Multilingual plays connect better with varied audiences, says Blindspot makers

Time of India

2 days ago

By Sravasti Datta
A multilingual play enhances relatability for diverse audiences, believe Venkatesan Vaidhyanathan and Vishal Nayer. The theatre artistes, under MISF!T – My Interest Stays Firmly in Theatre, will be staging Blindspot, a multilingual play, which incorporates English, Kannada, Hindi, and Malayalam, in Bengaluru this weekend.
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'Having a multilingual play is also a way to encourage learning and interaction among various languages, which is especially relevant in light of ongoing discussions about language,' they say.
'The play revolves around Dr Anika Sharma, a psychiatrist, who has perfected memory reconstruction and returns to her ancestral home to take over a company as the new managing director. However, she suffers from memory lapses due to a childhood incident.
The plot thickens when a man walks in claiming to have impossible memories of his sister, who was murdered in the same therapy room, which leads to Anika's memory taking on a new shape,' says Venkatesan.
The play unfolds almost like a fast-paced film, in a seamless, innovative back-andforth between time periods. We don't do blackouts during scene transitions; it happens in front of the audience
Venkatesan Vaidhyanathan
'COMIC ELEMENTS OFFER A BREATHER TO THE AUDIENCE'
Directed by Venkatesan, the play is said to be a psychological thriller that follows a non-linear sequence, wherein incidents shift between the past and the present. Vishal Nayer, the creative consultant for the play, says, 'Though this play is a thriller, there are comic elements to give the audience a breather. As a concept, memory reconstruction has been researched in psychology and artificial intelligence.
However, we have taken some creative liberties.' The cast comprises a mix of professional actors and actors in training.