Suhasini's play to adorn award function
Suhasini explained that she has also shot about a third of the play's parts on camera to make it a uniquely combined cinema and theatre experience.
Chennai: The 19th annual Gollapudi Srinivas memorial award – to be given away to Jayaprakash Radhakrishnan for his film Lens – is going to be a function with a difference.
A fantasy play directed by Suhasini Mani Ratnam, which will be a bio-drama of her father Charuhasan’s career as a lawyer and based on a book published by his friend of his email correspondence over the years, might turn out to be the highlight of the evening.
Of course, the awards ceremony has glittering stars to honour the winner like chief guest Shiva Rajkumar of sandalwood fame, Boman Irani (who will deliver the oration), Priyadarshan, Sudhir Mishra and Jayasuha Kapoor with Kalki Koechlin compering the programme.
The 75-minute English play titled I am actor your honour (actor In law) will have Y Gee Mahendra playing the part of an elderly Charuhasan (Kamal Haasan’s uncle) while other actors, including health secretary’s son Arvind Radhakrishnan, portraying him in his younger days.
Suhasini explained that she has also shot about a third of the play’s parts on camera to make it a uniquely combined cinema and theatre experience.
While Mahendra’s daughter Madhuvanti plays Suhasini in the play, the young RJ Ramya is to appear as Suhasini’s mother. Both father and daughter of the YGP family expressed their apprehension over acting in their maiden English play, but the director hinted that there would be more Tinglish in it in typical father-daughter interactions in the family.
“This is one play with a claimer rather than a disclaimer, which will say all the events are true and relates to real people,” Suahasini said. There was praise all round for the concept of the Gollapudi award in the name of Gollapudi Srinivas who was directing his debut film when a giant wave carried him away from a rock off the shore of Visakhapatnam.
“This is one family that has converted ‘soham’ (grief) into ‘santhosham’ (joy) in the form of this award. That takes courage as well as imagination,” said Y Gee Mahendra.
Suhasini recalled her own association with the event in the last three years in which she has gone out of the way to connect to leading film personalities to come down and honour the winners of the award every year.
The awardee of the year, Jayaprakash, said it was still like a dream, not only to be honoured for his film on the social media environment of the day but also to have Suhasini’s play introduce the awards night, at the Music Academy on Friday (August 12) evening.