteen short fiction films, three documentaries, three seasons of television programming and two seasons of talk radio.

  

Below we have an exclusive interview with Siddarth, where he talks about what got him into theatre, the most challenging aspects of the production and his expectations of the performance. 

The Pillowman - The Producer's take

The Renegades Arts and Theatre Society started in 2006; we have three theatre productions and one film to our credit and we’re not stopping there! We started off as an amateur theatre group full of energetic people who had a few things in common- our interest in theatre, art and film. With the number of past productions we have done, we have progressed enormously in the vast theatre fraternity here in Bangalore.

From our first production, Kamala (2006), to our next production which will be The Pillowman we have gathered a large number of theatre enthusiasts who have become a part of our theatre group, and we always welcome more such individuals in the future who share the same kind of passion for the arts that we do.

The production of The Pillowman will be our largest ever production so far and we can’t be more excited about it than we already are! Since 2006 we have with us a several members of the group who have studied film, architecture, engineering, photography, law, animation etc., and who will be putting in all that we have learnt into this production of The Pillowman.

We wanted this production to mean a little more than the rest. We want it to draw more people into the art of theatre and storytelling. It isn’t easy producing a play; it involves a number of things that we may not notice in the final production of the play, such as getting the rights to the play, the casting of the actors, the number of practice sessions that go into the production, etc. If there are people interested in knowing more about theatre, we would be happy to take you on this journey with us! We have with us a series of interviews with the cast and crew of the play, behind the scene takes of the practice sessions, information on how to get things done while producing a play and finally the finished play that you can attend and watch first hand!

For our first blog we have an interview with our production manager Sudhir Selvaraj. Sudhir has been one of the founding members of the Renegade Theatre and Arts. He graduated from Concordia College, MN, in 2011, majoring in International Relations and Political Science. He is currently working at PlayRight Education. Sudhir has vast experience in planning events and has been a part of over 15 theatre productions as an actor,director, producer and writer. He is an avid photographer in his free time (when he has some). In the interview Sudhir explains the role of a production manager, how to finalize a venue for the play; build a team around the production etc. Comment below if you have any questions you many want to ask Sudhir. As an added bonus we also have a few scenes from our first few readings.