Five to tango

The 70-minute play with an all-female cast revolves around five bridesmaids at a big fat Indian sangeet and is a fairly realistic portrayal of a girl gang that vents about life and their trials and tribulations. Shikha Talsania, director and also part of the cast of Dekh Behen, elaborates, “The story is all about the five bridesmaids who like to sit down and talk about everything from their outfits to trivial gossip to their intimate lives. The bi-lingual play has humour and stories and depicts the intricacies of interactions within a girl gang with all the various human emotions involved.” According to Shikha, the story itself is the lead actress in this play. “A good story always inspires viewers and leaves an impact. That’s why we focused on the story which, I think, can be entertaining and inspiring for any age-group,” she asserts.

Mithila Palker, one of the actors, shares, “I play a character in her early 20s, discovering herself and fighting the regular fight of emotions versus principles. I loved playing a bridesmaid and found the storyline very relatable and realistic. The conversations that take place amongst us could happen in any close-knit group of friends.” She tries to explain the essence of the play, saying, “It talks about a lot of things that we have been arguing as a society. In the wake of section 377 being legalised, the #metoo movement gaining the relevance it did… the play resonates with the audience now more than ever.”

Dekh Behen has many ‘Yes, I’ve seen this!’ moments. From vegan counters at weddings, sangeet dance practices, bitching about their outrageous outfits and bonding over many things. It portrays the bare-bones behind-the-scenes realities at a glossy wedding function. Playwright Tahira Nath Krishnan shares how she and her co-writer conceptualised the script. “My co-writer Dilshad (Edibam Khurana) and I chuckled through the process, thinking about our girls’ night outs and the kind of things we actually talk about and the colourful ways in which we express ourselves. We wanted to bring in the present-day millennial perspective. The idea was to make it feel like any gang of girls in our current times.”

Some challenges Tahira and the crew faced at the beginning were the deadlines. “Initially, the time frame we had set to execute the play was a huge constraint. We had to work at top speed in the writing process as well as setting it up. But I think it worked very well. We literally lived and breathed the play and the flavour those first couple of months. It became an all-encompassing concentrated effort of bringing it alive, which was super fun,” she smiles. And perhaps that helped to keep it current and resonate with the audience even better.

Already having performed over 55 shows across the country and twice before in Bengaluru, the strength of the audience has never disappointed the crew. And they say they’ve especially liked the way Bengalureans welcomed and embraced them with an enthusiastic response on their last visit. Dekh Behen is scheduled to be enacted at the Ranga Shankara theatre in the city from August 1 and will feature bi-lingual dialogues as Bengaluru is so cosmopolitan.