Both Kanti and Tanaji are young adults now, negotiating more “adult” issues. They will also return to a theatre world which has been coloured by their vision. Soon after Video was staged, other theatre groups of the city followed suit. A wispy musical on Jack the Ripper was staged recently by a bunch of youngsters, which used the same aggressive language that is typical of Tin Can. But the most significant inheritor of Tin Can’s sensibility is probably Playhouse, a youth theatre group which was set up by Basu, now a 19-year-old, and Safdar Rehman (18), both of whom have worked extensively with Tin Can. Their first play, Boomerang, staged last year, was a “collage of societal conditioning” which used child sexual abuse as a metaphor. Through the lives of its two antagonists, a sexually abused school girl and a peon who dreams big, Boomerang attempted to question the very prejudices that plague our society. Both these youngsters, like most Tin Can characters, were misfits in their worlds, both had scores to settle. “I remember seeing Intro and falling in love with it. I went to Tanaji and Kanti and told them that I wanted to work with them and they were more than willing to take me in,” says Rehman. Playhouse, claims Basu, is a performance group. Using their contacts, Basu and Rehman brought together a creative team of 30-odd school students to put together their first production, which was to be a searing comment on modern society and the way it alienates its younger members.

... contd.