Janus

We had quite a fabulous week at Short+Sweet Dubai 2016. Our first play this year, New Year’s Eve, sailed through to the Gala Final as the top pick in both the judges and the audience vote.

So now on to the second play in our four plays planned this year for the festival. This one’s called ‘Janus’, and it’s a monologue that attempts to explore the nature of identity. It deals with stereotypes, reverse stereotypes, and how people aren’t what you think they are. And how sometimes they’re exactly that, or worse.

Part of Top 40 week 3, it's on at the The Junction, Al Serkal Avenue on Friday the 12th and Saturday the 13th of February, 2016 at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets are available on The Junction website and at the venue. This year has seen some crazy action at the box office, so booking in advance is recommended.

See you there!

 

Third Half Theatre presents…

Janus

Writer: Rhea Dixit & Sanjeev Dixit

Director:  Rhea Dixit

Cast: Sanjeev Dixit

A man walks into a grocery store, and it changes his life.

New Year’s Eve

Well it’s that time of the year again. After the rather astounding time we had at the 2015 festival, Third Half Theatre is back for Short+Sweet 2016.

Our first play this year is a beautiful two hander exploring the nature of aging. Without being maudlin the play manages to bring out both the travails of growing old and the indomitable spirit of man that never ages.

We’ve got quite the team for this play. We welcome a true Dubai veteran of the stage for his first play with Third Half Theatre. He joins two of our regulars, one of whom marks his directorial debut. Looking forward to see the results of the team’s hard work on stage.

Part of Top 40 week 2, it's on at the The Junction, Al Serkal Avenue on Friday the 5^th and Saturday the 6th of February, 2016 at 7:30 p.m.

The festival runs from the 29th of January to the 11th of March and will feature over 80 plays. The majority of the plays will be performed at The Junction, a newly opened black box theatre at Al Serkal avenue and the Final will be held at The Madinat.  

Tickets are available on The Junction website and at the venue.

See you there!

Third Half Theatre presents…
New Year’s Eve
Writer: David MacGregor
Director:  Dharam Veer Sood
Cast: Disha Joseph, Eric Dury

We begin aging and moving towards death from the moment we are born. What then, is the point of it all?

Haaye Akhtari

As part of global celebrations marking the centenary year of the legendary Begum Akhtar, Third Half Theatre is happy to once again be associated with Malhaar in bringing you Haaye Akhtari, a soulful blend of Music, Dance, and the Theatre.

The show will feature Begum Akhtar’s most famous ghazals, thumris, and dadras, some of which are innovatively rendered in Malhaar’s signature choir style and accompanied by classical Kathak dance. Interwoven through the music and the dance is the theatre which will depict the life story of her journey as a young school student performing extempore to the fully realized Malika e Ghazal—or Queen of Ghazals—Begum Akhtar.

Haaye Akhtari will be staged at Madinat Theatre, Souk Madinat Jumeirah, Mina A'Salam on September 18 and 19 at 7:30 p.m. The spoken language of the show is Hindi/Urdu and features Indian traditional music in various languages set to classical as well as contemporary rhythms.

Tickets: Platinum AED 350, Gold AED 200, Silver AED 100, and Bronze AED 75.

Tickets available at Madinat Theatre Box Office, Madinat website, and Platinum List online. For further information, please call 050-6882652.

See you there!

Tréteau at the Madinat as part of Shorter+Sweeter

Our little box of magic, 'Tréteau', is a gift that keeps on giving. Having performed to rave reviews at Short+Sweet, Emirates Litfest, and the Sikka Art Fair, it will now be showcased at the Madinat Theatre, Jumeirah as part of Shorter+Sweeter 2015.

Shorter+Sweeter promises to be an annual event that features the very best of Short+Sweet plays performed in Dubai and indeed worldwide. In its first iteration it will feature a selection from the festival's three year history in Dubai.

Some superlative plays; perhaps the very finest scripts from all of Short+Sweet the world over will be on view this weekend and we're quite flattered to stage 'Tréteau'  alongside them as a guest performance.

The full list of plays can be seen here, and we also have the eight reasons to see Shorter+Sweeter here. There has also been coverage for the show in The National and the Khaleej Times.

The shows are on Thursday the 7th of May at 8 p.m. and on Friday the 8th of May at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. at the Madinat. Tickets are available at the box office and at the theatre's website as well as on Virgin Tickets.

Third Half Theatre presents..
Tréteau
Written & Directed by Sanjeev Dixit
Cast: Shereen Saif, Minali Patel, Ushma Shah Jasuja, Cmith Sarkar, Dharam Veer Sood, Siddarth Sivaprakash, Sunil Jasuja

I don’t know how to describe this play; some alternate titles were: ‘It’s All Been Done Before Too’ and ‘Think Inside The Box’. I suppose in many ways it’s a distillation of my love—our love—for the theatre. 

Sikka 2015

Both 'Surgery' and 'Tréteau' get another run, this time at the 2015 Sikka Art Fair thanks to the wonderful folk at Short+Sweet.

Information about the annual art fair along with performance listings, location maps etc. can be viewed and downloaded here.

We will be performing on Saturday March 21st at 17:00 on the Main Stage at Sikka, Al Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood, Dubai.

Third Half Theatre presents..

Surgery
Based on the short story by Anton Chekhov
Hindi adaptation by Sunil Jasuja
Directed by Disha Joseph
Cast: Sanjeev Dixit, Sunil Jasuja

A priest visits the dentist of a small town in India with a toothache but finds himself trapped in the hands of an amateur subordinate… from hell.

Tréteau
Written & Directed by Sanjeev Dixit
Cast: Shereen Saif, Minali Patel, Ushma Shah Jasuja, Cmith Sarkar, Dharam Veer Sood, Siddarth Sivaprakash, Sunil Jasuja

I don’t know how to describe this play; some alternate titles were: ‘It’s All Been Done Before Too’ and ‘Think Inside The Box’. I suppose in many ways it’s a distillation of my love—our love—for the theatre.

'Surgery' and 'Tréteau' at The Emirates Litfest 2015

If you haven't been able to catch our plays at the 2015 Short+Sweet festival, you have a chance to catch two of them at The Emirates Litfest's 'A Short+Sweet Showcase' this weekend.

After a roller coaster Gala Final weekend, we've barely had a breather before we're up and running once again on Friday at 6:00 p.m. at the Al Baraha 1 Ballroom of the InterContinental Hotel, Dubai Festival City as part of The Emirates Litfest.

Third Half Theatre's 'Surgery' and 'Tréteau' will feature along with four other handpicked plays from the recently concluded Short+Sweet Festival. A full list of plays being showcased can be viewed here.

Tickets are available online and at the venue.

Third Half Theatre presents..

Surgery
Based on the short story by Anton Chekhov
Hindi adaptation by Sunil Jasuja
Dialect consultants: Ruqya Khan, Kalyan Chakravarthy
Directed by Disha Joseph
Cast: Kalyan Chakravarthy, Sunil Jasuja

A priest visits the dentist of a small town in India with a toothache but finds himself trapped in the hands of an amateur subordinate… from hell.

Tréteau
Written & Directed by Sanjeev Dixit
Cast: Shereen Saif, Minali Patel, Ushma Shah Jasuja, Cmith Sarkar, Dharam Veer Sood, Siddarth Sivaprakash, Sunil Jasuja

I don’t know how to describe this play; some alternate titles were: ‘It’s All Been Done Before Too’ and ‘Think Inside The Box’. I suppose in many ways it’s a distillation of my love—our love—for the theatre.

'Tréteau' wins Dubai's Short+Sweet 2015

All of us at Third Half Theatre are extremely proud and happy to have won Short+Sweet this year.

'Tréteau' bagged Best Overall Production, Audience choice winner, Best Director and Best Script (shared). Third Half was also nominated for the best Independent Theatre Company of the year. The full list of results and nominations can be seen here.

In what turned out to be a dream Gala Final for us, eleven plays selected from the over seventy plays that participated in this year's festival played to packed houses on Friday and Saturday at Kilachand Theatre, Ductac.

The amazing part about this year's Gala Final was that eight out of the eleven finalists were locally written original productions. This was by far the best opportunity for a Dubai written play to win Short+Sweet in its three year history. All of us at Third Half Theatre are honoured to be the first to earn this milestone. Here's to many more locally written plays shining through in the years to come.

The most consistent feedback on 'Tréteau' has been praise for the ensemble cast who took a difficult play and made it look, well, easy. Their timing, their dedication, their hard work and most importantly the fun they had putting this together showed on stage and was the deciding factor in the play having won over both audiences and judges alike.

I think the cast as also surely all Short+Sweet participants would join me in thanking all our families who have had to put up with some insane hours to support this passion of ours. Thanks are of course due to the festival organizers Liz and Alex and to the wonderful sponsors they brought on board. A big thanks also to the judges and the audiences who wholeheartedly embraced our attempt at something completely different on stage.

As I had said at the awards ceremony, Short+Sweet has always been and remains about the dressing room shenanigans, the camaraderie between different theatre groups and the selfless joy in seeing fellow actors do well on the boards.

Here's to the spirit of the theatre, a microcosm of which we endeavored to encapsulate in our magical 'Tréteau'.