Doon tours with "The History Boys" to Delhi & Mumbai
The Doon School drama group The BHKBC (The Boards Have Killed the Bard Company) is touring with their Annual Production ‘The History Boys’ by Alan Bennett. The show will be performing in Mumbai and Delhi on the 9th and 11th of October respectively.
If you are free on those evenings, do come and check it out (the details of the venues are given below). The show starts at 7 PM (7: 20 in Bombay) on both evenings and runs to 1hr, 45 min (leaving enough time for a drink afterwards!). There are no tickets being charged for the shows.
4th October
Vittal Mallya Hall
The Doon School, Dehradun – 248001, Uttarakhand
0091-135-2526400
11th October
The Vasant Valley School
The Vasant Valley School, Sector C, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi - 110 070
0091-11-2689 2787
0091-11-2689 6547
9th October
Sophia Bhaba Hall
Sophia Campus, Bhulabhai Desai Road, Mumbai – 400026, Maharashtra
0091-22-23538550
The History Boys’ was written by Alan Bennett in 2004 and was instantly a hit. Many people wondered why? A first read of the play makes it seem simple, commonplace and even ordinary. The second reading makes it sound a little more interesting as a picture of a stage starts to form before your eyes. The third read creates a classroom of the usual sort – desks, chairs, notice boards and maybe even teachers and students. You then picture the Headmaster’s Office and the Staff room, glanced at only furtively while desperately trying to avoid ever having to go in. And then it hits you. This is your story. Or something that could very easily have been.
The play is set in the early 1980s, in the last year that entrance examinations were held for students to be eligible to attend Oxford and Cambridge. The Headmaster of this Sheffield grammar school is desperate to be able to claim that the alumni of his institution are from Oxbridge. The students have just completed their A Levels and find themselves on that rather precarious edge between school and university, best defined by the so-familiar and only answer available, ‘I don’t know’. The teachers believe that the students will do fine left to their own devices. That is, until the Headmaster pulls an ace out of his sleeve – a tutor. This specialist brought in to help the students get into the various colleges clashes with everything at the school and what ensues is what the play is all about.
The play is still running to full houses in London and has toured the United States and Australia to great success. It has recently been made into a film with rave reviews and has bagged awards everywhere. The Doon School brings the play to audiences for the first time in India, though we at the BHKBC always warn our audiences to never have high expectations of anything we do. We specialize in, as a wise man once said, “…the otiose, the trash, the department of why bother”. That, and we promise not to throw up all over you this time.