Bangalore Love Story Diaries:# 2

Charithra Ballal
http://charithra-charas-chai.blogspot.com/?spref=fb

Amjad Prawej

You have a special chapter in your life with a special person. Happy, sad, funny and painful moments are still lingering in the form of memories. Years have passed and you get an opportunity to relive the experience all over again. Everything is exactly the same except that special one.

Our Bangalore Love Story workshop #2 was all about reconstructing those moments. In the course of reconstructing the events, I realise how at times the scene is so different from my memory. It is such a fascinating experience. A word, a look, a sigh or a touch, anything from my co-actor is capable of changing the entire scene. As the scenes are played, I am also forced to reflect on my past actions. Could things have been different?

How different? Why did I say a particular thing? Why did I do that? If similar events were to happen in my life now, would I react the same way I did years ago? Probably not or maybe yes. In all these years I have definitely changed. And so has my reasoning. This workshop is a great experience to compare and learn about my past self and my present being. Thanks a lot Kirtana, Kuki and Tom for this wonderful opportunity. 

By the way I now know for sure who plays my girl in the film. Thanks a lot Charitra for being so patient and supportive. And yes, the murder mystery still remains unsolved!!

Jyotsna B. Rao

I am preoccupied with the beauty of the work and space and the generosity of the entire team. Great to be on board with all of you. Thank you Kirtana, Tom, Cookie, Zui, Dogs, Food, Actors and the limitless sky :)

Thank you again

Jyo

Ashvin Mathew

It all began with a film workshop with Tom Cowan where we wrote a script, shot it, edited and screened it in 2days. I felt i had learnt more things than i did in 2 years at Uni. After the workshop you suggested the idea of workshopping real love stories from Bangalore, create a script with the actors through Improv and then make the film, "bangalore lovestories".

I loved the energy we developed while working with cookie and the others on the Bald Soprano and with that came the trust that what ever we come up with at the end would be worth the time and energy.

We started the workshops last weekend with 4 stories and 8 actors. and we were given scenes and asked to play.

Strraight away the questions flew, How do i know her? whats my relationship with him? do i Like him? and How can i make this man real?

The answer to these questions were, "lets find out".

Over the period of 6 days, we have laughed, smiled, fallen in love, watched others in love, fall out of love, we were served imaginary coffee by 'suresh' who never got the orders right, we fought, we learnt, we took loans we can never pay back and at night we ate like Kings.

As for me, in the proicess of bringing Varghese Mathai to life, i realised its not just one thing that makes a character, He cant just be bad, for he loves love stories too. He lends money on a high interest and borders on asking for a pound of flesh in return and yet he would give away money to someone whose father was very ill. He would dream of a big empire and yet would drink coffee in the company of prostitutes and strangers looking for branded underwear. He would want the good life and yet he would sleep hungry. All this and more i learnt and when Tom asked me to savour the words that came out of Mathais mouth, it hit me. This man Mathai is also in love! he loves his journey, he loves his misery and he loves Bangalore, the city thats made him more than just his fathers son.

Irealised that when you leave your Inhibitions at the door and truly let go, then the sky is the limit and the world becomes your playground and whatever your character speaks the mountains will take chorus and most of all i learnt in these 6 days that ,talent in absence of inspiration more often than not will produce only mediocre art.

thank you for this opportunity, thank you for the love and thank you for believeing in me and most of all i thank, you, cookie and Tom for the inspiration.

Jyotsna B. Rao 

The 3 days spent at the farm and bringing stories together has been a good experience viewing and also rediscovering and revisiting episodes from my life.

Some thoughts that came to my mind during the workshop:

"Love travels beyond distance". 

"It does not affect you until it happens to you".

"When love leaves, everything leaves".

I was on a journey of self discovery and was weaving a story with the other 2 actors and It was easy to replay incidents from real life somehow and absolutely liked the way unexpected meanings emerged from the improvisations.

On a different note I state an observation, which is: Improvs make me less creative when repeated and it would help if actors involved in a particular scene could do an exercise of some sorts.

( theatre/ dance) to help find connections easily and find ourselves on the same boat.