The 26th of April, 2009 was witness to Lord Ganesha ripping through the galaxies with his trusty light sabre…Don’t get it? Well, Hippocampus was home to the launching of Masquerade’s Youth Theatre.
The members of Masquerade lead by Mr. Krishna Kumar (popularly known as KK) conducted a story reading session titled ‘Ganesha the prankster’. The session combined the stories of Ganesha, Star wars and had a hint of Power Rangers too. The members acted out the story of Ganesha’s birth and read the story on how he humbled the Lord of Wealth, Kubera.
Masquerade, is a performance group dedicated to the growth of theatre in Chennai. It was founded by Mr. Krishna Kumar and a group of enthusiastic theatre buffs in 1994. The group’s current focus is to bring in the concept of community theatre, with larger audiences and social interaction.
For the story- telling, Siddarth Shivakumar was the voice of Ganesha, Dileep Rangan was Lord Shiva while Ramya Mukund portrayed Parvathi. Harshavardhan Ganesan, Hrishi Siddartha and Sanchith Shivakumar played the roles of the narrators. The three narrators also took on the role of SPD, Shiva’s Personal Demons!
About the Masquerade Youth Theatre (MYT), KK said, “We have started this to provide a platform for the youth so that they can have fun and entertainment, but with a purpose. We want to redefine youth theatre and youth contribution to community. We would like to set up a scholarship corpus to help deserving students study further”
Why the the unusual fusion of stories? Harshavardhan, a member of Masquerade, said “We included the other stories to make it as fun for the children and contemporary too”
Following the launch of the youth theatre, Camp Neuve, a theatre workshop was conducted by MYT for 15 days.
KK says about how the group would function, “MYT will hold workshops only in the summer but there will be many more events like these being conducted to keep the members active”
Contact Masquerade Youth Theatre at the email – masquerade.madras@gmail.com