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Bittersweet comedy Dekh Behen leaves tricity audience impressed
A big fat wedding is underway
A big fat wedding is underway. Merely hours before their rehearsed dance performance, five bridesmaids catch up, gossip, eat, drink, and crib about their identical outfits. But that’s not all they have in common. They all dislike the bride! And that’s how Dekh Behen begins…
Akvarious Productions’ all-female cast and crew’s 80-minute bittersweet comedy Dekh Behen about different women (daughters, girlfriends, mothers, sisters, wives) getting through a wedding function left the tricity audience thoroughly impressed.
The cast included Astha Arora, Preetika Chawla, Prerna Chawla, Shikha Talsania, Tahira Nath Krishnan among others.
The play’s writer Dilshad Edibam Khurana says, “Writing is a tough job, but doing so with my co-writer Tahira Nath Krishnan is so much fun. We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses which made the process smooth.”
“Also, the fact that the play is about a group of women – a topic not too far from our hearts – also helped as the dialogues came naturally to us.”
Tahira adds that it was an army training camp-like situation. “The coach and producer really pushed us to take laps around the same field so many times that one could say we vomited the play out in the end,” she says.
“I’m used to being thrown into the deep end and feel challenged in the best way by what I would love to believe is the team’s trust. Some of my favourite lifebuoys (the obvious ‘lifegirls’ joke is tempting, but I’ll abstain) were thrown in for good measure,” says director Prerna Chawla.
“The women involved in this project are all amazing. My co-director Shikha Talsania and I are good friends and work well together. With her, there’s nothing preventing me from having a blast,” she adds.
Talsania says, “It’s a dream come true to make my directorial debut with such a talented bunch of women. Collaborating with them was a truly lovely experience.”
Producer Akarsh says, “This piece has been a rage as it depicts women in an uninhibited manner – they speak their mind, peppered with some obscene language. We wanted to do a play that had the same abandon and showed all sides of women, not just stereotypes.
“We’ve gone one step with an all-female crew. Writers, directors, technicians, designers, there isn’t one man in sight, except me. But once I gave a go-ahead to the script, I kept my distance, just signing the occasional cheque from afar,” he concludes.
