Love ballads are often sung on stage. Very few of them manage to hold the audience’s attention throughout the performance. But Eric Vigner’s theatrical piece, Gates to India Song strikes an intense dialogue with its audience and emerges a clear winner.
Created on the occasion of Bonjour India 2013, Gates to India Song is based on the novels The Vice-Consul and India Song by 20th century French author, Marguerite Duras. It is the story of a love that lived in the India of 1930’s, set in the climax of passion, where at a reception of an imagined French Embassy in Calcutta, a cursed Vice-Consul screams his love for Anne-Marie Stretter.
“Duras has given me the vocabulary and the fundamentals of the kind of theatre I want to create,” says Eric Vigner. “I believe that this is not a simple story that can be narrated in a linear format. You get into the skin of the writer, of how she would have written the play. When I first read the script, I was not able to understand how to interpret it, within the boundaries of grammar, you know. It is more about the literature here,” explains Nandita Das, who portrays Anne-Marie Stretter.
The play will be presented till March 13 at the Residence De France, Nyaya Marg, Chanakyapuri