Chasing Miss Blossom

An Australian play adapted to an Indian setting will be staged in Delhi tomorrow

The name "Miss Blossom Callahan Patialewaali" leaves little to the imagination. Emerging from a suburban underbelly, she is a former cabaret artiste who struts in tattered laces, lost in her imaginary world and attempting to manipulate the real one. On September 1, the audience in the Capital will catch a glimpse of her dark world through Miss Blossom Callahan Patialewaali, an Indo-Australian play written by Australian playwright and actor Stephen House, which has brought the Melbourne-based character to the seedy lanes of Old Delhi.

Besides House, the 70-minute play has three Indian directors acting in it as well. "It's a crazy play about 'play', and in this case, it means manipulation," says Smita Bharti, a Delhi-based theatreperson, who has adapted the script of Australian play Miss Blossom Callahan to suit the Indian context, which is now called Miss Blossom Callahan Patialewaali. This would be the play's first-ever show in India. "Even though it's an Australian play set in an Indian context, we didn't have to change much because portraying human behaviour and its ugly side is a universal theme," adds Bharti, who plays the lead role.

The other two Indian directors, Ishwar Shunya and Sonali Sharma, are playing the roles of a drug addict and the landlady of the building where Patialewaali lives, respectively. "Though the theme of the play is universal, there are some cultural differences which we took care of. The language, for instance, is not just English but Hindi and Punjabi, too, as Miss Blossom interacts with other people. Another difficult part was to rewrite the script in Hindi," says House, who plays the role of Max, Patialewaali's westerner beau, adding, "Initially, one of the questions I'd asked was, is there a woman like Miss Blossom in India? I now know that this woman fits in India and is here to stay."

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