Ranga Shankara: Samprati 2013

It's home to us.

We can walk around blindfolded, know the numbers of steps to the first greenroom, the width of the wings, what the cyclorama feels like when one rests a tired cheek on it, the taste of the sabudana vades and definitely better than to eat or sleep (openly) in the auditorium.

Ranga Shankara, Arundhati Nag's baby and one of the dead-best theatre facilities in the country, turned 9 on October 24^th this year and will shortly kick off it's 10^th Theatre Festival - Samprati, a platform to delve into the works of Girish Karnad. A fair chunk of the sun for this well known Bangalore playwright.

If we* love RS in the times of cholera, chikungunya and the rest of the year, we simply adore it at festival time. The weather is great, the girls are pretty, some folks are witty and everyone gets down with the buzz and excitement of a darkened theatre and...the lights coming on. The sheer, insurmountable thrill of witnessing live actors on stage.

I spoke to Suri (S.Surendranath) the new Artistic Director of Ranga Shankara, the morning before the festival begins. Despite being immersed in streamers, posters, interns and having to solve every manner of pre-festival crisis, Suri is his game and funny self, one eye on his laptop and the other on Veronica. “Ayyo Rama” he says “not 15 years, just 9. It's the 10^th festival though.” In tandem with the festival in Bangalore, away in Mannheim, Lichtenstein and Nuremberg, the super successful Ranga Shankara-Schnawwl Theatre production 'Boy with a Suitcase" begins it's 8th run. Meanwhile Aru, utterly unphased by the hectic nature of it all, nibbles on a plate of bhel puri knowing, que será será.

So, go people, go and enjoy Samprati! Eid is here and Deepavalli is around the corner. The energy at Ranga Shankara, during the festival, is electric, like nothing else. There will be seminars, discussion, debate, videos of monologues and lots and lots of theatre. Stimulate yourself (ok, I didn't mean in quite that way). Go to Ranga Shankara if you've never been before, you will be so glad you did. And if you are one of that royal we*, well, you know what I'm talking about.

Over to Suri...

1. Any pet dreams for RS, Suri? Where would you like to see it go in the next few years?

I want to reach out to the younger generation. That is where a lot of good and path-breaking things are happening. The new generation or the younger generation has developed its own language. Also, if you look at the demography of the country, about 600 million are under 35 today, making India the biggest youth nation. And about 140 million are around 19 years. How can we forget this audience? It is important that they are given a platform to say something that they really want to say. So in the next couple of years you may see a lot of these young ones performing at Ranga Shankara.

2. Samprati focuses on the works of Girish Karnad...what brought this on? Are you looking at new audiences? New interpretations? 

It is precisely with the same approach we started ideating for this festival. Give platforms to the younger generation. Girish Karnad's playwriting completes five decades came in as a bonus. Then we thought why not marry the two generation. For me it is a wonderful happening - Girish Karnad is from a generation earlier than me and the directors are from a generation after me. It is a kind of bringing tradition and modernity together, like what Girish Karnad has done in his playwriting. For him Modernity and Tradition are not two separate idioms. They are just two phases of any creative process. Like Ananthamurthy says, we must often question tradition to rediscover modernity. And this generation, in these plays, are doing exactly the same. Through Girish Karnad's plays they are questioning the tradition, they are redefining modern society, they are re-interpreting his works in a modern context. Yes I am trying to reach out to newer audience. Even if I get about 20 new audience per day, I am through. I will have achieved something.

3. What about new writing....are you exploring ways to encourage and develop a new crop of playwrights?

This festival could be a step for me to understand the way the younger generation works. In the coming years I think we should allow new writing to be on stage. There is an immediate necessity to get new play writing on board. We need to support new playwrights. Theatre cannot be stagnant. It lives in this moment. And to make it more lively we need this new play writing.

4. Seeing the spate of new and devised works at Ranga Shankara over the last year, do you see the need for dramaturgical interventions or guidance? Do you foresee the introduction of dramaturgs to our theatre-making process?

The need for a dramaturg is more immediate than yesterday. We need not intervene in the process. But certainly we need to guide them. A playwright gives us a focused play. Which is then open to many interpretations with a director/directors. With a devised play, though they may be good, this 'focused element' is often missing. When you have a team writing/developing a play, this is natural. It is then we need a dramaturg, to put the process, and content in order. Not to spill over.

Dramaturgy brings in a kind of cohesiveness to the entire process, from ideating to scripting and structuring the play. The dramaturg, he or she, is as responsible as the director to take the play to the audience. The director can only take the play further from where the dramaturg leaves off.

5. Do you foresee a time when Ranga Shankara spreads its wings and has festivals at other venues? For instance, what about a Folk and Traditional Theatre Festival at Infinite Souls?

Inshah-allah. Right now we are planning to take our AHA! productions to other venues in Karnataka. I come from a strong Karnataka background. I feel children in other towns of Karnataka are deprived of good entertainment. Good theatre, I feel, should reach out to them. Show them what is good. It has some challenges. Language is one. English may not be accepted all over. We need to produce some Kannada plays and take them out of Bangalore. Holding festivals is a humongous challenge. We need a lot of man-power. Ranga Shankara is ready to explore this possibility with a group of like minded people/teams. Why not...

6. What about theatre pedagogy? I have personally been involved with the pedagogy exercises that RS has offered the local community, including the Theatre Pedagogy for Toddlers Workshop. Do you see a Pedagogy Department at RS in the future?

I did not have a clue about this. But once I saw the Portugal team in this year's AHA! festival I am all for it. (Remember I have a grand-daughter, 18 months, who watched the show. She loved it!) We should really seriously start this. Will you help us?

7. How does RS reach out to the community....through interactions with school children....low income group children and so on. In what ways do you hope to further your outreach?

Aru and I are talking every day about reaching out. Our main concern is to get college students to theatre first and then to Ranga Shankara. We need to crack this. When I was running a television channel, we had the same challenge, to get college students to watch the programs. It is one section whose behaviour is very difficult to predict. We need to keep on trying. The school children are with us now. About half-a-million kids have watched AHA! shows at Ranga Shankara. And about one-third of them are those children who could not afford to watch a play. Thanks to Britannia we are consistently achieving this. But there is still a lot to do.

8. How is this RS experience turning out for you personally? Do you hope to leave some kind of mark on RS?

I loved theatre. And am enjoying it. After many, many errands in my life, I feel I have finally settled down. I really don't know about leaving a mark. May be leave a good theatre behind?

July: Dramaturgy, Open University and other ideas

A stream of visitors to the farm. The first avocados. A blitz of Bermuda cherries. A herd of wild boar who rooted around for fragrant khus-like grass bulbs. Rumours of elephants.

Then the team from Centre for Study of Culture and Society on retreat at Infinite Souls. http://cscs.res.in/

Long conversations into the night; about music, Ahmedabad in the 70's, the Identity Project, Aadhar Card. Ashish Rajyadaksha knows Konarak from that time, via the Emergency and rock concerts at NID. I first met Tejaswini Niranaja, during the research and making of Guhya, through her feminist writings, translations and writings on translation. Her idea that translation can be a tool for resistance, that used effectively, the very act of translation can be potentially disruptive, is a powerful one and has had an impact on many of us struggling with issues of multilinguality and form in contemporary performance. No more abject recipients and, further, conduits of words, but more cognizant of the embedded politics of language and text.

Woken early by squabbling peacocks, we walked up the hill to look on Savandurga by dawn. The dogs ran ahead of us, sure footed, eager, 3 patches of beige and white and one flash of black Maggi.

****************************************************************************

I've been wanting to organize and host a Dramaturgy Workshop for a while, inspired by Germany and the Boy with a Suitcase experience, and it all came together in July. Riding on the zeitgeist of all the new writing coming out of Bangalore, we gathered together, well... tremulously, is the word that comes to mind. We were: Arundhati Raja, Gautam Raja, Swar Thounaojam, Ram Ganesh Kamatham, Mallika Prasad, Kamal Pruthi, Deepika Arwind and Ruhi Jhunjhunwala. And me. Just a small group who had put out new works (that included text in English) in the last year and were interested to participate and hone our craft. Ruhi would be our scribe.

The plan was simple and open ended. I would make a presentation on Dramaturgy in general (from traditional to contemporary tenets) and thus a case for intervention between the points of writing and direction. And we would then, in small groups, make dramaturgical interpretations of 6 scripts. The framework for analysis I shared with the group was:

1. Language

2. Form

- Physical Dramaturgy

- Vocal Dramaturgy

- Musical Dramaturgy

- Dramaturgy of Silence

3. Content

4. Voice

5. References and referencing

The scripts we worked on were:

Bogeysystems - Swar (We didn't have the time for Lucky Lobster, though Swar submitted this as well)

The Wedding Party - Kirtana

Coding Music & Vydehi - Gautam Raja

Nobody Sleeps Alone - Deepika

It was bloody hard work, brave work, and yet we plowed through it, only stopping for food and chai. By around 9pm, we were about done, having presented the interpretations to the playwrights involved. Of course there was blood shed, what decent process would expect anything less.

Later in the night, Suresh Jayaram, the hugely well versed curator and founder of 1 Shanti Road made a lovely presentation on Representation of Body in Indian Art. He rooted it in the links between visual artists and performers, beginning with the outward gaze of Raja Ravi Varma's Galaxy of Musicians and taking us through G.Ravinder Reddy's giant bronzes of Telengana women and N.Pushpamala's frozen, highly referenced critiques of female stereotypes. Me, I fell in love with Anupam Sud's stage-like prints. 

Galaxy of Musicians

N.Pushpamala's The Other and The Mother

G.Ravinder Reddy

Anupam Sud

http://1shanthiroad.com/

The next morning, the playwrights spoke briefly about their process and intention as a sort of riposte to the previous day's interpretations. Response, but not justification. It is an eternal battle, between playwright and director. The one's fight for autonomy and artistic independence and the other dragging in that damned fourth wall dilemma - the audience. It raises two questions immediately: Does the playwright write to keep the audience happy? Should the director care about keeping the audience happy? If we substitute 'happy' with 'provoked' there would be no argument. There is a certain sad futility associated with merely catering to an audience and the sub text of the battle is the knowledge that artistic freedom must be absolute. That intrinsic to artistic freedom, is artistic responsibility... and the rest is moot.

But hey, we don't gather for a Dramaturgy Workshop for the good times, right?! A meeting of artists with very different world views, contexts and intentions is bound to be fraught. Hopefully we took baby steps in seeking each other through close readings of text and discussions.

An issue that kept raising itself was that of 'the political'. Is the act of doing theatre, itself a political one? Are we being sufficiently responsive to our times? How has our post colonial history impacted us? How strong is our resistance through the act of theatre?

The other was transculturality. Since several of us had recently been involved in collaborations or trainings with other countries, we spoke a lot about the equations involved. It appears we haven't moved far from Said's Orientalism. Often, even a fairly exposed or evolved collaborator will err in favour of tradition over modernity, unwittingly choosing the embedded value systems the tradition also includes. Choose the mask over the face, so to speak. Let alone foreign collaborators, Mallika spoke of watching a koodiattam performance and then having someone ask if she could do the same! We asked why an urban contemporary artist must be compared to a traditional artist. Apples and pears. Why isn't a traditional artist asked to challenge the politics of gender and feudalism instead?

There were four questions I asked that we try and answer. Suffice it to say, we didn't. Well, not completely. But the questions have been tabled and we are mindful of them and struggling to frame answers in the context of a rapidly evolving Bangalore.

1. Why theatre?

2. Theatre for whom?

3. How do we deal with the changing spectator?

4. Can we be or should we be transcultural?

We ended with 2 promises from Jagriti Theatre that bode well for the future of new works. An online window for new scripts that will be actively promoted and facilitated by Jagriti. A festival of new works at Jagriti. There was also a feeling, perhaps not strongly articulated, but felt - that we should be directing each other's works. That directors, instead of looking elsewhere, should begin by directing plays that have evolved locally. If not as big productions then at least as works in progress, at least to increase community, a sense of solidarity and with empathy for each other's process.

With this, we look forward. To expanding our Dramaturgy Workshops into a public forum, open to all who are interested. To evolving modern Indian tenets of dramaturgy. To working in interdisciplinary ways. To, like Lilly in The Hotel New Hampshire "...keep trying to grow." And unlike Lilly, "...to keep passing the open windows."

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The Dramaturgy Workshop peeps had barely left, when the Open University folks came in! What joy, to have so many friends at Infinite Souls in the course of just a month. To see familiar faces after so many years. Chellam Bennurkar, director of Kutty Japanin Kuzhandaigal, the seminal documentary film on child labour in the fireworks industry of Sivakasi and an old, old friend of our home. Corinne Kumar, whose very face and presence is enough to gladden anyone's heart, one of the Mothers of C.I.E.D.S collective, Vimochana and AWHRC (Asian Women's Human Rights Commission). Anita Ratnam, who I met 20 years ago, when Samvada had published the first ever study on Child Sexual Abuse in India and we used this study in the making of "My Children who should be running, thru Vast, Open, Spaces...' Srini Kaddur, wonderful man, who has a farm in Magadi and a tamarind grove not far from us and who is also part of C.I.E.D.S. Ishrath who works with Samvada. Suresh Jayaram of 1 Shanti Road who stayed over after the Dramaturgy Workshop, bless him. I had asked MD Pallavi to come as well, as she was on the cusp of both: her play C Sharp C Blunt, directed by Sophia Stepf, is one of the new works of the the year generated in Bangalore plus I thought she would enjoy witnessing the Open University dialogues. Kotaganahlli Ramiah was the one missing person, but we held his energy and ideas close. As Pattabhi's younger brother Shiv would say this group "... could have been seated at a banquet for the Gods".

This was our third meeting to forward Corinne's idea of an Open University, with a focus on justice and gender, for marginalized youth. She has the experience of running such a model in Tunisia for many years, working in the Arab world with all the restrictions of a police state. We sat beneath the banyan tree and dreamt out loud what we each wanted for this university. Inspiring to listen to the various experiences and ideas the group brought to the table. (check out their websites for a serious buzz) For me, the dream is to explore Sakshi-path deeksha, for want of another phrase. The concept of the individual as Witness. I first had this idea when I saw Amar Kanwar's The Lightning Testimonies. What would it be like, were we to understand the power and potential of each of us, as Witness? Would this enhance our sense of agency and engagement with the world around us? Would we then be less cynical, less apathetic?

We decided to make a small start with a Hunime Habba in Vardenahalli. We spoke with Nagamma, Sankaramma and Lakshmamma and asked them what they thought? How many people would attend? How does a play by Ramiah's Adhima group from Kolar sound? And some music? Janapada? Dollu? Harikathe? Once Nagamma bit, there was no turning back. So dates were fixed in November.

And that's that, right? We can only perform, put ourselves out there and see what happens next. Talk to our neighbours, Rame Gowda, Hanumanthappa and Ramchandra, spread the word, meet by moonlight and enjoy some theatre and music together. Side by side.

Sounds like a start to me.

http://www.cynthiacockburn.org/Bangaloreblog.pdf

http://www.samvada.net/

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Farm Song: Peacocks and Cicadas

Sunset at Infinite Souls Pic: Chris Burchell

Just after the last full moon, we sat out beneath the big banyan, exhausted and happy, the trees mad with prescient rain-scent, night-excitement and insect-song. Check the crickets, I said and Chris said No, they're cicadas. The crickets just chirp but the cicada make the full on tree hum. And since there are no coincidences, this morning: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/06/songs-of-the-cicada.html

As it happens on lazy Sundays, one thing led to another and I found, lo and behold, an FB group working on photographing and identifying Indian cicadidae. Beautiful, noisy little musicians of the insect world, J.G.Myers wrote of them in his book Insect Singers: "It will not therefore surprise one to find the greatest musical artists of the insect world among its deepest drinkers."

Further, his second chapter is on the appearance of cicadas in Art, Mythology and Literature. Aristophanes, who will appear again shortly, mentions them in The Birds:

"But in flowery meads I dwell

Lingering oft in leafy dell

When the inspired cicadas gladness

Swelling into sunny madness

Filleth all the fervid noon

With its shrill and ceaseless tune."

Aw...

No affection lost there. Perhaps they kept him up, on hot summer nights, with their endless search for sex and drink, those damned cicadas.

One time during the rains some years ago, after many a Dionysian revel, Chalam was snoring about as loud as the thunder and we spent the night poking him with bamboo and chucking pillows at him, to no avail. The next morning he woke up and has complained since about the frogs in the pond and the racket they made. "Brekekekex ko-ax ko-ax brekekekex...."they went on all night long, never making it to Hades, never bringing back Euripides, just going at it, hammer and tongs, in the pond.

"Brekekekex ko-ax ko-ax....

When the revel-tipsy throng, all crapulous and gay,

To our precinct reeled along on the holy Pitcher day, 

Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax."

Aristophanes again, observer and purveyor of all things natural and unnatural. Aeons ago, in The Valley School, my students performed The Frogs chorus one moonlit night around a different banyan tree.

Pic: Chris Burchell

We have another celebrity noise-maker at the farm, Pavo Christatus or the Indian Peafowl. Mornings are wild with their calls, but run as I might, I never get more than a sight of a blowzy beige and brown peahen, occasionally low-flying from one tree to another. Never have I seen that man bird, not a tail feather nor blue strut in sight. This causes me no end of wonder and pissed off-edness. When Arunchala and yes, lots of Auroville is crazy with peacock, how come I don't see them at the farm? When peacocks just laze around the roofs of the ashram at Thiruvanamalai, how come none deign to visit my cottage? When I have seen, with my own very eyes, those vain critters preen in front of a one way mirror studio door in Auroville, why the hell won't they show here? And yet I hear their keening cry so often...

Maybe I should do as Hanumanthappa says and scatter ragi in the lower fields and then rise at 4am to watch them feed. "Mai-yooo" their call goes, onomatopoeic. Mayur.

When Zui was a month old, we were in the Auroville old Visitor's Centre cafe listening to Debiprasad Ghosh play his magical sarod to bring in the new year. Later, drinking ginger-lemon inside we experienced a strange sound phenomenon. Tables scattered all over the cafe beneath the vaulted roofs of the Visitor's Centre, and we could hear, utterly clearly and intimately, conversations several tables away from us.  Our own possibly wandered away to entertain another table. All these many years later, sitting on the verandah at the farm, we hear Zui and Siddharth having a conversation on the hill. 45 minutes away from us through bramble and briar and then up the metamorphic buttresses and outcrops of neighbouring Savandurga.

Another unusual sound was once heard in the very wee hours. Chalam and Johnson, having said bhum Shankar most fervently, were off on a walkabout. The next day they reported a tale of fear and mystery; of foxes and wild dogs circling the farm and passing calls between them like football players. A high pitched, thin sound that volleyed from side to side, now here, then gone, then re-appearing on the diagonal side. We wondered if it was the owls on the tamarind tree, or perhaps Puck looking for some Love-in-Idleness, but they were certain this wasn't an avian sound.

Besides these and the cacophany from the parrots on the young banyans, all we have is the morning bird song. And Nagamma talking to Sankaramma from 3 inches away. Not much else. No traffic or cell phones. The butterflies don't make much noise.

Pic: Chris Burchell

There are other seasonal man-made sounds: the nightly singing when a stray farmer sleeps in his field to keep the wild boar away from his crop, Rame Gowda's radio that he occasionally leaves on to keep away a wandering elephant, the sss-sss-thump-thump of disco bhaktigeete via loud speakers of the temple in Sevanagar and the dull blasts of greed and dynamite that tell me with misplaced authority that these beautiful hills and their resident cicadas and peacocks are on borrowed time.

Boy with a Suitcase: 4 Reasons to love the Play

I have been with it for three years now. Have travelled with it and lived with it in close, no, very close quarters. I have watched about 60 performances of it in Bangalore, Mannheim, Bombay, Madras, Pune, Stuttgart and Berlin. And I have been at perhaps 5 or 6 times as many rehearsals, meetings and discussions, so, yeah, I'm super-objective.

Berlin was simply the cherry that did it. The magic catalyst that moved the play from being a wonderful collaboration between two theatres in two countries (Ranga Shankara, Bangalore and Schnawwl, Mannheim) to the big league - a successful, traveling production that draws in large audiences. 

The team was performing at Augen Blick Mal! the famous festival of the best of German theatre for children and young adults. This takes place in gothic-mad-wonderful-tear-drenched Berlin at the Theatre an der Parkaue. There was theatre from all over Germany and about 6 invited international productions or collaborations. For instance, The Blue Boy from Brokentalkers, Dublin and A Papnő from Krétakör, Budapest. 

And there was Mike Kenny's Boy with a Suitcase.

I saw Roberto Frabetti, the godfather of theatre for toddlers and director of La Baraca Testoni Ragazzi at one show and Dr.Wolfgang Schneider, the president of ASSITEJ, was at the premiere. There were many who had come from great distances, dramaturgs and directors, who had heard of this play and didn't want to miss it. Our friend, Agnes Stache-Weisk, who had seen it in Mannheim drove all the way from Munich with her daughter Johanna, to catch a show. There were musicians and young people who came for the music. There were actors, students, friends from JES, Stuttgart who wanted to catch one more viewing, critics, academics. And without exception, they were blown away. The last show saw the cast getting 8 curtain calls and a heartfelt standing ovation. People would wait for the actors after the show and tell them they wept through the play. Others were overcome by the performances (Nikolai Jegorov plays 6 finely defined characters and everyone is so impressed by the quality and emotionalty of the Indian actors). All spoke of the music.

Nikolai Jegorov

I could understand pretty much all of this because by now the play has found its feet and become quite seamless. It flows beautifully and always pushes the right emotional buttons. But what is interesting is that I can still stand to watch it. No, seriously, anyone in the theatre will understand that however fond or invested you are, it gets insane watching performance after performance. But why do I still watch and enjoy this play?  Here are 4 good reasons:

1. The actors and musicians appear to care for each other, in that they actually listen to each other and perform so as to lift each other. BV Shrunga and David Benito Garcia, are as different as two human beings could be, the one satvic and vegetarian, the other hedonistic and deeply carnivorous. The one from Hanumanthnagar, Bangalore and the other of Spanish origin from Luxembourg. Yet when they perform, we've been asked so many times if they are brothers, so lovely is their synchronicity, keeping it spare, keeping it upbeat. When they run forward in fear and wonder, the Naz and the older storyteller Naz, to look at the guns, they have a certain step and angle to their necks that is full-on doppelgänger. The Naz that we see in Shrunga is as yet naive, underexposed, over emphatic. David's Naz has been through it all and is ironic and acerbic in his view of the world.

David Benito Garcia

BV Shrunga

2. It has moments in it that I find subtle and deeply touching. Bookending the play are two such emotional milestones. When the play starts, the adult storyteller Naz recollects home and wonders what it means, this word - HOME. In the same frame we see the young Naz asleep in his tiny home as his mother, played by MD Pallavi, covers him with a blanket and sings a Kannada lullaby - Haavi kandamma. One single moment and it conveys so much. A blanket and a lullaby: the multi-lingual quality of the protagonist's adventure, a mother's love, memories of security, nostalgia for a time that has passed. At the end of the play, Naz reaches London, the city all his dreams are built on. He comes to his sister's home, the sister who migrated years ago and whose postcard has been Naz's inspiration and lodestone. In a heart-stopping moment, his sister (also played by MD Pallavi) screams at him - "Why did you come....it's the same old world....people spit at you in the streets....there's work for everyone who will do the dirtiest jobs...it's like hell on earth" and we see Naz's dream world slip away from him. His world of Sinbad stories and fantastical escapes from evil antagonists. In that moment the play becomes hyper-real and you see in the sister and Naz what it really means to migrate: the loss of home. There is a third moment that I always wait for. Naz and his mother are in a refugee camp. A human-trafficker, played by Nikolai Jegorov, is present. The mother tries to negotiate with him to take them away from the camp. But she doesn't have enough money so he walks upstage, away from her. She harshly says to Naz "Wait here"and briskly releasing her scarf covered hair so it flows loose she walks to the trafficker. On the sarod, Konarak Reddy, plays Kaushik Bhairavi. We don't hear the exchange between the mother and the trafficker, but so much is implied.

MD Pallavi

3. What a work of art a good set is. Our set designer, Christian Thurm, went through many variations - with projections, without, an arc-like set, dark brown walls and then finally settled on a set that consisted of 2 parts:
(i) The upstage musician's area which consisted of an installation of metal stands and instruments. This was a complex arrangement with a large curved metal frame for the thunder sheet marking stage right and the guitar stands and an interesting horizontal stand for the sarod marking stage left. Centrestage was an array of drums including a cajon, darbuka, wind chimes and bows. In between were 2 rigged sewing machines, small instruments such as cymbals, rattles, a shruthi box, ocean drum, horns and a large basin of water 
(ii) The downstage actor's area which consisted of 4 canvas covered boxes about 6ft x 2.5ft and one small bench of the same fabric. That's it. 4 boxes, 1 bench, the actors and the stage. Un moment...one details should not be omitted. The boxes were covered with an off-white canvas as I mentioned before, but their corners were finished with beige leather, much like the corners of suitcases! I thought this was a marvel of deconstruction and wit.  
As I watch the play I always wonder at the mind of a set designer and particularly the mind of this one. The contrast between the density upstage and the vacuity downstage, the metal versus the wood. How did he come up with such a simple set that allows the actors to create stories on stage that stimulate the imagination of the sudience. In the course of the play the boxes are different homes, walls, the mountains, a boat, a lorry, shelter and eventually a tiny ghetto allotment. No tricks, everything in evidence. Spartan.

4. The music is always a live concert. This is not theatre music playing some kind of background-soundtrack-musak role. This is bold, rock-worthy, emotional and skilled. Embedded in the dramaturgy and in each the scene, always with the actors, lifting every moment, every character. Nothing remains static because of this. Another feature of the music is the sense of irony and subtext it imbues the narrative with. The play begins with Pallavi singing Padharo Mhare Desh against the other actors murmered chant of the word for 'home' in their native languages. So... Zuhause, Mane, Veed, Dom, Casa and so on. Padharo Mhare Desh is itself a Rajasthani song that rings a welcome. 'Welcome to this great land', goes the song. And the audience indeeds hears the invitation in Pallavi's singing.    
The first turning point, the arrival of guns in the village, is marked by loud rhythm guitar and cajon on the public address system. This jolts even the most somnolent child into feeling the danger of the situation. Cheap toys are used to make a soundscape in the refugee scene. A Kannada lullaby becomes the essence of the mother. Sarod, the descendant of the Afghani rubab, is used to communicate the desert feeling of the refugee camp as well as the loss of something great. Real sewing machines create a drone against which Konarak taps his guitar to create harmonics and Coordt plays polyrhythmically against a standard 4/4. Windchimes play Big Ben to signify Naz's arrival in London. Konarak's heart breaking harmonic minor alaap on Sindhu Bhairavi is the undertow of the conversation between the siblings that culminates in the sister's breakdown.

I was always against the last song, rhythmic mash-up of Padharo Mhare Desh and the Home chant. I felt it was a bit of a pastiche and added on simply to create a shiny-happy feeling after what is clearly a sombre moment. So I couldn't explain why my heart soared every time I heard Pallavi's voice begin singing after the last line, Naz's "And thank you for all the stories." And then I heard the director, Andrea Gronemeyer, once tell a discussion group that, for her, the most important moment in the play is when Kryzia, essayed with magic and charm by Simone Oswald, replies to Naz's bleak retort about having nothing - "Nothing? You've got stories."

Simone Oswald           Photo credit - Christian Kleiner

So that's why my heart soars. Because this play is eventually about that backpack that we carry, which contains something far more precious that smartphones or fast cars or whatevs. Our past. Our stories. That is why.

So, yeah, I figured who better than me to write a review :)

Andrea Gronemeyer

Liminality

I've never known this feeling before, except perhaps at international airports. It came upon me like a wave on January 1st 2013 and hasn't subsided. Like burrowing into a rabbit hole and staying put. Hesitant, tremulous and yet feeling on the verge of something new. With Liz Lemon I said "Yes to life, yes to love, yes to staying in more!"

Liminality. That's what it is. From the Latin līmen, meaning 'threshold'. A state of 'in between-ness', so to speak. To exist between states...between solid and liquid? What's that? Like jelly? Yes, no, maybe, ok. It's the feeling in between something and something else topped with a sound helping of the between-ness of  somewhere and somewhere else. Whaddyatalkinaboutgoddammit... Ok, this -

We are currently living in a fragile space between the city and the farm, between 58 St.Mark's Road and Infinite Souls. And now I damned well understand the meaning of liminality and airports have got nothing on this, baby.

Evenings we sit in the garden, lit by the fairy lights and stars, drinking and talking, remembering. By daylight we memorize precious views.

1. The one of Mrs.D'Mello's gabled roofs and her avocado tree
2. The one down our lane where Ramani used to sit, where Geeta watered her tulsi plant, where Mrs. George peered out at us from behind her curtains
3. The one of the bamboo through the alcove and our bedroom window
4. The one of the roof and beams above our studio and soundproof room
5. The one of the tiles of the attic roof that I can't think of without wanting to weep for the quantities of beauty and rapture that went down under those tiles
6. The one of Zui's pink attic wall with black roses stenciled on and Jimi Hendrix peering through his smoke
7. The one of the holy archways created by the Pink Cassia, the Eucalyptus and the Christmas tree
8. The one of Barny parking his Suvega and walking in the driveway "Hi Patta...I've got some whiskey for you from the Army Canteen."
9. The one of the Lovely Room with its blue and white stripes...through the kitchen French doors
10.The ones that only Kuki can see: of Mrs Doherty and her potted cactii, of Gunboard Jack and his motorbike, of the Vedamanikam's and their girls, of the rikshaw man who parked his rikshaw in the garden and in exchange drove Grandma Lil to Bowring Institute to play cards, of Powell Thatha's roasts hanging in the kitchen

The dogs rush around our legs saying to us "But we'll be there. We'll form the bridge between the old and the new. We'll love you as always, unconditionally, yadda yadda woof woof."

We'll be gone, dear home. September's round the corner. We've loved every pore of you. We loved you in the winter when you were at your beguiling best, dressed in Santa curtains and plum cake. We loved you as we lay hot and desiring electricity, afternoons of the summer load shedding. We even loved you at your worst, wet and flooded during the rains, walls damp, mildew filling cupboards and making a mockery of our books and paintings. We are melded to you. But we'll be gone. Would that you go peacefully too.

In the rains...
Pic credit: Lekha Naidu

A Series of Unrelated Events

The team from The Concerned for Working Children and the Saturday morning batch of Theatre Lab began shooting The Voice Bhootha On Saturday 2nd February 2013. They all drove in together with Prudence, the canine star of the show. By the time they arrived and Om declared that he was starving and Nagamma and Shankaramma managed to rustle up their unique variety of jungle eggs (scrambled with curry leaves and chillies) and toast and all the kids had eaten, kissed Prudence, fed her Mixed Fruit Jam, got sticky, got washed and then got into costume...it was 10am. Oh well.

The first sequence involved a bunch of shots in the fruit orchard with Kaya and Sharanya doing a scene around the trees. Om and Siddhanth were armed with Handycams and got busy documenting behind the scenes stuff. 10 takes later it was blisteringly hot and Yash declared, brightly and loudly, that he was bored. So I delivered him into the able babysitting hands of Thirpal who gave him a stick and got him to start whacking the huruli that was drying in the round rehearsal space.

Sonakshi and best buddy Prudence

Then there was Siddhanth who had to be shoved up a tree (push by Santosh, pull by Kutta) for his Bag-Snatching scene. The twins, Sanjana aka Dottyamma and Shivanka aka Juttamma, messed around in their matching skirts and beads while trying to retrieve the bag. The whole while Kritya whinged and whined that she wanted to be up the tree herself. Sonaskshi entertained herself with Prudence and the teenagers...well, they're unintelligible and communicate in grunts and giggles, essentially a 4 member law unto themselves... so we just ignored them.

Resting between shots

Learning Sign from the boys from Association of People with Disability

50% of the teenagers who grunt and giggle

By the evening we were a large crowd including two guys from Association of People with Disability who were there to teach the kids Sign Language, 5 members from the CWC team, Nikhil Bharadwaj who would play the Police Constable, 10 kids, Shankaramma, Thirpal and me. In this way day turned into night and night turned into Sunday and Kavya arrived with 10 more actors from CWC and a box of brownies. Thus our numbers grew...

'Wherefore art thou Romeo...'

The PC's hat and stick

Shooting the "Waiting for a Bus" scene

Setting up for the roadside scene

Waiting for the bus...

Police Constable Nikhil Bhardwaj

Still waiting...

Kutta prepares...(just before he heads off to the Kumbh Mela)

Ashwathi directs

PC Nikhil chats with Santosh and Ashwathi...

...and rescues Ridhi 

Marching forward...

....the Child Brigade arrives

Best Friends Forever

Hanging out in costume

More hanging out...

Juttamma

Stick Insect

Prudence in costume

Consider this....

About 10 days ago, three elephants graced our farm. This in itself is not unusual, especially now, in the dry, dry season. But this time they had wandered right up to our cottage and there was dung besides the pond. Thirpal said there were probably two cows and a calf and that they came by at 12 midnight. I have no idea how he knows this for sure as he falls asleep by 7.30pm and is terrified of stepping out of his cottage alone, but still.

Bamboo Flowers
Photo Credit: Bakki Kudva

Photo Credit: Bakki Kudva

Elephant dung near the pond...

The day after the kids left I was walking around the farm with Viju chikki, Vidu chikki, Arun Uncle and Bakki Uncle when we came upon something unusual hanging from the bamboo. At first we thought it was a nest of some sort. Wasps or gnats perhaps. But on closer examination we found it was efflorescence - the bamboo was in flower. I had a vague memory that this was a very rare occurrence resulting in bamboo rice and meant something, but what, I had no idea. Perhaps elephants like the smell of bamboo rice the way the bears come for the sickly scent of borum and jackfruit?

Google to the rescue and sure enough. Bamboo only flowers under very rare circumstances, usually at the end of their life cycle and when there are climatic or soil changes that trigger the efflorescence. Thus both in India and China. bamboo flower is seen as a curse, an indication of bad days ahead. The logic for this is that bamboo, food of the elephant, dies on flowering, causing the subsequent starvation of elephant populations. Also, the bamboo rice attracts in droves the elephant's vahana, the rat, and this leads to the destruction of the farmer's crop.

Check out Shalini's wonderful article on Bamboo Rice and cooking with it in Coorg...

http://www.acookeryyearincoorg.com/?p=1129

Talking about food (I've written about this before) can only only only bring to mind my three chikkis: Sowju, Viju and Vidu. Amma and her three sisters talk about food all the time and this weekend we had the truly spectacular pleasure of having all of them and their respective husbands stay with us at the farm. I told you our numbers just kept growing, much to Nags and Shanks delight. The idea of my chikkammas as well as Amma being at the farm simultaneously was causing them to spaz at regular intervals. Of course lots of food was cooked, could you possibly expect anything else?! From Amma's superb Prawn Biriyani to the unbelievably simple delights of wood roasted sweet potato and melting butter under a starry sky. But the meal that had everyone gobsmacked was cooked by Nags and Shanks for Tuesday's lunch:

• Massaopu
• Ragi Muddhe
• Gongura pachdi
• Alugadde pallya

The gongura is grown on the farm (in honour of Kuki's love of Andhra food) and Thirpal brought in a tender bunch of leaves, delicate and edible raw. Shanks cooked these down with red tamarind from the kitchen tree, but I missed the other ingredients. This much I do know, the raw chopped onion added at the end just nailed the pachdi.

I love massopu and muddhe. Nags makes it so uncomplicated, just mashing down cooked barke soppu and togri with tamarind and tomato, and seasoning it with crushed garlic, green chillies, curry leaves and mustard seed. Yum yum yum, I swear to God, and all grown locally. 

Amma's Fab Prawn Biriyani

1kg cleaned and de-veined fresh prawns

1kg Basmati rice

1/2 cup oil

4 inches of cinnamon sticks

6 cardamom pods

8 cloves

4 bay leaves

6 medium onions sliced

1/2 cup fresh, made-from-scratch ginger and garlic paste

6 chopped tomatoes

8 sliced green chillies

1 small bunch chopped coriander leaves

1 small bunch chopped mint leaves

salt to taste

Fry the cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, bay leaves and onions till the onions are cooked and fragrant. Add the ginger-garlic paste and cook till the raw smell vanishes. Add the green chillies, tomatoes, coriander and mint. Stir for a minute or so. Then add the prawns, rice and salt and cover with enough water to cook. I calculate it at approximately 1 and 1/2 cup of water per cup of rice. Put it on a low flame till just cooked and turn it off.

You can garnish it with a mixture of more fried onions/coriander/mint.

Serve it a simple grated cucumber raita.