I have to write about two per­for­mances that I enjoyed in the last week.

One was last Sun­day evening at the Palace Grounds — Octo­ber­fest, the fes­ti­val orga­nized by King­fisher. Since, beer is not some­thing that tick­les my fancy (or my taste­buds), I was hop­ing the music would be worth going for. On that note, I must also add, that I was pleas­antly sur­prised by the way the whole set-up was orga­nized. They had nice seat­ing arrange­ments all around the front area of the stage, so you could chill out and eat your food and drink your beer and enjoy the music from wher­ever you were.

TAAQ ROCKS! : Sun­day night was slated for Ther­mal & A Quarter’s (TAAQ) per­for­mance as Bijoy — who’s closely asso­ci­ated with the group — informed us as we were lunch­ing together a few days prior. So, on a lazy Sun­day evening, along with an even lazier Venx (it was only the promise of all my beer coupons that he agreed to accom­pany me) we made our way to the festival.

Ban­ga­lore, I must say, is pretty chilled out that way. Every week­end I decide that I will be a home­body and do some­thing con­struc­tive like paint (or study for that mat­ter). And then some­thing more excit­ing invari­ably pops up : a con­cert, a food fest, exhi­bi­tions, plays etc. You won’t have a prob­lem keep­ing busy here, that’s for sure.

Any­way, com­ing back to my ini­tial point, TAAQ proved to be much bet­ter than I had ini­tially expected. Though I had lis­tened to a cou­ple of their songs online, watch­ing them live, was a dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence alto­gether. Lead vocal­ist, Bruce Lee Mani, and his team mem­bers : Rajeev, Rhzude, and Sunil — were delight­fully good and had an appre­cia­tive audi­ence to boot (amongst them a few drunk!), hit­ting the right note with Shine on you Crazy Dia­mond. Other than that, they mostly per­formed their songs and a cou­ple of other covers.

I must say I spent most of the evening hap­pily watch­ing Mani and his rather awe­some head of hair (and lis­ten­ing to him, of course :) Smita, the drum­mer Rajeev’s wife came up and said hello and said she reads my blog, which was really sweet. And I am now an offi­cial TAAQ fan. Please check them out if you haven’t already and their web­site. Their lat­est album is there avail­able for down­load so grab the songs. Such incred­i­ble tal­ent, right here from namma Bangaloru!

In another part of the ground, DJ Ivan was rock­ing the crowd in a dome : a makeshift dance floor (a huge one at that) they had cre­ated for the occa­sion. Lots of psy­che­delic lights and enthu­si­as­tic peo­ple (you have to grab every oppor­tu­nity to dance here in Bangalore!).

Venx, Apra and Anshu (who were also there) had a beer fight (well, a near beer fight) over the last remain­ing can of King­fisher. Ulti­mately, it didn’t land up in anyone’s belly, but all over the floor instead. Quite a sad end for that last can. Thank­fully, a beer brawl was averted as they were too happy after the many litres they had already con­sumed ear­lier in the evening. Beearp!

SHAKESPEARE REVISITED
Which brings me to the sec­ond per­for­mance. A Shake­spearean play called Mea­sure for Mea­sure, per­formed by the group Com­plicite at the Ran­gashankara last evening. You can imag­ine me quak­ing in my boots (chap­pals, actu­ally, but you get the point) when the play started with this dialogue:

Of gov­ern­ment the prop­er­ties to unfold,
Would seem in me to affect speech and dis­course;
Since I am put to know that your own sci­ence
Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice
My strength can give you: then no more remains,
But that to your suf­fi­ciency as your Worth is able,
And let them work. The nature of our peo­ple,
Our city’s insti­tu­tions, and the terms
For com­mon jus­tice, you’re as preg­nant in
As art and prac­tise hath enriched any
That we remem­ber. There is our com­mis­sion,
From which we would not have you warp. Call hither,
I say, bid come before us Angelo.

(On an aside, hav­ing a friend like Ree, who talks like this: “Can I ask you a ‘koshen’?” or “What it is that you are doing?” has brought down our vocab­u­lary to deplorable lev­els already.)

But a few min­utes into the play, we started get­ting warmed up to the lan­guage and actu­ally even began to com­pre­hend parts of it.

The play was bril­liant in a lot of ways. The pro­duc­tion was superb; the light­ing, the tim­ing of the actors, the way they mor­phed one scene into another : all fault­less. It’s worth watch­ing just for all these fac­tors. And not in the least, the per­for­mances of the actors, seemed effort­less as they matched each other in their act­ing prowess.

In par­tic­u­lar, I thought Angelo, the Duke and Isabelle did a fan­tas­tic job in their roles (not sure what the actors name were). The group, accord­ing to their web­site, are going to per­form next in Milan and Greno­ble, so not much hope of catch­ing them if you haven’t already.

Ran­gashankara must be applauded for the great work it’s doing bring­ing these plays to audi­ences here in Bangalore.

My only prior expe­ri­ence with Shake­spearean Eng­lish was a col­lege the­atre group aptly named and some­times pur­posely mis­pro­nounced ‘Shake­speare Soci­ety’. For two years, I did less study­ing and more of prac­tic­ing, and try­ing to act. We had decided to per­form the Mer­chant of Venice and I was play­ing the part of Jessica.

I am not com­pletely sure what I did now and how I pulled off the part, but my short stint with stage did 2 things : made me real­ize that act­ing was not my call­ing and more impor­tantly made me appre­ci­ate actors who can spout such lan­guage, and act at the same time!