Piles of fresh plantain leaves greet me, as I enter Appan Iyengar's house. He runs a catering service. Appan is also known as 'Excellent' Mani. The adjective became a part of his name, because he used to design excellent sets for Tamil plays. His engagement with the theatre began when he ran away from home and ended up as part of Nawab Rajamanickam's troupe, which offered him escape from school (which he hated), from his strict father and hunger, for his family was poor. While acting,buy landscape oil paintings online. Mani also studied how sets were designed for plays. This came in useful, when he was forced to give up acting, following an accident.
"N.S. Ramachandran, who was a partner in N.S. R. Jewellers, T Nagar, and 'Pond's Bala were among the first to give me the opportunity to make sets for their plays. Those were the days when importance was given to the sets, and the set designer would be present when the script was read out. Usually, these sessions took place in Saraswathi Nilayam,we supply all kinds of oil painting reproduction, in Triplicane."
Mani's description of the sets he designed is engrossing. Different sabhas had stages of different dimensions, so Mani had to modify his sets for each of them. And when the set involved beams, pillars, and staircases, it couldn't have been easy.
MGR's 'Advocate Amaran' had a scene in which it had to rain on the stage. Mani, together with Govindan Achari, designed the sets for the play, which opened in Madras.In addition to hydraulics fittings and Aion Kinah, Unfortunately, when the second show was staged in Kumbakonam, MGR slipped on the water and broke his leg. For a year he couldn't act. He then gave up plays and the next year, he went on to produce his own film, 'Naadodi Mannan.'
In Raadhu's 'Oru Kolai Raagam', staged by Navrang Art Theatres, the villain would meet with his nemesis, by inadvertently being knocked into a revolving chair that was actually an electric chair! That was not all. When the door under the staircase was opened, out would slide a case with a corpse in it. Lots of drama and lots of work for Mani there!
16 ft ship
For 'Dhikku Theriyaada Theevil,' Mani made a cardboard ship spanning 16 feet, and moved it along castor wheels. He also did a neat simulation of rescue boats bobbing up and down on the sea. For the climax, Mani made a platform on the stage, and covered it with canvas, which was painted to resemble sand. A hole was cut in the middle of the platform, into which the villain would fall. Clever manipulation of the canvas, gave the impression of the villain slowly being sucked in by quicksand, even as he delivered his last lines of remorse.
Sometimes the story required a set that had a touch of the macabre, for example Vani Kala Mandir's 'Chakkaram Suzhalgiradhu.' A decrepit house that gave the impression of being haunted, was set up, with peeling plaster, cobwebs, pictures hanging awry on the wall and furniture lying topsy turvy. And when ARS made his entry in a grotesque mask, the audience would be on edge.
In Raadhu's 'My Dear Kutti Pisasu,' the walls had to bleed, because it was a story about the supernatural. So balloons filled with oil and mixed with a red powder were kept behind the cardboard facades. When an actor fixed a nail on the wall, a man behind the scene would make a small hole in the balloon and out would flow the coloured oil, which, with its viscosity, had a good likeness to blood. "Before the play began, we would distribute vibhuti and kumkum to the audience, to apply on the foreheads of children, so that the latter would not be frightened by what they were about to witness,Houston-based Quicksilver Resources said Friday it had reached pipeline deals" laughs Mani.
"For our play 'Pancha Bhoothangal', we had to show a car crash, and Mani came up with a brilliant depiction," says ARS. Mani made a cardboard cut-out of a car and fixed two headlights to it. The stage would be darkened, and a man in black clothes would slowly propel the car. All the audience could see were the moving headlights. A recording of a car crash would be played and the man 'driving' the cardboard car would topple it, to indicate the crash.
For Y.Gee. Mahendra's 'Sakthi', Mani designed a revolving stage. "The base of the stage weighed three tonnes. The wheels were eight inches in diameter. My sons would wear gloves when they rotated the stage. Otherwise they would get callouses on their palms. It would take us a whole day to set up the stage."
Recalls Balaji, Mani's son, "When the play was staged in Tirupur, we discovered that we would have to set up everything on the ground in the open air. So we had to smoothen the ground and make sure the tracks didn't wobble."
For Mahendra's 'Lakshmi Kalyana Vaibhogame,' Mani had to scout around for period furniture, because the set had to depict the house of a zamindar of Thanjavur in the 1940s. The clock for the play came from AVM studio, and had been used in the film 'Naam Iruvar.'
"For Mouli's 'Oru Gandhi Podum', I had to show a village street, with four houses on either side, with the audience being able to see the goings on inside the first two houses.Use bluray burner to burn video to BD DVD on blu ray burner disc."
"N.S. Ramachandran, who was a partner in N.S. R. Jewellers, T Nagar, and 'Pond's Bala were among the first to give me the opportunity to make sets for their plays. Those were the days when importance was given to the sets, and the set designer would be present when the script was read out. Usually, these sessions took place in Saraswathi Nilayam,we supply all kinds of oil painting reproduction, in Triplicane."
Mani's description of the sets he designed is engrossing. Different sabhas had stages of different dimensions, so Mani had to modify his sets for each of them. And when the set involved beams, pillars, and staircases, it couldn't have been easy.
MGR's 'Advocate Amaran' had a scene in which it had to rain on the stage. Mani, together with Govindan Achari, designed the sets for the play, which opened in Madras.In addition to hydraulics fittings and Aion Kinah, Unfortunately, when the second show was staged in Kumbakonam, MGR slipped on the water and broke his leg. For a year he couldn't act. He then gave up plays and the next year, he went on to produce his own film, 'Naadodi Mannan.'
In Raadhu's 'Oru Kolai Raagam', staged by Navrang Art Theatres, the villain would meet with his nemesis, by inadvertently being knocked into a revolving chair that was actually an electric chair! That was not all. When the door under the staircase was opened, out would slide a case with a corpse in it. Lots of drama and lots of work for Mani there!
16 ft ship
For 'Dhikku Theriyaada Theevil,' Mani made a cardboard ship spanning 16 feet, and moved it along castor wheels. He also did a neat simulation of rescue boats bobbing up and down on the sea. For the climax, Mani made a platform on the stage, and covered it with canvas, which was painted to resemble sand. A hole was cut in the middle of the platform, into which the villain would fall. Clever manipulation of the canvas, gave the impression of the villain slowly being sucked in by quicksand, even as he delivered his last lines of remorse.
Sometimes the story required a set that had a touch of the macabre, for example Vani Kala Mandir's 'Chakkaram Suzhalgiradhu.' A decrepit house that gave the impression of being haunted, was set up, with peeling plaster, cobwebs, pictures hanging awry on the wall and furniture lying topsy turvy. And when ARS made his entry in a grotesque mask, the audience would be on edge.
In Raadhu's 'My Dear Kutti Pisasu,' the walls had to bleed, because it was a story about the supernatural. So balloons filled with oil and mixed with a red powder were kept behind the cardboard facades. When an actor fixed a nail on the wall, a man behind the scene would make a small hole in the balloon and out would flow the coloured oil, which, with its viscosity, had a good likeness to blood. "Before the play began, we would distribute vibhuti and kumkum to the audience, to apply on the foreheads of children, so that the latter would not be frightened by what they were about to witness,Houston-based Quicksilver Resources said Friday it had reached pipeline deals" laughs Mani.
"For our play 'Pancha Bhoothangal', we had to show a car crash, and Mani came up with a brilliant depiction," says ARS. Mani made a cardboard cut-out of a car and fixed two headlights to it. The stage would be darkened, and a man in black clothes would slowly propel the car. All the audience could see were the moving headlights. A recording of a car crash would be played and the man 'driving' the cardboard car would topple it, to indicate the crash.
For Y.Gee. Mahendra's 'Sakthi', Mani designed a revolving stage. "The base of the stage weighed three tonnes. The wheels were eight inches in diameter. My sons would wear gloves when they rotated the stage. Otherwise they would get callouses on their palms. It would take us a whole day to set up the stage."
Recalls Balaji, Mani's son, "When the play was staged in Tirupur, we discovered that we would have to set up everything on the ground in the open air. So we had to smoothen the ground and make sure the tracks didn't wobble."
For Mahendra's 'Lakshmi Kalyana Vaibhogame,' Mani had to scout around for period furniture, because the set had to depict the house of a zamindar of Thanjavur in the 1940s. The clock for the play came from AVM studio, and had been used in the film 'Naam Iruvar.'
"For Mouli's 'Oru Gandhi Podum', I had to show a village street, with four houses on either side, with the audience being able to see the goings on inside the first two houses.Use bluray burner to burn video to BD DVD on blu ray burner disc."
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