In conversation with KIPAF

In conversation with KIPAF: Recollections and Reflections.

Submitted by

Zooni Tickoo

(was previously published here : http://understandingperformance.blogspot.in/2014/08/in-conversation-with-kipaf.html )

The AnecDOTes session with Performers Independent or Pi had Rahul Bhattachrya and Anirban talking about their journey for the last two years and more. They were invited to talk about “Creating Platforms: Experiments in Cooperation”.  Performers Independent describes themselves as “independent artists' collective, experimenting and exploring the traditional, modernist and contemporary spaces in the cultural paradigm”. By their own definitions, they intend to create a space, a corner for performers who want to make art and performances with bare minimum availabilities. With this aim, Kolkata International Performance Art Festival (KIPAF) got instated as an accessible platform for artists from all genres, from local to international. In this session with AnecDOTes, Rahul and Anirban began to talk about KIPAF after donning dark tinted sunglasses inside the gallery space, in effect setting them apart as performing entities demanding attention. But this position kept itself fluid, as throughout the session they kept wearing them on and off, perhaps wanting to bring about a sense of alienation within the audience. Nevertheless, both the presenters took turns to talk and explain, completing each other whenever needed. However, gladly there were a couple of other KIPAF participants from amongst the listeners present who significantly contributed to the discussion.

They began by elaborating that the intentions behind a project like KIPAF also revolved around allowing artists to indulge in their very quirky yet immediate artistic voices, to execute their preliminary plans or to shape them further. Anirban stated that with regards to Performance Art, one can simply use words like “blah blah blah” and that can in fact be the answer to it. But this did not serve much in realizing a festival or even as an event. Therefore, continues Rahul, that he noticed in Kolkata itself, there were numerous activities going on in the performance arena. It was here that Pi felt that an attempt to give “structure” to these activities was needed. Also then, Kolkata becomes an ideal location, as Rahul genuinely felt that circles of Performance Art had largely become concentrated in gallery spaces of Delhi and Mumbai. KIPAF then also meant for them to think on the lines of “de-curating” and thus they chose not to follow a structure of biennale but do more experimental executions every year with local cooperation.

Anirban explains further that there is no corporate funding involved in KIPAF.  They collect money from localities, or self fund the events. It may look like anarchic, he remarks, but it is not. Both maintain that they are doing things in art but with alternative means. For example, Rahul adds, the organizer may ask the participating audience to walk the whole evening to the destination space, in anticipation of a performance event, but in fact that walk itself would be the performance work. He believes that these interventions “contest the idea of contemporary”. PI as an organization maybe does not totally defend the idea of “utopia” but it explores to create other means and ways in art. This is further given shape in their Web link with vernacular writing reports in Bengali. The purpose, Rahul explains, was to “decentralize” the idea of performance art. Also they wanted to explore how documentation of the art works can follow these new trajectories, through, “sound memories” or through vernacular blogs, etc.

Anirban adds that the design and the dynamics of KIPAF is open. So, many theatrical groups come along to participate, but they rightfully gain their space in KIPAF through practice and then feedback.

At this juncture in the session, Rahul led the discussion open for former participants to include their views. He especially asked performance artist Inder Salim to express what his experience was after he participated in KIPAF 2014. Before he began , Inder thanked KIPAF or inviting him, and he recognized that two of his important works took shape only at KIPAF. But Inder on his part had several interjections to make to Rahul and Anirban. He felt as an artist some of his observation soured the overall experience for him. He pointed out that mainly during the festival there were some “obstructions” created by organizers themselves. His frank and foremost complaint was regarding some “un-professional” attitudes towards other participants and the events scheduled as he pointed out such experience. The fact that artists from far and away had come to be involved at this festival, completely on their own, was not well respected. Furthermore he noted another fellow artist’s statement regarding “Performance Art is Dead” and added that it was “absurd” to declare such statements when in fact the artist community in Indian subcontinent have not exhausted even it’s beginning.

Inder went on to add that when the aim is to give Performance Art activity a shape or a structure, thus it becomes inevitable that some definitions and guidelines be laid out in the beginning itself. Also,  he felt it becomes pertinent that Performance Art must shake or disturb the existing order by having genuine questions and serious approach. At the moment, he expressed doubts on this front regarding KIPAF but accepted that being in nascent stages the festival has immense scope for growth. 

Samudra too interjected the discussion by stating that the autonomous energy to begin with is good but there must be some goals, explicit or not, that the festival should strive to achieve.   Also he felt that the idea of the vernacular that has been stated does not seem to be fully in execution since most of the participant artists are from the mainstream.  To this, Rahul responded in agreement. He shared with the audience that brainstorming on similar lines has already taken place. Therefore, in KIPAF 15 there may be a curated section where some well-known art practitioners shall be invited. This, he confessed is a strategic necessity as the local media needs be involved in publicizing the events so as to disseminate the acts and motives of KIPAF to larger audiences and readers. Then there is an open-call for young practitioners from all around to send their proposals so as to integrate fresh works and perspectives.

The monetary angle of the festival raised several questions from Inder who lamented that KIPAF must rise above the influences of leftist trends typical in Kolkata. He clearly pointed out that “Left as a straight-jacketed strategy” does not work. Otherwise, he added, it would be a great loss to witness KIPAF follow the fate of organizations which aligns themselves towards more political rather than artistic. He suggested some examples of Sarai and SAHMAT, that in the present situation and times, one has to subvert the idea of funding agencies by using their funds while still being able to continue with similar performance motives. Both Rahul and Anirban claimed in agreement that they were in fact looking forward to local patronage and the doors for monetary assistance are of course open.

Samudra, at this point wanted to know about the problems of performance art that PI had encountered in the previous two years. There was also an interest in knowing how KIPAF would handle explicitly subversive acts like stripping or nude performances. Rahul replied that usually they don’t work by procuring top-down permissions from local police, that is why they get local community involved. Towards the end of the discussion, some music could still be heard within the audiences as Pervez Imam, artist/film-maker wondered about the contradictions inherent in the design of the festival. He noticed that the organizers somehow aim towards guerilla performance events, and yet require funds and structure to accommodate the art and artists. Then perhaps a lot of re-thinking about several practicalities need to be done, at conception level itself. Most of the discussion then focused on KIPAF’s structural debates regarding ideology, goals and experiences. However, the works of artist participants over the past two years were not touched upon greatly. Reflecting over all the suggestions above, the session culminated with promise of an upcoming KIPAF 2015 along with improved work over propositions raised in the discussion.

Lal-Ded in Performance

Lal Ded of Kashmir: Shaivite-Sufi Poetess in Performance.

DD Kosambi in his paper titled “Myth and Reality: Studies in the Formation of Indian Culture” tells us that the habits like ‘praying to god’ are extremely primitive in their evolution. By primitive he means to say, always in relation to the discovery of bread or when the primitive human knew how to satisfy their desires and needs. He also tells us that Shaivism then grew out of these primitive an-iconic beliefs incorporating cult-stones, for some people, as a “sublimated highest god”. This icon gave way to include the buffalo horned image of the deity Mahishasura found in Mohenjo daro. Then Parvati killing Mahishasura and as Kali, Shiva’s consort, trampling the prostrated Shiva and infusing life into his lifeless body by the very same act, becomes a peculiar entity in understanding of such gendered spirituality.

From this we can now enter the realms of women in spiritual practices like those of Akka Mahadevi of the Veerashaiva cult from South India, who ran off from her husband’s house in search of her salvation by roaming freely as a naked and unclothed self. After a brief description about Akka Mahadevi’s spiritual alliance we shall move to Lal Ded, especially in relation of Shaivite philosophy, without excluding the Sufi recognition of the same. This paper will be specifically dealing with the life and times of Lal Ded, or Lalleshwari, or Lalla Arifa, or simply Lalla out of fondness, as she is variously known, a 14^th century mystic poetess from the Kashmir valley, who goes on to be accepted by both muslim and hindu followers. Along with an analytical and informative approach upon the subject of Lal Ded, this paper shall also try to look at some of the contemporary performance adaptations based on the vaakhs or saying of Lal Ded, namely by performers like Mita Vasisht- theatre practitioner, Rani Khanam- dancer(Kathak) and Inder Salim- Performance Artist.

Talking of gendered spirituality, Vijaya Ramaswamy in her book called Walking Naked-Women, Society and Spirituality in South India, mentions of Akka Mahadevi’s spiritual practice as a site for transvestism and androgyny. She reports through Bhasavana’s records of her vachana:

Look here, dear fellows:

I wear these men’s cloths

Only for you.

Sometimes I am man

Sometimes I am woman. 

Such subversion in times of when women were not even allowed to approach asceticism and monasticism under the Brahminical Hindu traditions is quite radical and much ahead of that time. For a woman, as is believed, being a truthful daughter, wife, mother, sister etc can lead her to eternal salvation, and so such forms of renunciation are not prescribed. Under such scenario, Akka Mahadevi and Kashmir’s Lal Ded walked out of an oppressive marriage and opted for an ascetic path. Both these woman saints shunned feminine modesty by walking entirely naked and breaking religious taboos. The moment Lal Ded realized the futility of a clothed self, she danced naked and sang in her very famous vaakh:

Lalla, think not of things that are without

Fix upon thy inner self thy thought

So shall thou be freed from doubt

Dance then Lalla, clad but in the sky

Air and sky, what garment is more fair?

Cloth, says custom, but does that satisfy?

In the same way, Akka Mahadevi justifies her walking naked by blatantly saying:

To the shameless girl

Wearing Mallikarjuna’s light, you fool,

Where is the need to cover and jewel?

But Vijaya Ramaswamy also tells us that although both Lalla and Akka Mahadevi renounced their marriages, still they craved for the eternal spiritual union with their rightful pati (husband), Shiva. Interestingly for Lalla, Shiva is an entity that seems to reside in her own self, not outside in any temple or stone. In another of her vaakh she clearly says:

A thousand times I asked my Guru

The name of the one who can’t be named?

The one who pervades the entire cosmos!

One who is the cause of the existence

both finite and infinite! Both inner and outer!

No response! And asking again and again I tired myself.

One also needs to highlight that the aspect of recognizing the self with the Shiva is a peculiar feature of the Trika Philosophy or Kashmir Shaivism. The followers of trika, Abhinavagupta or even Lalla advocated the merger of individual consciousness with the Universal consciousness through the medium of Yoga and Wisdom. Vijaya Ramaswamy also records an important observation that Virashaivism of South India reflects Buddhist concepts like ‘shunyata’, or the state of nothingness, through female Shaivite scholars like Bonta Devi, who is said to be a migrant from Kashmir and hence strongly influenced by Trika Philosophy.

From here, we are now in a position to examine the influence that Lalla had on her contemporary and later Sufi poets and scholars. One of Lalla’s most famous vaakh is:

Shiva is everywhere manifest

Don’t speak of Hindu or Musulman

If you are wise, know yourself.

That is the recognition of the True Friend.

Clearly she loathed the idea of religious distinctions in kashmiri society of those times. Abir Bashir Bazaz, a writer from Kashmir, and a former professor at the University of Minnesota, tells us that Nund Rishi or Shiekh Noorudin Noorani the 15^th century patron saint of Kashmir was greatly influenced by Lalla’s vaakhs and considered her as his guru.

http://kunear.com/styled-25/styled-14/

The very act of walking naked depicts immense potential as a performance. Particularly such an act by a local woman has tremendous possibility to shake the social set up, and can lead to be shunned from society. Lalla’s open resistance againt the social norms has and continues to have a magnificent effect on the current breed of artists in india, at least.

Such pervasive effect of Lalla’s poetry has inspired some artists in the field of performance to illustrate the grandiose of her philosophy through their art. One of the first that comes to mind, specifically considering Lalla’s flexible nature when it comes to religion and the rigidities in society is the work of the kashmiri Performance Artist called Inder Salim and his work titled as “From Lal Ded to Ahad Zargar”(2007). Abdul Ahad Zargar (b. 1882) of kashmir, infused both sufi and Shaivite thoughts into his own poetry. According to Inder Salim, if Lal Ded can be considered the first sufi poetess in kashmir, then Abdul Ahad Zargar, who lived more than a hundred years ago, can be proclaimed as the last sufi poet from the valley.

Taking from Lalla’s oft-quoted vaakh:

My guru gave me this one percept:
‘withdraw your gaze from without’ and focus 
On the self within. That became the turning point in Lalla’s Life
And naked I began to dance.

(Translation by Neel Kanth Kotru)

along with Zargar’s longish poem/song, from which some of the most controversial lines go like this:

I Suckled the milky breasts ( of mother )
of whom I married lawfully ( wife )
Heed not how logicians may interpret it.

(Translation by Dr. M Maroof Shah.)

Inder Salim tells us that “This performance is intended to reconnect ‘ the self’ with that history in order to discover ‘the present’ in its most chaotic form.” His performance included walking naked and stitching the verses from the poem on to his back and later distributed yellow rice, a common kashmiri practice, to the audiences.

Inder Salim Perfroming (2007)      image courtesy: www.sarai.net

(www.sarai.net)

Next we move on to look at another example of the adaptation based on Lalla’s poetry in performance. It is by the prominent theatre artist Mita Vasisht who conceived and performed Lal Ded for the first time in 2004 to the audiences of Mumbai. She mostly performed on the poetry of Lalla based on movement improvisations after she intensively trained in Kalaripaytu and Koodiyattam and devised this performance with its minimalistic features.

Mita Vasisht in Lal Ded

Finally, we look at a recent classical dance rendition by a Kathak dancer Rani Khanam dancing on the sufi verses of Lalla along with Rama Vaidyanathan who depicted, through her Bharatnatyam dance, the verses of poetess Saint Janabai. Rama Vaidyanathan, again, in Mumbai presented another choreography called Mad and Divine at Mumbai.

 

Rama Vaidyanathan in Mad and Divine

Conclusion

We  have, by now, been able to create partially a comparative observations about Akka Mahadevi in South India and Lal Ded from Kashmir. Not only is it clear now that women have been major flag bearers of spiritual bhakti movements in india but also that contemporary art practice is heavily influenced by such women. However, it it necessary to point out that, works of art from Kashmir in particular do not garner as much viewership as can, say, a work about the verses of Kabir. Lal Ded and her poetry has been kept restricted to mostly literature and Linguistics. The works stated here very few and far in between and from outside Kashmir, considering in the field of performance.

Pina Bausch : Dancer as a 'Public Intellectual'

Pina Bausch: Dancer as a Public Intellectual.

The germ of this essay comes from a very basic and simple preposition, rather a question that, Can a dancer be considered a, in terms of Edward Said, public intellectual at all? Can a person so immersed in his or her own body as it's sole instrument of expression, be accorded with the status of any type of intellectual at all? Edward Said, the great admirer of Theodore Adorno and his profound work on music probably comes a little close to feebly touching upon this quesion in his essay called 'The Public Role of Writers and Intellectuals' 2002, when he mentions about the public role of a writer, artist and even a theatre-maker. I believe that is the most closest he comes to when I strive to place intranets as an intellectual. But can not the boundaries of understanding a functioning intellectual also include a dancer, a choreographer, or a Performance artist? Theatre , for a lot of time, has engaged itself into a mode of social reflection and critique. But then again, even Dance and Movements have in their very being, contained possibilities to social change. A dancer knows her body is capable of many things, of many feats, and of reaching very many directions of imagination. dance is imagination. Imagine is what intellectuals do too. They strive to imagine a better critique of the society, or against the state oppression and injustice based on rationality and a critical worldview.

 Dance or Movement, then for me, present immense potentials to become a medium of how we may begin to look at the conventional perception of the intellectual. The idea is to open up the blinds and see for ourselves that movements, not necessarily in terms of dance always, can generate accurate interventions towards social change and justice. However, just like not all scholars can be termed as intellectuals, similarly I raise this case not for all kinds of dancers and choreographers, but specifically the ones who consciously take the onus of their craft towards achieving and raising relevant questions about the self and the social, and not merely to serve the purpose of non serious entertainment, as has mostly been. On these terms, I believe then that a dancer or a movement artist is more of a Public Intellecual, like any other, if not more, because unlike others who may use media, text, sound, etc as their mode of interventions, a dancer is present with herself into the space to unsettle and yet engage the viewer/reader. she becomes the text herself.  The dancer then is a mystic and all the more an intellectual. This arguement partly stems from a critique of the Cartesian mode of understanding knowledge and critique and therefore to assert that the embodied intervention holds a much deeper resonance with the conditions of society and politics. Having said that, there is no negating of the fact that writers and academicians and other artists have undoubtedly played a major role in bringing about major changes in how humans function with the ideas of equality and justice. Then perhaps, the ground set by the witers and artists only makes it inevitable to propose that Dance and Movement practices, in their own right, must be taken seriously as capable of remarkably relevant utterances.

From here we can now enter into how exactly Edward Said imagines a Public Intellectual along with taking the special case of world reknowned Dancer-Choreographer, Pina Bausch. The intention is to unravel before the readers how a dancer-choreographer-artist, taking a lot from her very own psycho-physical being attains a stature that becomes immensely capable of impassioned critique to what she saw around herself. Further I shall illustrate how, and not as a large lofty claim, that even in not mentioning Dancers in his list of intellectual occupations, Said was inherently hinting towards an impactful realisation akin to how a choreographer like Bausch would.

Royd Climenhaga, a Performance Studies scholar from Northwestern University states in his book, Pina Bausch, "It is a pure moment of performance that reflects back upon the the audience and makes us aware of our own complicity in taking in the worlds that are presented to us." He calls the impact extremely visceral. He further mentions that, in the field of theatre it was Bertolt Brecht, the pioneer of Epic Theatre, who had realised that the self conscious presence of the performer was required for an effective purpose and he drew immensely from the moving bodies of his performers. Her work was greatly inspired by the agerman expressionist dance and operated along the lines of Brecht's idea of Gestus or Gesture, "which is replete and full of the intent from which the action derives". It was her first choreographic piece, as the director or Tanztheatre Wuppertal, Germany, called The Rite of the Spring, an avant-garde adaption of Igor Stravinsky's work that her depth and the capacity to unsettle the viewer emerged. This piece was about that violence of beauty which proclaims the arrival of spring. The performers achieved this through the magnanimity of their bodies moving, shaking, shivering, falling, and then re-situating themselves again on the earth spread across the stage.

But even before Pina achieves this feat, it is in her sheer decision to break away from her strong ballet trained background, under the influence of the likes of Laban, Martha Graham and Antonin Artaud, that tells us that she was constantly thinking through for her mode of an artistic dialogue. She did not want to be part of a museumised portrayal of dance. She wanted her dance to communicate and express much more than what she could have by remaning in the strict grammar of her ballet trainings. There is a comprehensible and rational being that fules her overtly emotional expressionistic dance style. When asked about what technique she employes to bring forth her art, she utters her iconic career defining statement, "I am not so much interested in how my dancers move, rather what moves them".  Said centers his imagination of a Public Intellectual in a similar fashion. He explains that a sense of "outsider-hood" or "otherness" is essential for a Public Intellectual. He draws this from his own experience as a child of being 'out of place' as a Palestinian exile. From the vantage point of this outsider-hood, one must be able to look at the issue not with apathy but with sympathy and with humanism. This is where he understood his own subjectivity and therefore could look and raise relevant questions. This is similarly very true of how Pina began to break away from traditional ballet practice and was eventually able to overturn all of the dance and theatre world and its understanding.

Pina also seemed to harbour a lot of this outsider-hood to devise her choreographic pieces but it was evident that she looked at it from the perspective of a lot of passion and sympathy. she states in one of the balle school's 1989 yearbook, "I only know that the time in which we live, the time with all it's anxieties is very much with me. This is the source of my pieces." The plight of the woman, suffering, as an object of beauty and exploitation was hiw Pina explored and interpreted in The Rite of Spring. Around 1976, she had begun to look at Brecht for inspiration from works like Don't be Afraid, and The Seven Deadly Sins. These Brecht works were adapted by Pina but unlike The Rite Of Spring, they were not well received, certainly because Pina 's foresightedness could not be communicated to the masses. This left her disillusioned for some time with dance yet she returned with another kpiece called Bluebeard in 1977, which was again a violent piece depicting a trapped female subject under Duke Bluebeard.

Pina and her group undertook what were known as the Residency Pieces (1980s) to expand further on their form. The intention was to travel and gain more from the dancers living in those specific places. To again discover what moved them. Pina travelled to America and witnessed revolution in dance called The New Dance, which was very formalistic in nature and was viewed in complete contrast to German expressive movement style, which she herself was part of. She encountered the different space that the Americans inhabit, like Los Angeles, and one member from her troupe had remarked "Los Angeles seemed very poor to me in the spiritual sense, so full of illusions" yet Pina maintains that she would love to see, learn, meet new people and dancers and then see what happens. They go on to travel to many cities like Hong Kong, Lisbon, Madrid, Vienna, Palermo and most recently, New Delhi, and just before Pina's demise where they performed Bamboo Blues for the Indian audiences.

Similarly, Said dismisses the extra wordly, private and ethereal contexts of intellectualisation and urges to enhance the critical capacity by being "in the world". Thus Said maintains this explicitly "situating critique at the very heart of humanism, critique as a form of democratic freedom and as a continuous practice of questioning and accumulating knowledge that us open to the constituent historical realities of the post Cold-war world". He invokes the term 'Weltliteratur' by Goethe, 1827, whereby the essense of what is alien and the Other, here specifically in the field of Literature and Literary criticism, is to be sympathetically understood and owned, without exoticising or subordinating it. In other example, he also pointed mentions Eric Aeurbach's critical work "Mimesis" where he is recollecting and comparing two seminal texts like Homer' Odyssey and the Bible, and traverses throughout till modernism, from the viewpoint of an exiled German Jew. Obviously the outsiders perspective works here to defy the canon of history.

After all these stated arguments, I believe it is clearly visible that the idea of  public Intellectual that was imagined by Edward Said in his essay, Pina Bausch seems to fit the bill quite well. When Pina earnestly seeks from each of her individually different dancers what really their emotional core is, I believe, even the Public Intellectual of Said does a similar introspection to then stumble upon a narrative which is deeply rooted into a humanist perspective. Perhaps, Pina does this in a much better way, if at all there is only one.

Nevertheless, there are certain critiques that are hailed towards Said's conception of Weltliteratur, as the basic quality of a Public Intellectual. He is accused of being a traditionalist, anti western and euro-centric in his attitude towards postmodern. He even goes on to call Derridas work as being "fruitless standing aside". He fiercely guarded his stand as a pragmatic entry point towards a, let us face it, a utopic possibility of combining tradition and rationality. nevertheless, this criticism Said faces with regards to his total body of life's work. I do not know how ridiculous it might sound but, to my undrstanding, Pina would escape this criticism to a large extent. probably so because being an artist and not limiting one's way or working and looking at world allows widening of horizons. I don't not see most writers and theoreticians ready to disengage with their set thoughts and beliefs so easily, and thus, chances are that they might fall in a similar trap as Said. Despite the inevitable belief that role of the public intellectual, as defined by Said, is very significant, the details seem to lag behind to a large extent when contextualizing in present times. Having said that, there seems to be no denying of the fact that The role of Public Intellectual has now to be delimited from the definition of Said and brought out in the open. This is so because, one needs to immanently recognise that the artist community, is not only a self conscious group with a motive but that it also wants to be free to choose their vantage points, be it from tradition or from rationalism. Perhaps, exmples closest to home are that of Chandralekha and now Maya Rao.

Bibliography.

1. Climenhaga, Royd. "Pina Bausch". Routledge: New York, 2009

2. Said, Edward W. "The Public Role Of Writers and Intellectuals." The Public Intellectual. Ed. Helen Small. Oxford: Blackwell      Publishing, 2002. 19-39.

Book Review: Rabelais and His World

Book Review:

Rabelais and His World  by  Mikhail M. Baktin

In the history of Renaissance literature there have emerged literary figures like William Shakespeare, Cervantes, Victor Hugo and many others who have garnered tremendous repute on the world stage. But perhaps not most of these stalwarts project an image as enigmatic as that of Francoise Rabelais. Rabelais was a sixteenth century French Renaissance writer who also dabbled as a physician and Greek scholar. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, who authored the book around 1950, Rabelais remains as one of the least understood and unappreciated writers of his time. He can be considered as the so-called ‘notorious’ writers but, as we shall see further, therein lies his “genius” (the word these days has been critiqued so much, also by Bakhtin). Some of the key features of his writing are phantasmic non-conformity with repulsing connotations in text which is deeply rooted to the popular folk humor and sensibilities of the Middle Ages. One of his most prominent and well known works include Gargantua and Pantagruel, about the exploits of a giant father Gargantua and son Pantagruel. Mikhail Bakhtin partially bases his book about Rabelais after the detailed study of Gargantua and Pantagruel. The style of the voluminous text is laced with language that can be called risqué and therefore, this work faced a lot of banishment and censorship in France. The significance of his works is that it shook the perceptions of the middle age Renaissance baroque to question and reconstruct their taste in art and revive the folklore. His contribution does not limit itself to the literary fields only but also extends to the study of performance arts as well, in light of him conceptualizing the Carnivalesque and the genres of Grotesque Realism both in writing and in the sphere of performance.

The Carnivalesque

Carnivalesque is understood primarily as term used in the literary style and Bakhtin can be credited to expounding this concept through this book. Before embarking upon the project of illustrating the contributions of Rabelais, Bakhtin puts forward a rather relevant point, ie, there were two aspects of Renaissance period ranging from the varied forms of comic manifestations of parody in folk; and on the other hand, the serious official feudal culture. Laughter, then, according to Rabelais, is one of the most unexplored yet powerful instruments of social and political transgression(does transgression equal a upside down second world? A question to think about). For the spaces of Carnival to happen, the site of transgression, places like the market place become the ideal spots where laughter manifests itself. In any such given scenario, the type of language used also plays a very important role. Bakhtin notes that the examples of Gargantua and Pantagruel, two enormous giants, slinging excrement and urine, provide us with images that also come to form a very significant part of the language used such as the slangs and the swearing words. Yet, Bakhtin maintains, This certain type of debasing language used at the carnival, or the billingsgate, always referring to the lower-stratum of the physical body (genitals), was basically ambivalent, as genitals would also be shown with procreating and fertile connotations as well. Again, as an example, from the chapter calledLanguage of the Marketplace, he mentions Gargantua pissing for three months continuously, but this in-turn gives birth to the river Rhone in France, a symbol of positive fertility. This clearly explains the concept of ambivalent nature of carnival humor. Therefore, he sums up three distinct types of manifestations of the folk humor that were prevalent at that particular time :

1.- Ritual spectacles: carnival pageants, comic shows etc.

2.- Comic verbal compositions: parodies both oral and written.

3.- Various genres of billingsgate: curses, oaths, popular blazons.

Clowns and fools, especially dwarfs and giants, the significant catalysts to the manifestation of laughter, mimicking serious rituals formed an important aspect of the carnival, which also came to be known as the “feast of fools”. Bakhtin begins his book with the first chapter called the Rabelais and the History of Laughter, and in this way, he proposes laughter as a universal and wide-reaching character, which nonetheless, feeds on strengths like freedom and sentiments of the collective truth which concerns the people and their history. He points out that laughter is essentially unofficial, so inherently, it inhabits the virtue to parody and mock the serious looking claimers of the higher class. He is quick to mention about the ritual laughter which had the traditional sanctions and were prevalent all through the Europe of Middle Ages.

This sanctioned and ritual purgation of laughter allowed the people to venture into another world of non-officialdom. This certain other world consisted of everything opposite to the serious, no-nonsense high-brow social order. But this second world was quite part of the tradition and the folk comic rituals. Basically, it maintained the intrinsic consolidated duality of the human self and Bakhtin in this work, calls this particular phenomena as the “Two-World Condition”. Carnival then did not merely remain as a spectacle for the others, but everyone lived in it(great point elaborate a bit more. Carnival is life itself modeled on play).

Saturn devouvering his Son

Bakhtin makes a clear mention of the Roman Saturnalias festival which ushered the temporary but golden age upon earth. This particular “golden age” specifies the carnival time and called upon a style of life which must be lived ‘unusually’ with the spirit of carnival atleast for the time alloted for the celebrations. And this celebration of sorts is accompanied by the thrashing and uncrowing of the kings, as Rabelais mentions in the chapter called Popular-Festive Forms. From the same chapter he gives various additional instances kings dethroned from the voluminous texts of Gargantua and Pantagruel

Grotesque Realism

As has emerged from the previous discussion about the Bakhtin’sCarnivalesque, the human physical body becomes a potent apparatus of transgressive actions couples with folk humor. The exaggerated and hyperbolic use of the human body has emerged as the indelible part of the Carnivalesque traditions. According to Bakhtin, in the chapter called The Grotesque Image Of Body, the genre of Grotesque Realism looks at the human physical body as the extremely sexual, utopian and degraded and very earthly in essence. Bakhtin mentions earlier scholars like G. Shneegans’ The History Of Grotesque Satire where Shneegans is primarily focusing on Rabelais works and also Italian comic character Harlequin’scommediadell’arte. But Bakhtin points out that the works of these scholars are flawed in the fundamental aspect of ignoring the ambivalent nature of the grotesque. At this juncture, Bakhtin points out that Grotesque Realism deals with the physical body in a positive manner. The positivity is all about the abundant, festive and collective body which is preserved in the ‘banquet of the world’. He tells us that the basic principal of Grotesque realism is degradation.

Most essentially Bakhtin maintains that when Shneegans proclaims Rabelais as a satirical author, this as a preposition is entirely flawed. Since Shneegans is overlooking the very significant aspect of ambivalence, the coming together of lower and the upper strata and of positives and the negatives, thus, he is mistaking the grotesque of Rabelais as satirical. For instance, For satire to be established, ambivalence of the humor must be done away with. Buthere, as we have gathered from Bakhtin’s formulations, with the carnival, as the place of amalgamations of all sections of society, satire is impossible to take place because the basic nature of grotesque realism is ambivalence. According to Bakhtin, Shneegans is looking at exaggeration quantitavily, and not qualitativelyand therefore ignoring the fundamentals of grotesque. What can instead, be associated with the grotesque is the element of mockery and taunts.

Modern authors and artists like Alfred Jarry, Bertolt Brecht in theatre, poet Pablo Neruda etc have been credited by Bakhtin in his book for stimulating the grotesque in their works. Especially in the existentialist works of art and literature, like that of Franz Kafka in his Metamorphosesand others have significantly revived the grotesque mode of thinking and understanding of the social in art.

Conclusion :Transgression Now

Peter Stallybrass in his essay called The Politics and Poetics of Transgression,cites Mikhail Bakhtin’sRabelais and His World as one the seminal works in the Renaissance Cultural Studies. He is quick to add that although Bakhtin’s works features the Carnivalesque as a form but also inventively building upon the argument of carnival as a transgressive form. Stallybrass points out that the reversion of the set hierarchies in a carnival space serves as a potent yet populist and utopian version of the world to come. Body images in the Carnivalesque speak clearly of the social relations which provided popular imagery as against the upper elite class (social relations, yes..but is it always against upper class elite? Transgression as a category against the carnivalesque? Think of carnivalesque and transgression as two distinct modes of thinking).

But scholars like Terry Eagleton harbor a certain suspicion regardingBakhtin’s extremely positive embrace of the carnival. Eagleton expresses that perhaps carnival works as a ‘licensed release’ by the ruling order as a form of social control. According to Eagleton, the carnival in entirety aims towards preserving and strengthening the established powers of control. But Stallybrass sticks to his ground and re-emphasizes that the Carnival, nevertheless, is essentially laden with the transgressive potential, perhaps much more than what emerges out of Bakhin’s book on Rabelais.

In conversation with Patrick Sims, director of 'Hilum'

In Conversation with Patrick Sims – director: Hilum

Interviewed and submitted by:

Neha Tickoo

Vijay Singh

One of the attractions of this 6^th edition of ITFoK is Hilum - a tragic comedy in puppet performance presented by The Anttiaclastes – a puppet theatre company based in Allier, France. Patrick Sims – a renowned puppeteer who has held positions of artistic director, writer, and puppeteer and puppet factor of Buchingers Boot Marionettes has directed this performance.

Patrick began theatre at the age of around twenty. He began with Cinema, especially with animation and switched over to puppetry shortly after. Even in his current engagements with videos the end result is a live performance. Puppetry gives him freedom to be autonomous. He calls himself a Puppet Factor as someone whose work in a performance revolves around puppets, robots, and sometimes even in animals. His contribution as a puppet factor is to be able to see even mundane objects as puppets and essentially as performing bodies and devise means to incorporate them in work.

Puppetry that is generally believed to have been originated about 3000 years ago is one of the most contemporary forms for Patrick. He likes the “anarchic quality” of this medium that is the “autonomous ability” of the puppetry to mix up with other forms to convey the message of revolt and satire. Patrick studied traditional Java shadow puppetry and informed himself of different traditions of puppetry around the world including that of India but he does not dwell on a traditional grammar for his performance; rather he is interested in using objects of different shapes and size and bring the element of animation out of those to create an effect of surreal quality.

According to the director, the play is based on the meaning of “Hilum” which is a part of liver, anatomically, understood as a depression of fissures where vessels nerves or ducts enter a bodily organ. One significant example is the belly button or the Umbilical cord.

Taking a metaphoric cue from the swirls of and the stages of a washing machine cycle, Patrick believes that he could visualise a washing machine as the incubator or the contained universe. Hilum is a performance that ambitiously navigates along vivid imaginations aroused from the grotesqueness of the human body and the domesticity in which it houses itself. Centrally, the conflicts of a family are highlighted through the conflicts arising between the child’s play and the washer woman’s chores.

Hilum is a devised performance by the French Puppeteer company called Les Anttliaclasts. It has been performed several many times at various places including Germany and the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) London in 2011.

The formalistic structure that this performance follows is that of marionettes themselves being the manipulators. The autonomous nature immersed in contemporariness of this performance emerges with the use of popular elements such as the voice of Elvis Presley and a large American car, apart from making use of nursery rhymes, pictures of cartoons, and partial objects. All these and other references to the expressions of childhood form a part of the performance.

The performance builds a compelling comment on the societal sub-structures of a family and brings forth the anxieties of a little child trapped in the relationships of the domestic household.

Culturewars. org says in its review about the performance at London, 2011,  “It is like vision of hell glimpsed in the saucer of milk”.

Marat / Sade (the film by Peter Brook)

Marat/Sade

Marat/Sade, is a film based on the play written by Peter Wiess and directed by Peter Brook, and which premiered first in 1963. The play is set up in the famous Charanton Asylum of France and set against the backdrop of the incidents following the French Revolution. The first instance, while watching the video, at which the viewer is taken aback, is when the camera zooms out though between the iron bars of the prison cells. This happens while the elite director of the prison, Coulmier, introduces the purpose of the play to the audiences and the viewers. One realizes that the viewer at the end of the visual medium is actually caught in a double fix. There is a lingering confusion that seems to prevail. What is the truth: isn’t the jailor too actually one of the asylum inmates performing? And where does the viewer place herself?  

It is impossible to go ahead without taking in account the camera at work that follows this particular scene. Although later in the film there are several scenes which, in deliberately tentative shots, focus on the audience which is seated on the other side of the iron bars. However, it is through the scenography of the performance that we, in the process of reading it, are able to decipher the magnanimity of that particular space between the 'audiences' and the 'performers'. One can see the liminal capacity of where those iron bars are placed. A performance like Marat/Sade being a "play within a play", the iron bars of the asylum also lead the viewer to understand the "audience" inside the play, namely, Coulmire, his wife and daughter. 

The choice of the scene of action is the modern bath house of the asylum, which according to Coulmier, is fitted for the best of hygiene for the inmates. The bath house is colored dull, just like the pale and insipid lives of the patients. Ironically, a bath house is also a space of privacy but in the way the performance is set up, the audience becomes voyeurs inspecting the routines of the inmates. When Coulmier briefly describes the state of the art infrastructure of the asylum, it resonates with the overt chauvinism of the state replete with it’s empty “declaration of rights”. Later on, Marat anoints himself with the soothing and cooling waters relaxing in the bath-tub, relieving his searing fever signifying the fire of flaming revolution in him. Corday stabs him with her dagger while he is in the bath tub with his seething agony. A murder of a revolutionary in his very own bath tub is very strategic and cold blooded, yet executed calmly, after having given this action a meditated and prolonged thought by Corday, between wakeful and groggy headed states of transition.

From here, we can now enter to look at the play happening within the play which is about Marat and his execution as being directed by Marque de Sade. Soon audience is led to witness the raucous wails for “freedom” just after Marat has been marched in to the centre of the stage by the “fellow revolutionaries”. The inmates, suddenly become very vocal, and unanimously know of their common desire for independence. This swift transition of the mental patients to articulating beings points towards how these asylum dwellers almost reflect the voices of common people. It gets announced in the introduction to the play that only the best inmate has been chosen to play the role of Jean Paul Marat, the revolutionary. There is this over-arching and widely pertaining feel of the Brechtian mode of acting, with which the director Brook was highly influenced in the production of this work. The prisoners even while they enact the roles from the life of Marat and the revolution are always depicted essentially as actors/patients from the mental asylum.

The characterization of Simone Evla too is striking to the viewer. She is a constant companion to Marat, and just as Marat looks determined and contained, Simone, described as his maid, looks increasingly possessed. It looks like all the insanity that must get reflected in Marat as the patient, is transferred to Simone and at the same time he cant seem to discard her altogether. In a way, she, in all her likeness to a matronly figure, lets Marat be what he is, only at moments trying to hold him back and reflect.

Then there is this scene where the revolutionaries and the jugulars try to wake up the sleepy and exhausted Charlotte Corday. The inmate chosen for her role is suffering from the disease of Melancholia and she is often seen drowsy and being prodded by the asylum attendants. She breaks into a melodious song describing her intentions to murder Marat. the way the song is sung  intends to reflect her upbringing and her hatred for the revolutionary in Marat. de Sade hands over the shining dagger to Corday in a very erotic and playful manner, signifying his own presence of controlling the occurrences in the play. In another scene, Marat, himself accompanied by his maid called Simone, describes the traitors while piercing into the camera with his stern eyes. The viewer is always thus placed is a position that only set to raise the conflicts within.

When Corday, in one of her wakeful states, comes to visit Marat, she is there to kill Marat, hiding a dagger in her bosom. The bosom being the seat of her femininity, but which is now filled with just hatred for Marat. But the director Sade intervenes just before she lifts her dagger telling her to instead wait and come back three times to the door of Marat. It is interesting how eager Corday is to simply eliminate Marat’s existence and that de Sade has to intervene to prolong this attainment. She goes back to Paris and looks for the perfect knife to kill Marat. Eventually she finds just the one done in white, with refined and neat look, just like her own upbringing, sleeping and waking in between her insanity and her calculated plot of murder. She reminds us of some very sleepy labourer worker who is in a hurry to finish off her part of the job.

As is the case with Marat and his maid Simone, even Corday is followed around and perused by a Monsieur Dubois who is a sexual maniac and who lusts after Corday. Both Simone and Dubois represent the characters who want to stop Marat and Corday pursue their respective tasks. Dubois seemingly has an aristocratic background, and represents what could be a perfect match for Corday, had she not been blinded by her intentions of murder. Therefore, both Simone and Dubois embody the notions associated with family.

We are now taken back to the character of de Sade himself, who is shown to be rather oblivious of what is happening around him, in matters of the inmates misbehaving. Often the director the Asylum seems unsatisfied with de Sade’s representations through the inmates but he remains unaffected and detached. He is aloof but often indulges in debates with Marat and they wrestle with each other in the battle of thoughts to churn the truth, which is eventually left for the viewer to decide. He compares the Nature as a mere “spectator” of the human death, thereby, instilling in the audience with a sense of helpless annoyance. His pre-supposed notion of the human being is as a destroyer and thus he believes and tells Marat that it with passionate dedication the human must indulge in destruction and death.

In the scenes that follow are essentially about de Sade’s imagination of being tortured in worst possible ways. He mentions he is filled with sheer horror when he imagines so. But again, he pressingly, with a look accusing the viewer behind the camera, talks of people who he knows of being indifferent to all that torture. The next scene concerning Marat that follows is iconic when he attempts to embody the torture faced by France in ‘lunatic’ violence. He removes his cloths while in conversation with Marat and asks Corday to whip his back while de Sade describes his accounts from the Revolution.

This iconic and memorable sequence, which is heavily influenced from Antonin Artaud’s theatre of cruelty mode of acting representation, involves Charlotte Corday whipping the back of de Sade with her hair. The whipping sound resembles that of a whip shot in air and also sometimes reminded me of the sound of sharpening the edges of a dagger against a stone. A parallel image runs in my mind that while de Sade is being whipped with each sound even the dagger to kill  Marat is also being sharpened by Cordey. While she does this with accurate precision, closely measured whipping to be precisely with the soft tips of her blond hair against the bare skin of de Sade, he goes on describing, coupled with expressions of pain and discomfort and sweat shining on his skin, the gory violence from what he saw at the war.

"Un-Selfed" Performance Analysis

Performance Analysis

Unselfed-a devised performance piece is a theatre production presented by the Shapeshift Collective, in collaboration with the Company Theatre, Mumbai. This work has been directed by Sujay Saple, who is a permanent member of the company theatre Mumbai. Company theatre was established in 1993 and it aims to “investigate the truth of human experience” through the medium of theatre. Their recent work, UNSELFED - a very new work directed in 2012, came alive with the collaboration between the theatre artists and dance performers of Mumbai. It was staged at the Bharat Rang Mahotsava 2013 organized by the National School of Drama, New Delhi, one of the premier institutes of theatre in India. Saple has previously worked with college students and performers an[1]d conducted workshops regarding theatre. He also specializes in set design etc. UNSELFED, is a work that the director believes is loosely based on the themes of Haruki Murakami’s writing*, the Japanese author who largely dabbles with Surrealist and Magic Realistic lines of thought. This becomes evident when predominantly the aspects of alienation and lonliness resurface while seeing the performers perform UNSELFED. Also the focused interplay with the found objects and their materiality also forms an important part of the performance.

This essay will try to, as a whole, focus on issues like: 

*Trace down the formal aspects of the performance through Indian and international performances norms etc.

*What was thought behind having only female performers to represent the universal self?

* Regarding the protagonists in the performance, in relation to their identities, who are these people experiencing the disorientation of the self? What is their class, and what power structure do they adhere to? Are they city dwellers or rural folks?

* The performance being about the universal human self, how does one define this universal? Is there A Universal Self?

* Some of the performers are also well-trained dancers and this performance is rhythmic movement based with enough theatricality yet does not incorporate the usual theatrical modalities of texts and speeches. Who choreographed these movements? who are the other choreographers that inspire this performance ? 

“I meet you; I remember you; who are you, you destroy me, you are so good to me!

How could hv I known that the city was made the size of love?

How could I hv known that you were made the size of my body?”

Lines like these which, uttered by one of the performers in the beginning, few and far in between, remain echoing in the hearts and minds of the viewers throughout the performance. Unselfed comes across as a performance that does not follow any one particular grammar of a dance or a theatre practice.  For example, most of the performers seem to know the so called “contemporary/jazz style of dance” but one realizes that even this particular grammar is eventually done away with. However, the movements performed is one of the first and foremost features that makes the viewer take notice. Rather, the hybridity of body movements emerges again and again and the highly [2]communicative ability of the movements engages the audience to think in the directions indicated in the plot.

The performance chooses non-verbal, movement-based mode of communicating to the audience. This particular aspect of presentation seems to become predominant for myself as a spectator. The non-verbal aspect works well with the central theme of the performance of being un-selfed. Gesticulating body movements expressing the alienated Self of the performer/protagonist seems to be highlighting the physical and the ethereal characteristics of the body and the image it projects. One image from the performance comes in mind at this point, for example, when one of the performers tries to run away from the other performer, clearly depicting the evasive nature of the Self. We find a constant jostling to-and-fro from the Self to being Unselfed.

The performance revolves around five performers who range from trained dancers to core theatre practitioners. The attempt, as it emerges clearly, is towards a hybrid form of performance. The director/choreographer collaboration finds its routes through the use of some specific types of objects as well. The use of a metal detector like gate made of wood has been used as a liminal metaphor to depict multiple transformations of the Self. This particular ‘gate’ has also been used at the end of the performance when the entire cast passes through it and comes out of the character(s) they had been representing and finally take a bow in front of the spectators. They also use skeleton bones and narrate verbally the stories about Chinese people mixing the bone powder from the skeletons of warrior ancestors into the material to build huge gates. This, they believed, guarded their cities from all evil, as the souls of the warriors resided in the gates.

Other than this gate, The play uses several objects that may denote resemblance to the human body. Like the paper doll cut outs which seem to be played around with fast paced music. They use false skins/stalking to show sagging or scaling of the skin, huge-framed reading glasses through which they look at each other, white powder to draw the outline of a body at rest, some stethoscopes used as instruments to listen to the body of the other, and water sprinklers from where a character drinks and vomits into another’s mouth, lengthy polythene sheets with which two performers bind each other as one, a huge broom which can clean away the traces of the body outline of white powder, bandages to show the cuts on body, syringes being shared, a lighted torch to inspect the form of the other in darkness, some x-ray slides seen against bright light etc. Regarding the sets used on the proscenium stage, one can say that this performance is rather very Minimalistic. But we must mention that the Light work that happens on the stage has been done appropriately and successfully allows the bodies in movement to set and unsettle as structures, as and when required. Music chosen is mostly western (violin and the cello) and does not bother much as the pace and the rhythm of music has been edited and placed carefully according to the movements devised.

Going back to the formal aspects of the performance, and looking through the director’s prism, we realize that the medium of using the female form on stage for the representation of Self is what Felix Guattari conceives as ‘Becoming-Woman’. The point in focus is that the idiom of the female form, which is a sensitive minority category, is used to represent the universal nature of self in the performance. This transition from one state to another while in contact of several other bodies is a kaleidoscopic depiction of transgressive and liminal capacities of ‘becoming woman’. Interestingly, the director does not talk of issues faced by women in her day to day life, since that is not the concern this performance deals with but rather incorporates the physical idiom of woman to larger confrontations of the human self. Guattari says, “more precisely, the ‘becoming-woman’ serves as a point of reference, and eventually as a screen for, other types of becoming (example: becoming-child in Schumann, becoming-animal in Kafka, becoming-vegetable in Novailis, becoming-mineral in Beckett).”

The formal aspects of the performance dosnt use of any particular Indian dance style references but instead, the evolved hybrid movement genre that is shown, reminds us of Pina Bausch’s Tanz/Theatre which produced several works like Talk to Her, Café Muller and especially Kontakthrof that raises the performance experience on similar themes of Self. But even on the aspects of the form and the types of movements, we can more or less, draw references from Pina’s movement practices. Another aspect we must highlight is that Unselfed follows an episodic plot, where several myriad visuals seem to transcend the space in front of us. Also, as mentioned before, the communicative medium is mostly non-verbal and thus its conception does not adhere to any given text. Add to these the minimalistic approach of the stage design, and we may have what we can refer as an attempt towards the Post-Dramatic Theatre. Postdramatic theatre claims to be a form of  neo-realist theatre that is vocal, dynamic and extremely physical. This genre draws its influences from the surrealist movement, the neo-dada movement as well and some theatre directors of Germany and the US like Hiener Muller and Robert Wilson respectively. Hans Thies Lehmann’s study of Post-Dramatic has obviously answered a vital need for a comprehensive and accessible theory of relationship between “drama” and the “no-longer dramatic”. And thus, even Unselfed, is to be treated separately under a different name such as ‘a devised performance piece’ which is a characteristic of the post-dramatic theatre. (WOOSTER GROUP)*

According to the director, it is a collaborative work of non-stories delving on the encounters of the sense of self. The director attempts to explore the concept at imaginary levels regarding the experience of self collectively and in parts. As per the thought projected by the director, the performance at some hypothetical level also deals with the so called “[3]preciousness of being human”. By attempting to touch upon the ‘precious’ nature of being, the director might as well be hinting towards an unrelentingly ontological preposition. This particular point allows us to refer towards Ontological-Hysteric Theater (1968) which proposed a form of “total-theatre” inculcating elements from the performative, auditory, visual, philosophy, psychoanalysis etc. this style of theatre dabbles in involving inter and intra-personal relationships in space. Ontological-Hysteric-Theatre was initiated by the American playwright, Richard Foreman in 1968. His idea of theatre was to unsettle and disorient thoughts and perceptions to propose an alternative understanding of concepts. Clearly surrealism seems to be an influence here too. Ontological-Hysteric-Theatre generally, in the present times, makes use of high-end technology in the presentation of their performances. Yet we realize that that performance, Unselfed doesn’t seem to have all the criteria to fit the bill for OHT. Although the dimensions of OHT are wide to understand its genre better but we must realize that Unselfed is using solely the body as a trope, along with few objects. OHT is essentially incorporating the hybrid improvised body movements along with digital projections; highly elaborate, not necessarily realistic stage set designs and also sound art technology. Unselfed on the other hand, basically emerges as an improvised movement ensemble choreographed on musical snippets with ample pauses and silences in between.

Before we go forward, probably there is also a need to engage a little on the question of the formalistic stand that this performance must take. In any performance, set-design or the use of space, constitutes a very significant aspect. Unselfed, thoroughly, is doing away with the necessity of sets on the stage. Such kind of methodology for mis-en-scene was also proposed by Jerzy Grotowsky, towards the later part of his career, in his form of work which he called as the ‘Poor-Theatre’. Therefore, there is an evident oscillating nature of this performance from the avant-garde to post-dramatic. The performance seems to be aiming to achieve something in between these two genres of theatre. Possibly, Growtowsky clearly seems to be an inspiration even though the essence of Poor Theatre has not been realized fully in Unselfed.

On the levels of the thematic aspects of the play, one realizes that Unselfed is centrally incorporating existential strands of thought and characteristics. The protagonist in the play is a live, thinking, acting, feeling human being, yet it seems to be undergoing a process of disorientation. The viewer’s perception of the performance tends to waver from looking at multiple protagonists to multiple selves of one protagonist’s narrative.

But now, when we have [4]reached a point of thematic assessment of the performance, the point in focus, the quintessential Human-Self, has not been dealt with ample details. As is apparent from the performance, the viewer, as a universal entity in itself, who may or may not be from the city milieu, would be unable to identify with the protagonists. There are no specific markers, say, even in the costumes of the performers that may denote their signs of affiliation to a group or class or sect etc. They comfortably wear what we can call casual cosmopolitan attire. The protagonists are constantly defying, if there maybe any, limiting boundaries of identity. Eventually, In the process of assessing the performance, the performers become moving entities on a distant fourth wall. Their style of abstraction is nonetheless closer to dance rather than theatre resulting in forming illusionary visuals as dance presentation practices; say even Pina’s dance works, never allowed such distinct markers to dictate their style of narrative. But as a performance which happens to be devised post Pina, the director or the performance as whole does not go into the depths of why and how such disorientation occurs, which I believe are unavoidable.

Repeatedly, there is also a psycho-philosophical angle to the performance which must probably be expounded upon further in this essay. One such premise that seems to emege is the concept of “Subject Position” used by philosophers like Ernesto Laclau, Michael Foucault etc. Davies and Harre define a subject position in the following way:

“A subject position incorporates both a conceptual repertoire and a location for persons within the structure of rights for those that use that repertoire. Once having taken up a particular position as one's own, a person inevitably sees the world from the vantage point of that position and in terms of the particular images, metaphors, storylines and concepts which are made relevant within the particular discursive practice in which they are positioned. At least a possibility of notional choice is inevitably involved because there are many and contradictory discursive practices that each person could engage in (Davies and Harre, 1990, p. 46).

The subject position must be understood in relation to universalism and particularism. Laclau, in Universalism, Particularism, and the Question of Identity, point out to us that the death of the death of the Subject has already occurred. And thus the subject has been able to emerge back to itself again. Laclau then raises an important question : is it possible to play with the so called Universal, while being in between the essentialist objectivism and transcendental subjectivism? One can realize that when the play Unselfed claims to be dealing the Universal human self, it is not taking in consideration the necessary conditions of identity, and power of the protagonists or the power structures that they belong to. So one can deduce, that their formulations of the subject in the performance is rather vague and does not come out as well as it could have.

Another aspect of the problem that arises is about who is the audience? Who is the performance catering to? Undoubtedly, the show goes on to be repeated in at least most the metropolitan centers of India, so the aim of the whole production also seems to serve yet perplex and bewilder the petit bourgeoisie, without leading to much effect in social change. Also how accessible is this art when it comes to even the practice of documentation and research after it gets staged in a theatre festival of one of the leading drama schools of the nations. There seemingly lingers a sort of insecurity amongst the makers of such so called high-art, that readily to be consumed by the city dwellers along with any other source of entertainment in turn of market capital. But in case of performance research and documentation, not merely going by personal experience, rigidities especially in issues of copy-right matters need to undergo tremendous unblocking and transformation of minds. This paradoxical situation seems to cripple the potential art researchers and art appreciators. So, the director, knowing or unknowingly, possibly on an inspiration spree from foreign artists, has brought us the high art that does not reach across as well as it could have. 

So far the essay has dealt with references primarily stating the international theatre styles and advancements. Several times in the essay we have dealt with the question of the formalistic aspects of the performance Unselfed. Again we have focused on how the mise-en-scene has specifically underwent layers and multiple forms of renovations with smaller or larger objects.

In such light, it would not be inappropriate to claim that that the performance is following a modernist trajectory. The Indian performing arts are now for the past decade or so focusing on evolving new vocabularies that primarily do away with the traditional dance patterns in costumes or body gestures. One of the few names that come to mind is Padmini Chettur and her dance practice. She started off as a student and a performer in Chandralekha’s Dance Company. Chettur has a strong background in Bharatanatyam. Eventually she incorporated Kalari, martial art form, in her practice and that led to her evolving a new vocabulary that she can call her own. In her dance practice she emphasizes that her productions deal with modernized movement styles and thus does not want to call it Indian, per se. Her production called Pushed(2006) is somewhat also minimalist and episodic in form integrated with body movements that defy traditional dance styles of Bharatanatyam or Kalari. Pushed is also focusing her own efforts to ‘push’ the boundaries of the dance vocabulary. Yet she maintains that her dance is not entirely western but the very essence of innovation is much more necessary.

Works like Chettur’s and Unselfed and several others in between, feature particularly late in the history/histories of Indian performances.

We also need to realize that new innovations in Indian dance and theatre have evolved and advanced particularly late in the India diaspora. On the Indian shores we must realize that the Indian performance traditions have mostly lingered its efforts on the popular entertainment practices. Therefore, in such light, a performance like Unselfed, while still keeping in view its minor and major problematic flaws in concepts et al, is a breath of fresh air, along with its highly experimental nature, and an attempt towards innovative theatre practice in Indian scenario.

Bibliography

-          http://www.nsdtheatrefest.com/events.php, accessed on 2^nd May 2013, Internet

-          http://www.thecompanytheatre.net/teamnew.htm, accessed in Feruary 2013. Internet

-          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usg9L9YN088, accessed in February 2013. Internet.

-          Unselfed. By Shapeshift Collective. Dir. Sujay Saple. Meghdoot Theatre, New Delhi. 8^th January 2013. Performance.

-          Guattari, Felix. Soft Subversions. Ed. Lotringer, Sylvère. Los Angeles: Semiotext e, 1996. Print.

-          Laclau, Ernesto. “Universalism, Particularism, and the Question of Identity”. October, Vol. 61, The Identity in Question. (1992), pp. 83-90. Internet.

-           H Katrak, Ketu. Contemporary Indian Dance: New Creative Choreography in Indian and Diaspora. Ed. Janelle Reinelt, Brian Singleton. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2011. Print.

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[1] Murakami’s earlier work like Kafka On The Shore about a young boys Oedipal quest and recent work Dance Dance Dance talks of its protagonist in dream situations and thus leading its narrative towards illusionary and surrealist themes.

[3] Wooster Group, started in 1975: new york based highly experimental theatre group that is being headed by Elizabeth LeCompte.

[4] In an attempt to understand the theme better, we may as well, try to link it to the ‘theatre of the absurd’ by Martin Esslin (1965) understanding of Albert Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus, or Harold Pinter’s Dumb Waiter. Theatre of the Absurd seems to have direct connections with Dadaism and Surrealism as well.