Event Info
- Language: Hindi
- City / State: Mumbai (Maharashtra)
- Directed By: Purva Naresh
- Produced By: Aarambh Mumbai Productions Llp
Chandni Raatein
Chandni Raatein
Chandni Raatein is a story that spans four nights under a twilight sky where the sun never fully sets. Based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s White Nights, the play is a story of love, longing, and the delicate threads that bind people together. Told with a fusion of Indian classical music and Eastern European sounds, dance, and Hindi poetry, it explores whether love alone can illuminate darkness.
Chandni Raatein is a story that spans four nights under a twilight sky where the sun never fully sets. Based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s melancholic novella, White Nights, the play is a story of love, longing, and the delicate threads that bind people together. A man haunted by loneliness meets a woman waiting for a love that may never return. Their connection deepens and hope springs, as does the possibility of heartbreak. Told with a fusion of Indian classical music and Eastern European sounds, dance, and Hindi poetry woven into the storytelling, Chandni Raatein explores whether love alone can illuminate darkness or if some endings are just inevitable.
Directed By Purva Naresh
Produced By Aarambh Mumbai Productions LLP
Cast -
Mantra Mugdh as Deewana
Girija Oak Godbole as Nastenka
Danish Husain as Narrator
Anamika Tiwari as Madam Ekaterina
Anamika Tiwari as Matroshka
Kaustav Sinha as Vishal
Shimlli Basu as Asha
Trupti Khamkar as Nani
Subhashree Sahoo as Young bartender
Trupti Khamkar, Prerna, Piyush Kumar as Personas
Anamika Tiwari, Shimlli Basu, Subhashree Sahoo, Ashish Mishra as Female Personas
Divyesh Vijayakar as Dost
Raj Shekhar, Ashish Mishra, Sudhanshu Giri as Gundas
Piyush Kumar as Tourist
Piyush Kumar as Sharabi
Chorus by Subhashree Sahoo, Raj Shekhar, Ashish Mishra, Piyush Kumar, Dipendra
Verma, Sudhanshu Giri, Ashvin Sharma, Arihant Jain, Prerna , Pratham Jadhav
Crew -
Head of the Production Yash Khan
Assistant Director and Set Changes Vaishnavi Kulkarni
Creative Producer, Design Consultant, Light Design, Show Caller & Stage
Manager Asmit Pathare
Production and Set Changes Dipendra Verma, Ashvin K sharma, Pratham Jadhav, Sudhanshu Giri & Arihant Jain
Light Operation Adi Shashtri
Light Design Sanket Parkhe
Assistant Director and Sound Cues Hriday Bhatia
Costumes Harsh Dedhia
Music and Keys Kaizad Gherda
Set Design & Fabrication Kushal Mahant
Sound Design Varun Gupta
Indian Classical Consultant Rutuja Lad
On Mandolin Aiswarya Pagare
On Drums Suyash Megh
On Tabla and Dholak Vedant Jamgaonkar
On Violon Joel Richard Lopes
Dostoyevsky’s White Nights is such a simple tale of internalised feelings and conversations that to translate it into any other medium was extremely challenging. Film can still find a recourse through image because an image speaks a thousand words. How does one explore this loneliness through the stage? The design of the bridge emerged through these musings. A bridge gave us the horizon - the horizon gave us the scale of loneliness and how finite humans are. As human beings we are tiny and inconsequential against the horizon. Helpless, lonely and longing, exactly like the protagonists of White Nights. In a world where stories are being told at breakneck speeds, with plot twists and turns and very little character dwellings, White Nights is a very simple tale with no plotty twists. .
As a director and a playwright, I realised I had to uphold the sanctity of the classic and yet make it my own. I had to find my reasons for telling this story; I had to find a design that would not let the audience forget that they are watching an adaptation of a classic and yet make it my own. Music enhances the feel of Indo-Russian fusion but primarily gives voice to the "unspoken". A live band is present like a narrator . All facets-lighting, music, set, writing- work towards lifting the humans on the stage to loom larger than the horizon.