_d.png "Independence Day 2025")
A Mumbai-based playwright’s script on spinal cord injuries is being performed by a multi-city cast for a global audience and supported by spine surgeons’ associations worldwide
Dolly Thakore
Meher Pestonji
Senior writer-poet Meher Pestonji had initially submitted the play for the Sultan Padamsee Playwriting Award. It became part of the selection team’s long list of notice-worthy works, and during online readings, Kolkata-based Sumit Lai Roy, the founder of Red Curtain International, decided to take it on as a full-scale project.
For Lai Roy, who has practised “good theatre for a good cause” since the ’70s, Turning Point rung a bell. He was reminded of the Spine Society of West Bengal, which had hosted the Mastermoshai play on the first SPI Day in 2016. As he signed up the sponsors in July, he adapted the script to the Zoom virtual meeting platform, working closely with Pestonji for all rewrites required for the medium of digital theatre. Turning Point is also a patchwork of artistes based in three Indian cities. Lai Roy repeats happily that “geography has turned history” in the cyberspace. Just as the audience can be from anywhere, the play’s cast is situated in Bengaluru, Kolkata and Mumbai, from where the veteran Dolly Thakore plays Mrs Paymaster. Passing props across geographies takes a lot of attention to detail, which is why a stage manager in Chennai shipped similar props to artistes, so that a cup of tea poured by a character, performing from Mumbai, can reach an actor in another city, but in the same scene/screen.
The Red Curtain International runs on a pay it forward philosophy. Anyone can watch the play free, and donate its show to a new viewer as a token of support to a cause. There are no tickets and that’s a turning point!
WHAT: Turning Point
WHERE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/turning-point-tickets-166967707909
WHEN: September 5, 7 pm IST
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