A new theatrical poetry play explores the idea of female friendships and relationships

Artistes Nupur Saraswat and Karunya Srinivasan weave 12 stories through their performance
Karunya Srinivasan and Nupur Saraswat
Karunya Srinivasan and Nupur Saraswat

Taking inspiration from the 1983 single by Cyndi Lauper, Girls Just Want to Have Fun, two women in Bengaluru, Nupur Saraswat and Karunya Srinivasan, have produced a play titled Girls Just Want To Have Friends. The production takes a look at female friendships and will be staged this weekend.

The idea for this show comes from an article that Nupur, a spoken word artiste, had written on female friendships. “I was, in my own personal and private way, trying talk about bad female friendships that I have had. I was looking at how and why they went sour,” she says. When professional dancer, Karunya, her friend and co-artiste read this article, she insisted on adapting it for the stage. So the girls started brainstorming and the Cyndi Lauper hit stood out for them. “Cyndi talks about the ironic and varied relationships she’s had in her life. That’s when we started thinking about how girls just want to have fun but they are not able to maintain relationships because of the patriarchy and competitiveness in our society.”

The show has 12 different stories from Nupur and Karunya’s lives, and from the lives of women who have shared their stories with the artistes. All the poems are penned by the duo. “We are telling stories of not only women who we meet in schools, colleges and offices, we are also telling stories of women we deal with in our daily lives like our mothers, sisters and cousins,” offers Nupur. Theatrical poetry as a genre doesn’t exist, so the artistes are experimenting with it because of their different disciplines.

Rs 350. March 23, 7.30 pm. At Lahe Lahe, Kodihalli

ayeshatabassum@newindianexpress.com
@aishatax

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