Although Maskara is not a trained actor, he said he drew a great deal from Das, a veteran of 40 feature films.Īs a form of entertainment CinePlay affords performers many of the spontaneous features of doing staged plays even while allowing the benefits of retakes. Her CinePlay showing here is a story about a lawyer couple Maya and Shekhar who by a quirk of fate end up arguing on the opposing sides in a criminal trial. “I am excited about it as an artist because of the richness of the material we can film,” Das told me. Mohan Agashe in Mohan Rakesh’s celebrated play ‘Aadhe Adhure’ Asked how much an average CinePlay production might cost, he said between $40,000 and $50,000, which is significantly less than even the budget of shooting a single song sequence in a mainline Hindi movie production. Maskara pointed out the cost efficiencies in filming an enactment. Since CinePlay productions are digital in nature their portability increases dramatically and offer both classic and new plays access to global audiences that was unthinkable until recently. Das agreed that the new genre opens up access to a rich resource of world-class plays which are otherwise restricted by geographical limitations. CinePlay extends the influence and reach of theatre by creating a self-sustaining financial model,” explains Maskara, who is also CinePlay’s founder and CEO, on the company’s website.ĭuring a news conference in Chicago yesterday both Das and Maskara explained that at a time when economics trumps art in Hindi cinema, what they are offering restores some of the lost glory of high quality story-telling. Current economic constraints have challenged the theatre community. It archives iconic plays, allowing future generations to experience unforgettable stories and performances. “CinePlay allows stories from theatre to break the constraints of economics, geography, language and accessibility. This particular play has been written by Das and Divya Jagdale and runs 79 minutes, which is slightly shorter than the average duration of about 90 minutes for a typical Hollywood movie. The couple is currently showing their latest play “Between the Lines” directed by Ritesh Menon in some American cities. The sets remain what they typically are in a theater production but they become part of the filming with lighting, sound design and camera movements like a regular movie. Although filmed plays have been around, CinePlay differs significantly in that its productions are plays shot over several days as if they were films. Well-known actress Nandita Das and her businessman husband Subodh Maskara are busy perfecting this new genre of entertainment that draws on the best elements of filmmaking and theatre.ĬinePlay offers the intimacy of staged plays and gloss of the movies. Not only do they meet but they meet rather well, thanks to CinePlay which could well be a new genre of online and cinema hall-based entertainment. Theater is theater and movies are movies and the twain shall never meet. Goldberg’s interest in theater design continued at Marina City and in the later San Diego theater proposal.Subodh Maskara, left, with Nandita Das in CinePlay ‘Between the Lines” Preliminary studies were done for another Cinestage in Brussels (1957) but all work stopped when Todd was tragically killed in a plane crash the following year. Most all was lost in later years however Tim Samuelson and Frank Kruesi recovered some ceiling panels, which were restored for the 2011 Arts Club show and are now on display at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The lobby featured dramatic photo collages amid striped marble, with an unusual star-like ceiling with small plexiglas rods, backlit with neon, and finished in gold (Dutch) leaf. The design featured glass entry doors for the theater with etched circles in a geometric pattern, internally lit with neon tubes in the door frames. Albers prepared a model composition for the entry, which Goldberg completed. Goldberg worked to incorporate the new aspects of wide-screen projection with a revised seating arrangement, more spatially engaging and dramatic.įor the entry and lobby, Goldberg reached out to Josef Albers, his teacher from the Bauhaus, for design concepts. The main hall featured the emerging new technology of Cinestage, an interest shared with Michael Todd at the time. This theater design was a remodeling project, combining the Harris and Selwyn Theaters on State Street in downtown Chicago.
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