ELECTRONIC CITY
Multimedia Theatre (2007)Winner of Ustad Bismillah Khan National Award for Theatre Direction
“Grover presents the fragmented, dizzying world of the new global economy” - The Hindu
“This work presents the farce that is the inner mental world of contemporary man” - Mumbai Theatre Guide
“Grover’s work presents a powerful allegory of our times” - HT Mint Lounge
Tom and Joy: a neo-romantic love story from the start of the 21st century. Tom is a resilient and extremely flexible consultant whose only foothold is the porno channel in his hotel room. Tonight he is wandering around the corridors of a hotel complex. He's lost his orientation and no longer knows where he is: Berlin, London, New York, Hongkong, Singapore. He thinks of Joy. Joy is a stand-in on the scanner-till of Prêt-à-manger International. She didn't finish her studies and is a flexible and adaptable colleague. Her dream is George Clooney. Tonight, she stands at her little till at the airport, paralysed with panic as twenty businessmen want to pay for their sandwiches, but the scanner has broken down. Now her life is being filmed in a real-time docu-soap. She thinks of Tom. They fell in love while fighting over the last place on a flight home to Berlin. They were arrested and locked up together; the start of a great love story.
A panic-stricken farce from the inner mental world of contemporary busyness, this piece sorts out a number of supposed certainties and punctures the boundaries between the perpetrators, profiteers, and victims of globalisation. It takes place in an electronic metropolis (a global city) dominated by the universal service industry. It demands the flexible human being who disintegrates under the pressures of digitalised communication (always reachable, always available) and standardization. The performance seeks to invoke contemporary imagery and re-invent narrative elements. Operating through parody and pastiche, it attempts to highlight the histrionics of urban living, even as it trims the modern consciousness's guidelines of reality at the apogee of today's technologies. Falk Richter's 'Electronic City' is a fairytale for media-times.
Directed & Designed by Amitesh Grover | Play by Falk Richter | Performed by Amit Saxena & Padma Damodaran | Compositions by Ashwini | Chorus Mallika Taneja, Christine, Roy | Show Manager Varun Sharma
Produced by Max Mueller Bhavan/Goethe Institut New Delhi, 2008 | Language English | Duration 1hr 15mins
Shown at the BRM 2009, India’s biggest International Theatre Festival
