Bengaluru: Practice what you preach or don’t preach at all, believes Anna Thomas, the 37-year-old director of the play ‘In the Forest Dark and Deep’. Sharp, crisp and relatable, the storyline of the play goes back and forth between two siblings and their dysfunctional relationship, says Anna.
“Fairly early in the play, you get to know that about their bad relationship and the story revolves around how you can know each other for a very long time, still not really know each other. Also it does not give gyaan. It is very real, it portrays the scene like how it would be in real life.”
The play opens with the two characters in the sister’s cabin on a rainy evening, as she is set to move out of the house. There is an apparent tension between the duo. “He’s a carpenter and she’s a professor at a prestigious college.
So it’s not only their differences in class, but also education, values and philosophies that cause this turbulence in their relationship, though they belong to the same family,” she explains.
The evening progresses with both of them taking jibes at each other and making below the belt remarks against each other, which Anna says is a part of the charm. “The fights are very real and not sugarcoated. They are things that you would say when you’re actually fighting with someone you care about, making the play very relatable.”
Written by Neil LaBute, an American playwright and actor in the summer of 2011, it is one of his more twisted dramas and the audience shouldn’t expect a message. What they should expect is a good and wholesome drama that will keep them glued to the stage, she says.
“This is not a preachy play. We’re not telling you the right or wrong way of doing things, but what it will be is an evening of good storytelling that is delivered well. The story itself is a pleasant surprise.”
She devoured hundreds of scripts before she found this story. “I read a lot of scripts and quickly got tired of the ones that lectured. This one had me reading right through,” she says. Anna’s co-founded Jugaad Co in 2010, a production house based in Bengaluru, along with her actor husband Jimmy Xavier.
