The play ‘Grand Rehearsal’ currently staged at Mandala Theatre explores the cycle of balance and imbalance in life. People constantly strive to find equilibrium in life so they can achieve their goals smoothly. However, circumstances are rarely that simple. Individuals face numerous challenges, and as a result, they rarely remain fully balanced. Sometimes, just as balance is restored, something breaks down again; other times, new problems arise after equilibrium is achieved. Yet people do not give up—they seek solutions and try to regain their balance. The unfortunate truth is that this process keeps repeating in different aspects of life. The play ‘Grand Rehearsal’ vividly portrays this dynamic. Balance and imbalance, harmony and discord—these are the core themes of the drama.
At times, the play also evokes memories of the abstract works of Russian painter Kazimir Malevich. His paintings were distinctive and often unexpected. They heavily featured thin, thick, long, or short geometric lines and shapes, yet were never fully complete; instead, their intentional incompleteness embodied a unique sense of wholeness. Although Malevich’s artworks did not depict any specific stories, objects, or real-world representation, they were emotionally rich. Similarly, ‘Grand Rehearsal’ never appears fully complete throughout its long performance, yet the audience experiences a sense of completeness. The characters in the play resemble Malevich’s geometric shapes and the blank spaces on his canvases. Through its staging, the play attempts to bring Malevich’s suprematist art to life on the theater stage.
Malevich completely eliminated objects, shapes, and realism in his paintings, reaching the concept of the ‘Black Square’. He believed true importance lay in absence of objects and pure emotion. Likewise, ‘Grand Rehearsal’ breaks away from traditional notions of theatrical completeness, plot, and structure. It subverts representational theater, prioritizing chaos, physical gestures, and energetic performance instead. Just as Malevich’s ‘White on White’ induces a sense of void in the viewer, this play shows how life’s vitality often emerges only through disorder and breakdown. It is a deconstruction—challenging conventional styles to produce new forms of enjoyment.
To elaborate, the play is a Nepali adaptation of the British play ‘The Play That Goes Wrong.’ The adaptation retains the essence of the original work. Translators Anup Nyaupane and Umesh Tamang infused local color into the Nepali version, making it highly relevant. It does not immediately feel like a foreign play. The story presented is a ‘play within a play.’ Here, we observe a novice group preparing and rehearsing for a theater production. They practice and stage a suspense thriller called ‘Biheko Tutulko’ (Marriage Knot). However, the performance is riddled with unexpected problems—actors forget lines, technical glitches occur, stage props fall to the floor, props get lost or mixed up, and sets break. In this way, the play becomes a celebration of imperfection and chaos, with laughter and entertainment as the primary focus. The slapstick comedy drama style within the ‘play inside a play’ framework adds to the humor.
Furthermore, the play offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the drama of theatrical production. We witness the struggles, improvisations, scarcity, and sacrifices essential to staging a play. Usually, audiences watch a polished production, but here, the internal conflicts and processes of theater are revealed. The actors’ performances, timing, dialogue, storytelling style, and the way the audience becomes an active participant are all crucial elements of ‘Grand Rehearsal.’ However, the repeated sequence of setbacks during the performance of ‘Biheko Tutulko’ can feel somewhat predictable to audiences, reducing freshness and making parts of the play seem slow and prolonged. On another level, both life and theater inspire dreams of perfection, but reality is always a mix of disorder, failure, and ongoing improvement. The play suggests that the interplay between human effort and fate never ends. True joy comes when we accept this disorder. Watching that ongoing struggle with humor makes life lighter and easier.
Photo credit: Prasun Sangroula.
