Dramatech, one of Delhi‘s most successful theatre groups, turns 25

It is just meetings and files all through the week for IAS officer Rakesh Gupta. But come Saturday and this joint secretary of the UPSC undergoes a transformation. He wears a pink bowtie, picks out a walking stick and calls himself Horace Vandergelder, “a well-known, unmarried, half a millionaire from New York”. He is, in fact, rehearsing for a musical called Hello Dolly.

Gupta is joined by professionals from the city’s top firms — Madhu Rajesh, chief of internal communication in PepsiCo; Sunil Chaudhuri, administration head of BHEL; and Ravi Raj Sagar of Hewlett-Packard, among others. Together, with a sprinkling of students, they form Dramatech, a theatre company that was founded by a few IIT alumni in 1984.

Along the way, Dramatech has not only picked up critical acclaim — their production Ek Jaam Auntiyon Ke Naam (the Hindi version of the Frank Capra movie Arsenic and Old Lace) was selected among Sahitya Kala Parishad’s best plays of 2008 — but also box-office success — over 1,500 seats of their latest production Hello Dolly are sold, and corporate bookings are closed till the end of the year. Even as other groups in the Capital struggle to draw sponsorships and audience, Dramatech is celebrating its silver jubilee with music, dance and laughter — by recreating the Broadway hit Hello Dolly.

“Which song unseated the Beatles from their No. 1 position in 1964? The title song of Hello Dolly! by Louis Armstrong,” says Sagar, who translated the dialogue and lyrics into Hindi for the play. It deals with a young widow called Dolly Levi who wants to marry Vandergelder. The play has enough feel-good ingredients — a happy-go-lucky protagonist, a wealthy but miserly businessman, young lovers and rollicking songs. Sagar based his script on the film version that stars Barbara Streisand and picked up three Oscars, including one for best music. “I would return from work and religiously translate five pages everyday,” he says.

... contd.