A barber shop in small town India is the setting for a new Hindi Play

A barber shop in small town India is the setting for a new Hindi Play

If you raise a doubt about whether the small town location and the narrative of theatre director Sandeep Shikhar's new play Deluxe Hair Cutting Saloon can be identified by Bangaloreans, he will beg to differ.

According to Shikhar, the quirks and concerns of his play's small town characters will resonate with the audience here completely because the issues are universal.

Deluxe Hair Cutting Saloon, a new Hindi play produced by the Bangalore-based Mashaal Theatre Group borrows heavily from real life and takes inspiration from Dhanbad, a mining township in Jharkhand from where Shikhar hails.

The play is staged around a barber shop called Deluxe Hair Cutting Saloon run by a barber called Bacchan. His shop shares space with Jai Ambe Motors, a scooter repair shop on one side and Das Pathological Centre on the other.

The whole play revolves around a certain number of characters who walk into Bacchan's shop every day to exchange news, gossip, discuss problems and talk about how the barber gets into a fracas with each of them. "There really are three shops like this in Dhanbad.
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They have been around for years, since my childhood. In small towns, a barber's shop still rules the roost as far as gossip is concerned because this is where you get to know what's going on in your neighbourhood," says Shikhar. According to Shikhar, his play is not about very rich or poor people; it's about simple people and their simple aspirations.

Every character in his play has a problem which they deal with and get on with life along with sharing and enjoying the life's little joys.

The play also juxtaposes the lives of these simple people with those who represent the so-called white collared jobs. The barber's shop is located on a road called Advocate Mukherjee Road where only lawyers live. The lawyers are a snooty lot and think that their profession is their identity.
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Bacchan has an ongoing complex with them and this comes out in a dream which he plays out every night. In the dream sequence, every night Bacchan turns judge and people are brought to the court where he dishes out justice.

"The characters and their back stories have been inspired by real people I know but I have added a little twist of my own," says Shikhar. He started dabbling in theatre first in his hometown Dhanbad 12 years back.

He has worked with Delhi-based theatre company Abhiyaan and has trained in acting from the Shriram Centre of Performing Arts and has also dabbled in scriptwriting for television in Mumbai. Settled in Bangalore for the last one and a half years, Shikhar has already directed two previous plays called Nariyal Paani and Treadmill.
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Coming back to the question of his play being identifiable with Bangaloreans, Shikhar explains with an example of a salesman from his play who keeps threatening people and telling them if it were not for his tie (a tie being representative of a white collared job), he would come down to blows.

Actually the character is trying to hide behind the facade of the mask of his so called white collared job. Shikhar found this a recurring problem with Bangaloreans.

"So many people here who work in IT don't know what they are doing and what they are representing. Their work just defines them; they have forgotten themselves and who they really are," he says.

At KH Kala Soudha, Hanumanthnagar
On July 24, 7.30 pm
Call 97390 96270
For Rs 100