Full stage ahead

Firdaus Bohari and Archana Bora, the actors who play the couple

Time is what you make of it. Memories remain. What were the last year-and-a-half or so about? Time? Or memories that will remain? These are the sort of questions that the audience might ruminate on when a new play called Cinema Mon Amour is staged on October 23 at a Bandra venue, the day after physical theatres reopen in Mumbai.

It seems as if it's that time when things are slowly trickling back to normal. But Omkar Bhatkar, writer and director of the play, feels as if it will take some time for theatre going back to where it was. People moved on from the performance art form when it was shut down during the pandemic, Bhatkar says. "Doing theatre is exciting but you haven't been paid for a year and a half," he adds. Fair enough. It's been a hard time for everyone involved in the performing arts, when shows were shut down.

Omkar Bhatkar

Now, things are opening up again - restaurants, concerts, movie halls, theatre spaces, and offices. This play is a new play being staged in a physical manner after a very long time, when memories were made during the pandemic. It features two people - a couple who drifted apart. The time was wrong. But their memories remain. They meet again, 14 years on. They speak about what they remember. Both of them love cinema. That's what brought them together, back when the time was right.

Bhatkar tells us that audience members who know their films will find a lot of reference points in the play. Cinema Mon Amour is a self-explanatory tile. It's Bhatkar expressing his love for films, especially those of Abbas Kiarostami, Andrei Tarkovsky, Terrence Malick and Yasujiro Ozu. It's a confluence of the arts that the audience will experience at the play where writing, directing, acting and the movies will come together as one on stage. It's been a while since that's happened and Bhatkar feels that, well, it's time to start rolling the ball again. Meanwhile, memories linger like they do of the last year-and-a-half or so, and of the estranged couple who meet after 14 years.

On: October 23 and 24, 6.30 pm
At: St Andrew's Centre of Philosophy and Performing Arts, St Dominic Road, Bandra
Log on to: in.bookmyshow.com
Cost: Rs 300