Remember Remember: Tahatto’s well-loved ‘urban fairytales’ make a comeback
Written and directed by Prashanth Kumar Nair, Remember Remember is ready for new shows at Ranga Shankara on September 15 and at Jagriti Theatre on September 22
By Reema Gowalla
Who wouldn’t like a bit of magic in their life! More so when it reminds you of the charming, fantasy worlds that we loved revelling in as kids. But how about rethinking those fairytales as native fables? Tahatto’s popular play Remember Remember — a ‘magical, musical and mystical take on urban stories and tales’ — is back with a bang, as the Bengaluru-based theatre group promises a new line-up of rejigged stories. Written and directed by Prashanth Kumar Nair, the 90-minute anthology, comprising five short pieces, is all set to premiere at Ranga Shankara (on September 15) and at Jagriti Theatre (on September 22).
First staged in 2018, Remember Remember is one of Tahatto’s most loved productions. Crafted with love and care, the play explores what it means to hold on to our own stories, good or bad. The five mini tales — Watching an Audience Watch a Play, ZenTen, The Piped Piper Remembers, Everybody Needs an Imaginary Friend and The Woman Who Lost Her Stories — reflects on how we treat each other in the present world. The play is a commentary on depleting compassion and empathy among people and the loss of ‘magical’ human bonding. Remember Remember also features live music, with instruments like djembe, flute and ukulele used in the play.
The cast includes Badarivishal Kinhal, Jimmy Xavier, Anoushka Gupta, Kalyani Kumar, Piyush Agarwal, Nithya J Rao and Prashanth, while Shalini Rao, Aparna Vemuri and Anjana Soman are in charge of production management. In a candid conversation with TheatreRoom, Prashanth and Piyush spoke about the joy of reopening the play to the audience, mixing old memories with new learnings and addressing the ‘dragon’ in the room. Excerpts:
Q. Just like your earlier production, A Funny Thing Called Life, Remember Remember too follows an interactive, episodic format. Would you credit that to the popularity of the play?
Prashanth: It’s something that we have deliberated on. But speaking from the audience’s point of view, the episodic nature allows for a transient experience. And that’s probably one of the reasons they have enjoyed watching this play over the years. Although A Funny Thing Called Life was originally made for alternative spaces, it really got us thinking about the show’s design, and then came Remember Remember. Here, the episodes are not independent but rather interlinked to form a single experience. The image that I had in my mind was to say: how about we look at it like a storybook unravelling on stage? The idea was to create a book of fairy tales… In the sense that I would really absorb myself into a specific story that I’m reading. But then, the nature of the book and the experience that I have signed up for is also to say that I will finish the story and quickly move on to the next.
That said, the book on the whole has a theme. Even though it looks like the individual stories come one after the other, the narrative takes the audience on a journey. This was something we wanted to try out on stage. Unlike A Funny Thing Called Life, Remember Remember is still a full play with multiple subplots within it. The actors, with the help of live music, weave these vignettes into one whole story. When it comes to magic and enchanted tales, we often think that they are rooted in some far off land that we share no connection with in the real world. But how about these extraordinary stories originate from the everyday spaces that we live in? How would it be if these incidents happened in the neighbourhood of our own cities at the present time? We wanted to recreate the experience of reading a book of stories on stage, and that’s how Remember Remember came about.
Q. Since its premiere in 2018, Remember Remember has had several successful runs over the years. What inspired you to bring it back in 2024?
Prashanth: After the Covid-19 pandemic, when we started making plays and meeting audiences again, many asked about Remember Remember, and if we were planning to have more shows of the play. Although by then, we had shelved this piece, these inquiries got us thinking. However, if we were to reconsider the play, which would entail reworking the script and rehearsing the play again, there should also be a personal reason for us to do that. A lot has changed in our lives since the play was last staged, particularly during the lockdown period. So, we needed to reassess all that and more before bringing Remember Remember back on stage.
How do we come together and celebrate stories or even register them as being more than just flimsy, whimsical and entertaining bits? And as a theatre company, how do we approach that? These were some of the factors that we wanted to evaluate. In essence, the play is more or less the same, but the little details in it have changed. I think we’ve grown as people and also as artists. Be it a character or a scene, when we look at something now, we can better recognise its depth and potential, as compared to earlier. Those learnings as makers and performers of the play reflect in the new version of Remember Remember.
Q. Remember Remember comprises five stories. As the writer of the play, what kind of fine-tuning have you done to make the subplots more suited to the present day?
Prashanth: The script was written in 2015, and we first performed the play in 2018. But someone rightly said, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” As a writer, I was a bit nervous when I revisited the play, worrying whether or not it’s still relevant or if it would seem dated now. I don’t want to claim that it’s a timeless play, but what I have realised over time is that even after so many years, a lot is still the same. For example, one of the stories talks about mythical creatures, called dragons. It’s an allegory for people being treated as ‘dragons’, so that they can be made an enemy, be eliminated, be sidelined and can even be ostracised. The first script spoke of how people of different races, ethnicities and nationalities were ostracised. From Jews being called rats in Germany back in the day to now Palestinians being called rats and Syrians being chased out of their own country. Earlier it was more about allegories, but now when we are recreating this play, there is a genocide taking place in reality. Plus, there is the same ostracisation and animalization of people that’s happening in different parts of the world. So, that story suddenly feels a lot more relevant now than it did in 2015.
There’s another story about a woman’s imaginary childhood friend, whom she had conjured up as a little girl to keep her company and make a sense of life. Later when she grew up, she had completely forgotten about her until one very difficult day when that imaginary friend revisited her. This piece is centred on mental health issues and the role of support groups in coping with them. Again, this sounds more relevant now, after the pandemic, than ever before. So yes, the text and the subplots have been fine-tuned and tailored to reflect the times that we are living in, keeping in mind how we want to connect with the audience.
Q. From an actor’s point of view, how would you describe the evolution of the script?
Piyush: Remember Remember is a very bare-bones script, in terms of how Prashanth has written and structured it. It allows the actors to play around with it, workshop and devise a lot of things, and this was true even back then. This time, it gave us the opportunity to look at everything again, after which we decided what to do with the text and how we are representing it on stage in terms of action, music, movement, and everything else. In a nutshell, this is a more evolved version of Remember Remember. Similarly, the music and soundscape have also been rearranged, in order to convey the message of the play in a desired way.
Q. Since it’s a well-loved performance, does it put pressure on the actors to live up to people’s expectations in every show?
Piyush: It’s been a very interesting journey from an actor’s perspective. We walked into the rehearsals thinking that we really know the play well, but in the past two months we also realised that our understanding of the play is very different now. That’s because, I have also evolved as a performer during this period, and so the way I approach and look at things have also changed. It’s been intriguing to try things out and see what’s working and what’s not. Time has also played a part here. We are doing this piece after almost six years, so a lot of the things that we thought or our memory made us believe how we did it has completely changed now, and that’s exciting.
There is another interesting thing that we discovered during the recent shows of our other play Love in the Cholera of Time. The audiences that have come back and started watching theatre after the pandemic are very different from what we had catered to in the past 10 years. So then, as performers, it becomes even more thrilling for us. Especially, in terms of how do we make it more relevant for this new audience; how do we take our learnings and put them into this play, and still keep it as exciting as always.
Q. The striking red dragon masks have been synonymous with Remember Remember. What’s the story behind them?
Prashanth: Once we finalised the ‘red dragon mask’ as a motif, we instantly knew that it was going to stand out and become an iconic element. But, at the same time, there was also a risk that it would overshadow everything else in the play. When we were starting off with this play, we were toying with the idea of adding the large dragon puppets, as part of one of the stories. Later, we wanted these dragons to represent human beings who are branded as the ‘dangerous’ other. It’s an allegory for how people are ostracised on the basis of their language, religion and place of origin. So, when we are already equating people to animals, why not turn them into glorious-looking animals? Thus, we needed these dragon masks to be symbolic.
Although a mythical animal, the dragon in our play is rather a stylistic choice. This is a polygonal, 3D version of the draconic creature. Making these dragons was quite tricky. In fact, it was an extensive process of figuring out what raw materials should be used to make these masks and how to make them durable — all this amid the real-world struggles of a theatre company. Earlier, the masks were made out of paper, which were then laminated and spray-painted. But this time around, we have used EVA foam instead, as it’s more flexible and long-lasting. And then again, the masks are sprayed with the fiery red colour.
Apart from these visually appealing masks, Remember Remember features a variety of other props, motifs and costumes, which are equally integral to the narrative. A lot of things are unconventional about how the play opens and how it is presented to the audience. The actors talk to the audience directly as they walk in. While the performance is going on, they go and speak to the audience directly. We even ask the audience to lend us some of the stuff they are carrying. It could be a pen, a dupatta, a hat or a backpack. Those items also feature in the play. The intention behind it is to convey that stories are shared, and when you add a little bit of something to it, the story changes completely.
Catch the upcoming shows of Remember Remember at Ranga Shankara on September 15 (3.30pm and 7.30pm) and at Jagriti Theatre on September 22 (3.30pm and 7.30pm). You can book your tickets here.
