There’s a lot going on at Grand Life Apartments in Chennai, though nothing is out of the ordinary. A mother anxiously awaits her daughter’s annual visit from abroad, a new resident arrives from abroad, a heartbreak occurs while settling into a rented apartment, and elsewhere, another tenant is afraid to enter the arranged-marriage market. The community is always under threat of redevelopment.

The apartment, its tenant and the very charming city of Chennai, from Hema Sukumar’s 2023 novel Minor disturbance in Grand Life ApartmentNow we will come alive on stage. Madras Players will present an original stage adaptation by Nikhila Kesavan, who is also directing the play.

Nikhila remembers coming across this novel by chance a year ago, when she happened to watch a podcast with Hema. “When I read the synopsis of the book, I was immediately drawn to the fact that it is based in Chennai. While we have staged English translations of Tamil plays, this novel felt special. It felt like each character was facing a challenge or conflict that was relatable, and I also enjoyed the humor in the book,” she says.

In the past, Nikhila has adapted four novels for the stage, including Jhumpa Lahiri’s a temporary affairAnd Chetan Bhagat’s five point someone. with Minor disturbance in Grand Life Apartment She says that as a novel that is rich with observations and descriptions, it was important for her to keep with the rhythm of the book when working on the stage adaptation. “If there were short scenes in the novel, I made sure we retained these for the stage. I kept the adaptation simple, and did not need to employ any complex techniques or resort to multiple monologues,” she explains.

The cast includes a mix of Madras Players veterans and emerging talent; Anu Bhaskarraman, Anuradha Rao, Bhavya Balantrapu, Faheem Moosa, Janaki Sreenivasan, Junni Sreenivasan, Smriti Parameshwara and Venkataraghavan play characters who navigate love, family ties, loneliness and more, as they come to terms with the idea of ​​home.

To bring an apartment complex to life on the Museum Theater stage, Nikhila says she worked on coming up with a minimalist set that could take on the different spaces the tenants live in. She adds, “The play is a quiet play, with more focus on dialogue. For us, it was important to bring a sense of home and belonging, and not flesh it out through elaborate stage arrangements.”

Minor disturbance in Grand Life Apartment It will be staged at the Museum Theatre, Egmore on 26, 27 and 28 June at 7.15 pm. from ticket price ₹beyond 300 mdnd.in