Since 1999 Q Theatre Productions (QTP) has been proudly claiming the month of December as belonging to the Generation Next of Theatre. It has good reason to. Thespo, its annual youth theatre festival offers a much desired platform to young people below the age of twenty-five to not only showcase their talent but to also encourage new ways and new ideas of doing theatre. But what is true of the first instance does not exactly hold up for the second. Perhaps it's just another sign of the state of theatre in the country today. With very few exceptions, even the Nehru and Prithvi theatre festivals, which were held in October and November respectively were just as disappointing. Quantity cannot be equated with quality and while in the last few years there has been a fair deal of original writing, there is nothing much to rave about.

A total of four plays were presented at Thespo this year. The festival opened with the modern classic of Edward Albee's WHO's AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, directed by Tahira Nath. At the outset it was apparent that the twenty somethings had taken on more than they could bite. It is one thing to have perhaps read and savoured the text as part of a graduate English Literature programme but quite another to stage it. The result was that the production failed in large parts to communicate the myriad nuances of the text and of tearing through its deceptively realistic setting.

Let's say that the cast was simply not mature to have dealt with a play that startles and fascinates with the psychological games that its characters play. The underlying brutality, which is both systematic and complex barely comes through. No sooner do the young actors seem within reach of grasping some of the more volatile moments in the play than their energy dissipates. Also the projection of their voices was weak. At various moments they were almost inaudible. Things picked up a bit in the second act though.

AAYUSHYAMAAN (Marathi), written by Rajesh Shinde and directed by Pratap Phad swept away most of the awards at the festival this year. But apart from the tight direction (imaginative in parts) and uniformly competent performances the play suffers from unwarranted sentimentality; its wafer-thin premise turning into an excuse for doling out philosophical musings of the 'Chicken Soup For the Soul' kind. Granted its young protagonist's reasonable fear of awaiting the result of his HIV test and around which the play revolves, it nevertheless succumbs to a simplistic exploitation of emotions. I won't even get into the complete lack of reason and the unscientific reaction that envelops the plot.

DAMAGES, written by British playwright, Steve Thompson and directed by Siddharth Kumar was an interesting play even if its humour, owing to legal jargon, wasn't always accessible. The play conjures up a world of tabloid reporting and of the possibility of libel suits that come with the territory. Its subtext deals with the relationship that the newly appointed, night Editor, Bas had with libel lawyer Abigail and of the existing, acrimonious relationship with his senior colleague Lister. The only man around who seems to be in inexplicable control, in spite of his own familial problems is Howard, the sub-editor.

Himanshu Sitlani plays him with the matter of fact quality that is perhaps expected of the character but it turns monotonous very soon. Ali Fasal's Bas and Kashin Shetty's Lister on the other hand do not strike a particularly resonating chord. Again in parts they were as inaudible as the actors of WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF were and like them do better in the second act. But Nimrat Kaur as Abigail comes across as a promising actor. Earlier seen in Sunil Shanbag's recent production of MASTANA RAMPURI, URF CHAPPAN CHURI, she is able to look and play the part of the characters expected of her. Her contribution was well-recognized by the Thespo award for Best Actress.

The festival concluded with Badal Sircar's SAARI RAAT, translated into Hindi from the original Bengali. The play, which becomes a metaphor for pragmatism v/s idealism has a poetic touch to it. It takes us across the journey of the real and the imagined through three characters- a lonesome old man and the young couple who happen to stumble upon him in his isolated house, whose main room wears the look of a decrepit warehouse; a store of accumulated memories.

Significantly enough it is the woman who becomes increasingly restless in her new and yet known surroundings and comes to grips with the banality of her everyday married life. And yet she can't have both worlds. The routine finally overwhelms the elusive imagined; romantic and selfish as it is. The production directed by Raheem Darediya and Abhinav Kimothi, was able to effectively handle the text and the performances by Smit Kant Raturi, Ayush Ghai and Nidhi Pant in all respects were good.

One of the platform performances showcased at Thespo this year deserves mention. Written by Shahir Sambhaji Bhagat and directed by Rahul Bhandare, UNDIR BILLAT AAHE uses Tamasha inspired music to present the various socio-political problems that India faces. While some of it is a tad too simple, the satire is not lost. The young actors delivered an energetic performance. Thespo Nine as always had a series of workshops, which unfortunately I was unable to attend. It would have been very nice to have caught reputed puppeteers, Dadi Pudumjee and Ramdas Padhye in action as it would have been to see the young and talented Ahemdabad based director, Saumya Joshi elaborate on the aesthetics of social theatre.

*The writer is Editor of this site, a theatre critic and an academic keenly interested in Theatre & Performance Studies.