Articles by Deepa Mohan

 An unusual play: "The Water Station" is a theatre production co-produced by The Japan Foundation, a Japanese government cultural agency, and Theatre Roots & Wings, Kerala. It is written by an award-winning Japanese playwright Shogo Ohta, and directed by Sankar Venkateswaran, with an all-India castselected by auditions across the country.The play will be premiered in Ranga Shankara, Bangalore on 29 & 30 November 2011, and is set to tour several cities in India and Southeast Asian countries including Colombo and Jaffna, Sri anka in 2012.Synopsis of the Play"The Water Station" is a two-hour, wordless performance. Walking through a barren andscape, eighteen…

Very urgent, just 20 hours to go.... Amit Gupta, an Indian entrepreneur in Newyork, a friend and a kind soul needs a bone marrow match for a Peripheral Blood Stem cells donation and you can help.If you live in Bangalore India, chances are you can help not only Amit, but the many, many other people around the world. South Asians have a dramatically lower chance of finding a match in the worldwide bone marrow registries than other populations. While this is a big and often tragic problem, it's one that can be fixed!So what can you do? Get to the nearest…

 A memorable meeting... On the 6th of November,2011, I was privileged to be at a gathering of some of eminent birdwatchers of Bangalore. The gracious host was none other than the doyen of birdwatching in Bangalore, Zafar Futehally who has been instrumental in popularizing birding as a hobby in our city; ironically, the hobbby seems to be catching on in ever-increasing numbers as the number of species of birds in the City's shrinking parks and vanishing lakes are steadily decreasing.Here's Zafar Sahib, whose long years of service to ornithology cannot be understated: Several other eminent ornithologists and scientists, all of whom share…

 A memorable meeting... On the 6th of November,2011, I was privileged to be at a gathering of some of eminent birdwatchers of Bangalore. The gracious host was none other than the doyen of birdwatching in Bangalore, Zafar Futehally who has been instrumental in popularizing birding as a hobby in our city; ironically, the hobbby seems to be catching on in ever-increasing numbers as the number of species of birds in the City's shrinking parks and vanishing lakes are steadily decreasing.Here's Zafar Sahib, whose long years of service to ornithology cannot be understated: Several other eminent ornithologists and scientists, all of whom share…

 A very nice walk.... I've been interested in, and involved with, Magic Puddles a daycare and children's activity centre, for a while now, since I did a project with the children about trees. And having done the Puttenahalli Lake Walk a little while ago, I wanted to take the children there, too; so this morning, Viji and I rounded up some children and off we went!We started at the Brigade Millenium arch entrance:And as we went, I pointed out various interesting things to them. Here they are, keenly observing a grasshopper! The children were full of curiosity...their sentences always seem to…

 A very nice walk.... I've been interested in, and involved with, Magic Puddles a daycare and children's activity centre, for a while now, since I did a project with the children about trees. And having done the Puttenahalli Lake Walk a little while ago, I wanted to take the children there, too; so this morning, Viji and I rounded up some children and off we went!We started at the Brigade Millenium arch entrance:And as we went, I pointed out various interesting things to them. Here they are, keenly observing a grasshopper! The children were full of curiosity...their sentences always seem to…

 When I heard about an audition for actors in the field of corporate training, I was intrigued, and decided to try my luck and see if I would be chosen for the audition, even though I lacked the theatre experience that was asked for in the email sent by Steps Drama Learning Development.I quickly got a response from Mohan Mudgalkar, the Senior Associate of Steps in India, asking me to choose whether I wanted the morning or the afternoon stint, on the 8th of October, 2011. I chose the afternoon, and went there to find several others also arriving. Charumathi…

"Other Voices" 1 Madhav Bagh, a Ranga Shankara "Other Voices" presentation, featuringRevathy, returns this week-end. The play is written by Chetan Datar,translated by Shanta Gokhale, and directed by Mariam Jetpurwala. Theshows are at 9:45 pm on Sat, Nov 19 and 9:30 PM on Sun, Nov 20. Theduration of the play is 40 mins.Tickets are available at Ranga Shankara and indianstage.in. Given theintimate space of an "Other Voices" performance, the number of seatsis very limited."Other Voices" is a unique theatre experience at Ranga Shankara. It istheatre performed in an intimate space, after the show in the mainauditorium, in an informal setting (for…

One building...On my way to and from the Bangalore International Airport, one building often catches my eye:I have long known the custom of the Parsi community to dispose of their dead by exposing the bodies to the elements and to the sun. I vaguely remember being shown a "Tower of Silence" in Mumbai, many decades ago.I googled for "Tower of Silence", and got this link about Dakhma, transliterated as "Tower of Silence" I was not sure if the Tower of Silence in Bangalore is being used now...but a little digging produced this link to an article in the Hindu ...which…

 When I heard about an audition for actors in the field of corporate training, I was intrigued, and decided to try my luck and see if I would be chosen for the audition, even though I lacked the theatre experience that was asked for in the email sent by Steps Drama Learning Development.I quickly got a response from Mohan Mudgalkar, the Senior Associate of Steps in India, asking me to choose whether I wanted the morning or the afternoon stint, on the 8th of October, 2011. I chose the afternoon, and went there to find several others also arriving. Charumathi…