Off to Mumbai

After two houseful shows at Gyan Manch, M.A.D (Mad About Drama), a Calcutta-based youth theatre group, will be performing its latest production, With Love, Calcutta (picture above), at Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai on July 1 and 2, in association with Thespo at Prithvi, a theatre initiative by Q Theatre Productions.

On the first Tuesday and Wednesday of every month, Thespo hosts performances by youth theatre groups from across the country at Prithvi Theatre. After an audition in Calcutta last September, M.A.D’s With Love... made the cut.

Directed by Jadavpur University MA student Aritra Sengupta and Presidency University second-year student Ayanti Ghosh, With Love, Calcutta is an amalgamation of several tiny plays, telling the tales of a city that is more than 300 years old. The play takes the audience back and forth between Kolkata and Calcutta, between people and memories, between old meetings and new partings, between strangers and their strange tales and also about how people make a city, more than a city making its people.

The live score is one of the highlights of this production, with Shayandeep Roy playing the mandola throughout the 90-minute play.

“The last time a youth group (of under 25-year-olds) from Calcutta made it to Prithvi was way back in 2008. So we felt honoured and rather privileged when we were selected, that too for a ticketed show. M.A.D is proud to represent the growing independent theatre community of Calcutta at the mecca of Indian theatre,” said Soumya Mukherji, co-founder of M.A.D and an actor in With Love, Calcutta.