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.