Veteran writerdirector Rahul Da Cunha is back with India’s first reality show musical,
Veteran director Rahul da Cunha’s next is a twohour reality show musical that boasts of 29 songs and is all set to open today
#SingIndiaSing. The twohour long musical boasts of 29 songs, which the director cowrote with Bugs Bhargava Krishna. Directed by Nadir Khan and composed by Clinton Cerejo, the musical opens today.
Rahul da Cunha started his journey in 1984. With a career spanning over 30 years, the veteran has constantly pushed the envelope when it comes to theatre. He is the mastermind behind popular plays such as I’m Not Bajirao and Pune Highway, with his most prominent work being Class of ’84, a play that has completed more than 300 shows. The writer-director is now back with his latest venture, #singindiasing. A musical, which explores how we view the world and the how important a role the internet plays in it. He wrote this play with Bugs Bhargava Krishna and has 29 songs composed by Clinton Cerejo.
Talking about the play and its concept, Da Cunha says, “The play is a musical that centres on where we are as a country today, when it comes to entertainment. We are trying to say that everything has become a reality show. So, we are talking about a singing contest that is part singing contest and part reality show.” He adds, “It is about a singing contest where the cameras are on all the time and the audiences are watching the life of these participants.”
The idea first occurred to him when the popularity of talent reality shows started soaring. “The play has evolved since we started writing it in 2010. This is when we were first exposed to singing contests. This is when the idea first came to us. The contests back then were pure singing contests.
So our writing basically began in that zone, couple of years later is when we were exposed to other reality shows, shows such as Big Boss. So, that’s when we thought, why not combine the two. Why not, push our musical a little, from being a mere singing contest, to one where the odds and the risks for the contestants become slightly more dangerous. If the cameras are on all the time, then they are faced with not just how well they are doing at the moment. The internet allows their past to become a part of the process,” he says, adding, “Internet plays a very important role in changing our perception about people. You have access to anything, for example take Nana Patekar, at one level he was a very good actor. Now you read about all he has done, I will judge him, I will definitely judge him. Just the way Kevin Spacey is judged. The internet has made people’s lives available for us to look at, in a way that never happened earlier.”
The show is being touted as a one-of-a-kind musical. “An original musical has never been done before in India, you have had musicals, but they were based on other source materials. They were adaptations. This is a complete original. There is no dialogue at all, the entire story is told through lyrics,” says Da Cunha.
The musical boasts of a whopping 29 songs, which he co-wrote with Bugs Bhargava Krishna. Da Cunha says the songwriting process was the most taxing one. “The real nuts and bolts of putting it together was the songwriting, it’s been over 18 months since we started working on that. I have never written lyrics before. What was supremely challenging was how to tell a story through lyrics. Then we asked Clinton Cerejo, who we knew he is a genius, to compose. A lot of times, you see international musicals and sometimes you feel that there is a song just for the sake of it. You are not always fully convinced about how it will take the plot forward. So the challenge, for us, was to make sure that every single song had a part to play, every song has intent. It is not just a rock or a pop song. ” he says.
Internet plays a very important role in changing our perception about people. You have access to anything, for example take Nana Patekar, at one level he was a very good actor. Now you read about all he has done, I will judge him, I will definitely judge him. Just the way Kevin Spacey is judged... RAHUL DA CUNHA, WRITERDIRECTOR