Book wall

The Hindu's "LitForLife 2017" kicked off today at the Sir Mutha Venkata Subba Rao Concert Hall. It was quite a full house today, with Dr. Shashi Tharoor on stage; after his session, a large chunk of the crowd followed him outside, to the author pavilion where he was signing copies of his latest book. 

On the way back after getting the autograph, spotted this book wall. Couldn't help thinking it would have been better with people - kids, especially - standing up close and reading these. And then, we saw that there were spaces at the Hall where you could sit down and read, and in fact, swap books for the day. 

That's nice - look forward to being back there tomorrow!

Pits!

Any theatre would have a designated location for the control booth - the space for technicians controlling the stage lights and sounds to sit and do their work while the performance is in progress. The ideal location for this is, in some ways, the place where the best seats in the house should be; far enough away from the stage to have a full view of what is happening on it, but close enough to not miss out any of the details.

Chennai's theatres have different approaches to placing the control booth. Many of them - at least among the ones I have seen - have them right up front, just at the edge of the stage. The Museum Theatre has it jammed in the centre aisle, crushing into the seats nearby. Obviously, given the age of that building, it is a much later addition and it gives a definite appearance of having been jerry-rigged, as if it has been placed there just for this performance and no more.

The control booth at the Mutha Venkata Subba Rao Hall is much better organized. I don't recall seeing this space when I have been on the ground floor - and so I guess it blends well with the seating. But when looking down on the balcony, it looks like a fairly comfortable area to sit and work - and the best spot to watch the performance from!

City No.26?

The weekend that went by was quite packed. Apart from the Mylapore Festival that I had mentioned a couple of days ago, the weekend also saw the third edition of The Hindu's Lit for Life happening. The festival ended yesterday, but the photo is from Sunday's discussion about what India's Megacities represent to the country's people. Some part of Saturday was given over to the Mylapore Festival, including a wonderful talk on the Devadasis of Madras by Pradeep Chakravarthy (more about that coming up soon elsewhere!). So on Sunday, it had to be the Lit For Life. 

Any thought about the choice having "been made" was a bit premature. The Lit Fest had a few parallel events, and it was difficult having to flip a coin on where to go to. I do think we managed to cover 'all' the good ones... or maybe not.

The other highlight of the weekend was this article in the New York Times, placing Chennai at No.26 on the list of 52 Places to Visit in 2014. There was a lot more that the contributing writer could have written about the city. However, given that the music season is winding down, the Mylapore and literature festivals are done, the Book Fair under way, and hey, Happy Pongal, everyone... there is not much arguing with how she describes Chennai - "A cultural capital"!

Curtain raiser

It is the newest of the city's concert spaces, but it is more than a just a stage. With a grand semi-circular frontage, Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall offers a great venue for performances. Within two years of being open to the public, it has become the venue of choice for not only concerts, but for art exhibitions and any kind of performance in general.

The superb acoustics of the hall are complemented by the excellent equipment. Comfy seats let you enjoy the performance without having to twist and turn for that correct positioning. And there is adequate space for parking - the advantage of being able to use the space of the Lady Andal School after hours.

And though I haven't had a chance to see one such yet, the hall has a provision for providing 'surtitles' - projected on the stage, above the performance space - to enable translations of plays into another language, should it be required!

Line up for the blessings

Though it originally began as a day to worship weapons, Ayudha Puja has long ago moved on to be a day to worship the tools and implements of one's trade. Yesterday was the day of the Ayudha Puja and across the city, all kinds of 'tools', from CNC machines to computers, were cleaned and decked up for the puja. Almost every vehicle had a garland of flowers in front of it. Offices had had their signboards washed and sprayed with sandal-paste & kunkumam.

On Harrington Road last evening, these autorickshaws were lined up to participate in a puja being conducted by their welfare association. They looked all nice and neat, washed, polished and with smears of sandalwood paste. Though they all look the same anyway, the effect was even better with small banana stems on either side of the vehicle, all of equal size - and then the standardized garlands making them almost indistingushable.

It was a nice sight alright, but that didn't stop one from wishing these folks would swear to turn over a new leaf in their treatment of passengers!

Bringing down the curtains

'The Hindu', Chennai's venerable newspaper, has been bringing an annual week-long theatre festival to the city for four years now. Normally the plays are all in English, but this year's opening was a Korean adaptation of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (with English surtitles), probably in acknowledgement of Chennai's large population of Korean expats. The other new feature this year was a play produced by the Fest, in collaboration with the Goethe Institut, which premiered on August 3.

Apart from the plays - which included productions from Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chandigarh and New York - the festival had a symposium on English Theatre in India, as well as a workshop on running a theatre company. Today is the last day of the festival; owing to a variety of reasons, I have not been able to watch even a single performance this year.

I therefore had to be content with going to the Sir Venkatsubba Rao Concert Hall to take pictures of these off-stage props!