Lakshmi Nagappan
COAT OF MANY COLOURS
Chennai
Thursday 26th, August 2004
 |
POPPING in and out of various
persons might be a doddle for a thespian, but shedding skin within seconds
to represent eight characters, not of the same age or gender, is exemplary
indeed. We watched with awe Lushin Dubey's solo dramatisation of Pinki
Virani's bestseller Bitter Chocolate. This book is a compilation of the
agony of kids who have been sexually assaulted. Bitter Chocolate was performed
in Chennai in aid of the Indian Council for Child Welfare, The Centre
for Prevention and Treatment of Child Sexual Abuse and for the Safe Childhood
project of Ashraya, last weekend. Lushin switched gears effortlessly,
from a tormented teenager to a grizzled lawyer.
Blown with the wind are those impressionable years " when theatre for
me meant five hundred people clapping hands, today, I play to share what
I believe and feel strongly about," she says with ripe conviction.
Lushin's retro innings got on the road with her company, Theatre World's
production of Gautam Buddha, a play that lays emphasis on the relationships
in the family of Siddhartha. The Buddha set the scene for her next endeavour,
Untitled. While she was touring the globe with Gautam Buddha she was grounded
in London during the 9/11 catastrophe, and was glued to BBC to track the
trauma back in New York, where she lives for a quarter of the year. It
was then that she was inspired to compose Untitled, after viewing Beneath
The Veil, the BBC docu on the pluck of an Afghani woman who weathered
many a male storm to document the sentience of the fairer sex in her land.
Untitled is a hair-raising solo rendering by Lushin. It has played over
a 115 times in India and abroad.