addledbraindump

Response to Zhuangzi

2011-09-17T11:04:00.000-07:00

Once there was a butterfly
That dreamt it was a man
Dreaming he was a butterfly.
The man awoke in a daze.
In front of him was a butterfly curling into itself
Turning into a chrysalis from which emerged a caterpillar
Straining upwards with the memory of the butterfly.
The butterfly awoke from the dream, with a heavy heart
And stared at the man asleep, dreaming the memory of the butterfly…

The same breath - the intersection between martial arts and theatre

2011-08-17T11:10:00.000-07:00

I recently met a martial artist who had spent the last 17 years in Japan training his art. What was especially interesting about this artist was that he was also a street performer, calligrapher and potter. While his mastery of the martial art was exceptional, what was even more exceptional was the nature of his street theatre routine. It involved riding a 10-foot unicycle, while juggling chain saws! The circumstances through which his artistic evolution occurred were also profoundly insightful. Once while in training the artist faced a situation where weapons were being thrown around at adversaries and he was struck by how this seemed to be very much like juggling. Another time he saw the handling of concealed weapons and was prompted to investigate sleight-of-hand tricks and magic. On yet another occasion the study of swordplay brought him to the study of calligraphy. In all instances the idea of play simply led him to the interplay of one form with the other.

This encounter prompted me to introspect a little about the intersection of theatre and the martial arts. We are fortunate in India to have very lively traditions that exemplify cross training and inter-disciplinary osmosis. While training Kalaripayyattu I often encountered Kathakalli performers who moved in an almost identical fashion to Kalari exponents - sometimes even employing identical stances. On more than one occasion I encountered the statement that if you wanted to be an actor you had to learn Kathakalli and if you wanted to be a warrior then Kalari was the art to study - and invariably both forms were invoked in the same breath. This observation is neither intended to obfuscate the infinite variations between the two forms, nor is it to lump the two traditions into one common basket. It is in some way an attempt at locating the contemporary practitioner between both worlds - where one draws from both martial forms and performative techniques for self-development.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence of this intersection is in the use of stances and postures in both martial arts and theatre. In the marital arts the stance is invariably a guard or a defensive/offensive posture with certain attributes that serve different functions. Weight distribution with an emphasis on the front foot could suggest an attacking posture and weight towards the back foot could imply a defensive posture. Beyond mechanical function the posture also does things to the inner state - perhaps increasing a sense of rootedness, or sometimes invoking an animal spirit. (There's enough mumbo-jumbo about various esoteric fighting styles to infer what this could mean. Praying mantis style, drunken monkey etc…) This change in inner state is especially useful for stage performers. Often a simple change in breathing converts a fighting stance into a wonderful stage posture. With just a few modifications, the posture is adapted from serving the functional needs of combat into a theatrical state of heightened energy. Breath that is usually held in reserve for explosive movement or concealed to mask the instant of attack can be redirected towards voice and the production of sound. Similarly energy that is stored to enable movement against an adversary is now redirected towards the magical space between audience and performer.

Another point of intersection is the idea of moving as one. On stage we can instantly recognise when a performer has moved with complete conviction. We intuitively sense things like body intention and the unity of movement. Often we work with the idea of rooting movement in different energy centres of the body or at the very least with the idea of a limb leading a particular movement. Exactly the same idea holds true for the martial artist. A lot of training emphasises the idea of moving in totality - the idea of investing completely in a movement with the full body, mind and soul. This idea of holistic movement is also interlinked with the idea of intention. In dialogue we are always playing with intentions, rehearsing to explore the subtext and eventually rendering a particular set of intentions to each line - thereby making artistic choices on each line. In combat we are often striking with intention, not merely mechanically striking. In fact, at higher levels of some martial arts, the intention itself is enough to produce a reaction in the adversary.

Perhaps the most memorable exploration of this concept occurs with the famous scene of Bruce Lee training with a young student of the martial arts. The first sidekick that the young lad throws at Lee is merely mechanical and Lee rebuffs it - insisting that the boy kick with feeling. The second kick is also rebuffed because the boy has kicked with anger. On the third try the boy manages to satisfy Lee when he delivers a kick with feeling. He delivers a movement with total immersion in the movement. If you merely substitute the sidekick with a line of dialogue, the three stages of developing intention are evident. The first is a mere mechanical delivery of the line bereft of intention. The second is an imposed intention, where there is an emotional investment - but not necessarily the right one or the organically inherent one. The final stage is when the line is delivered with the right intention and where the performer has disappeared because he has immersed himself totally in the line. Be it a line or a sidekick, we are then confronted with the idea of acting in totality, of acting with complete commitment to the intention.

This is where it begins to get mystical because in this state of total immersion, all intention begins to dissolve. Suddenly the line is simply delivered without thought. There is a moment of blankness and at the same time extreme clarity. The kick is delivered at the right instant, with the perfect timing seemingly without conscious effort on the part of the practitioner. And as Lee famously said, “It hits by itself.” In this state of heightened consciousness time begins to dilate. A moment can be sliced into a much longer time and there is a sense of detachment where the doer of the action is merely observing himself doing the action, outside of himself.

Perhaps this is the ultimate convergence of the two paths - a heightened state of consciousness that transcends the physical and ventures into the meta-physical. A state of freedom, of clarity - a mind-space beyond thought, where one is absolutely in the moment and absolutely free to act…

(This article first appeared in the PT Notes August 2011 issue. Read it here at http://www.prithvitheatre.org)

Yes this blog is still active!

2011-08-09T00:07:00.000-07:00

I have so many unpublished posts now it is not funny.
Will update real soon!!!

The Bangalore Trilogy comes back home to Bengaluru!

2010-11-10T23:45:00.000-08:00

BUST - Friday 3rd December 7:30 pm
CREEPER - Saturday 4th December 7:30 pm
DANCING ON GLASS - Sunday 5th December 3:30 pm & 7:30 pm

At Ranga Shankara, 8th Cross, JP Nagar II Phase, Bengaluru 560078

Tickets: Rs.150/-
Book online at www.indianstage.in and www.bookmyshow.com
For Telebookings CALL 9886011973

Creeper was developed under a SARAI-CSDS Independent Research Fellowship 2007
Bust was developed under a Robert Bosch Art Grant 2009 by Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions Ltd.

Dancing on Glass and Creeper contain explicit language. Not suitable for persons below the age of 18.

Source of Performance Energy Workshop at Adishakti

2010-11-03T04:20:00.000-07:00

I must admit that I was extremely nervous about attending the Source of Performance Energy workshop at the Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Arts and Research in Puducherry. The biggest worry on my mind was that I had tossed up acting a while ago in favour of sitting at a desk and writing plays. I was dreading the prospect of actually going back to saying lines, as opposed to cursing under my breath every time a line was miffed, paraphrased or twisted by a performer in a way it was not meant to be twisted. I figured I was at least half-prepared, since I am always happy to do cartwheels, forward rolls, backward rolls - anything other than speaking a role. In addition the Adishakti workshops have acquired a bit of lore, mostly involving the intensity and stamina required to last through them and also the agony of the sessions on rhythm and percussion. "I came out with blisters and bruises! My hands were black and blue. - All the small bones in my hands shattered and now I can't hold chopsticks. - You have to get up at seven in the morning… every day!" - were some of the horrific statements I heard from a number of serious actors. What follows are my personal notes from the workshop - in no particular order, and organised with no particular logic…

Pic by Sharavana Raghavan

The first thing I realise in the workshop is how much we take for granted the existence of some body parts - small muscles in the eyes, the diaphragm, the muscles of the back, quadriceps and of course the hamstrings and thighs. The performer's tool is the body and the amount of energy spent in fine tuning the body, is directly visible in the calibre of the performer. The training at Adishakti extends far beyond doing weights and buffing up, it focuses on manipulating much subtler energies…

On the evening before the start of the workshop we receive folders (which had disconcerting 3D orcas on them) that outlined the structure of the workshop. At seven in the morning we would start with 15 minutes of eye-exercises, then it was Kalaripayattu till 8:45 am. Then some voice work before we adjourned for breakfast. The group would then split into two - one group would work with breath practices for psychological expression and the other on text. After a tea break, the groups would switch. Then it was lunch at one, a snooze break from two to three and then the Koodiyattam rhythm session, another break, then it was working with body centres and the last session before dinner was use of rhythm in performance. Then if you had any energy you could flop into the pool or bed, depending on which you thought more relaxing.

Vinay Kumar is a rock star. I am transported to the first moment of wonder that Adishakti created in my mind. It is 2004 and the Ranga Shankara has just been built. I have carefully budgeted and bought all my tickets well in advance for select shows of the opening festival. It is with some alarm that at a show titled Ganapati I am handed a flyer that has detailed notes to the play. If you need notes to see a play I wondered, there is something quite wrong with the play. As the show began, I stared at the performers, clueless. I was watching a code I had never seen, let alone understood - rhythm had replaced text as a signifier of meaning. It was like having a carpet yanked out from under your feet. And then Vinay Kumar whacking away at a mizhavu pulls a rabbit out of a hat, one minute he is playing the mizhavu, next he cartwheels out - magically displacing himself from one position to another on stage. My jaw dropped. It was like (if you forgive the hyperbole) a one-inch punch. You see it work but you simply don't understand the physics that goes into it.

The first few session of breath work leave me mystified. We are working on shrungara - a positive energy that fills one with a sense of well being - a vague definition to an even vaguer catch-all category of emotion. I am huffing and puffing away like a choo-choo train, but all I am getting is giddy and I feel like my lungs are going to explode. This is all bogus, I think to myself. How the heck am I going to fill the top of my head with air when my respiratory system ends much further south… My pupils are dilating, my eyes are doing funny things and everyone else looks like they have defective electrodes in various parts of their bodies - but no shrungara. After the session I am so oxygenated I feel like I'm going to vaporise. I suppose that counts as a feeling of well being…

Kalari is a load of fun. Vinay and Nimmi move like fluid. My muscle memory is not co-operating. I'm able to learn smaller movements, but unable to string together long sequences. I realise how careless I am with my knees and have to constantly correct my posture. The stances give you the option to really stretch, so I'm constantly trying to put the pressure on my thighs and hamstrings and not blow out my knees and lower back.

My dreaded session is voice work. I'm trying to produce some decent sound and am trying to figure out the right posture for it. I seem to be making a mess of it since Veenapani walks up to me and prods me a little. My hips are too far back. She asks me to root my movement correctly and casually tosses out a leg sideways to demonstrate. I'm trying to figure out how she's adjusted her centre of gravity without registering it in her upper body. I'm also trying to understand how she can toss off a leg, and half her base without affecting the structure sitting on top of it. We do an exercise where we run till we are out of breath and then speak a few lines. I suddenly realise all this breath/centre/chakra business may not be bogus after all…

It's now time to work on the breathing of adbutha - wonder. My cynical circuits have gone back to overdrive. We are making various monkey like sounds and breathing like choo-choo trains on acid. I sound like a monkey and my diaphragm feels like a football and I'm trying to be as awe struck as I can. I make a hash of my attempt at adbutha and figure it's time to abandon this hair-brained idea. It is only after the session I have my aha-moment. I'm jumping about like a monkey going O-O-O when suddenly the air hits a portion of my upper palate and I feel the impulse to jump. What's this then??? - I wonder to myself. I say the sound again and try to isolate the spot in my mouth. Once again I hit the spot and instantly I feel the urge to spring upward and bounce up and down. I resolve to just work in the breath sessions in an open-minded methodical way and not try to come at the exercise from a pre-conceived view point of what the emotion should be.

The mizhavu is the only musical instrument that is meant specifically for theatre. It's a big copper drum that inflicts incredible amounts of pain when played. It's pretty apt as a metaphor for the relationship one has with theatre, as I found out after talking to more than a few people. Politically incorrect as this may be, the mizhavu is a total bitch - unforgiving, unyielding and snooty. You can whack away at it all you like, it will still find a way to screw you over next time round. The rhythm session after lunch is a nightmare. Arvind Rane, the loveable local subversive element had this gem to offer - "If it hurts, hit harder." He was right.

People find different ways to adapt to this gut-wrenching session. A couple of us, find each other in the session as we are able to match rhythms and play together. For some of us it's easier, I switch off my pain circuits and manage to hop-skip-stagger past the hurt into numbness and then I'm working. Perhaps it's the stubborn writer in me that makes me plough through this legendary pain. It also helps to pull your eyes, face and mouth into funny shapes while playing, as well as move your body around; one - it helps mask the pain, two - it makes phrasing easier, you're actually talking with/through the drum, three - anything to take your mind off the pain!

We are working on karuna. It's scary. It's the respiratory equivalent of strangulation. I'm doubly worried because I know I can hold my breath for quite a long while, so I'm sure I'm just going to be sitting around as my heartbeat quickens, my body screams for air and everyone gets bored watching me blow another exercise. Vinay outlines the steps involved, expel air sharply with a 'huh', lock the chest and accelerate the de-oxygenation in the body, which is the absolute reverse of swimming underwater for a long time. It's sickening. Your face melts, as if all your facial features are hot liquid. It feels like stabbing yourself in the chest with a hot knife. I get a sickening sensation of hot sticky black liquid being poured into my insides. I'm in that horrible place, where your body is confronting death and is saying to you - listen buddy, keep screwing around like this and you are a goner. I've promised myself I'm going to go for it. I manage to nudge myself over some sick psychological threshold and take in a huge gasp of air. I bawl my guts out. Yeah, I've got this one figured… Vinay tells us we should be careful with this one, as it is addictive., the same as auto-erotic asphyxiation. For some reason I think of David Caradine. I'm edgy all evening as I try to shake off the after effects of the exercise.

Suresh reminds me of Ganapati. He's always in shrungara - smiling benevolently at some cosmic joke that only a human metronome knows. His hand reminds me of Ganesha's trunk. He dunks his hand on the mizhavu from an inch away and makes it sing like a bell. I'm reminded of the one-inch punch again, you see it work but you simply don't understand the physics that goes into it! I wish I had fatter hands!

Eye exercises with Nimmi are incredible. We work at actively changing the focal length of our eyes and giving energy to the eyes. Vinay says koodiyattam performers do eye exercises with ghee in their eyes. We're slacking off one day and Vinay threatens to put ghee in our eyes. The group is suddenly motivated!

A typical percussion session involves the customary howling in pain as the hands warm up. More than a few people cry and weep. Others book massages, then oversleep, thus finding a creative way to bunk the session. I discover I like percussion! It takes time for me to get my head around the tha-tha-keta-thak-a-tha phrasing, but once it sticks, it sticks - a weird combination of cognitive and muscle memory.

Raudra is a cinch for me. You create and hold tension in the muscles at the back of your neck. I tense my muscles so hard I get a horrible neck ache after. I'm so angry I see red and my entire skull starts vibrating. As with karuna it takes time for the after-effects of the exercise to wear off. The negative emotions seem easier than the positive ones!

Voice work for me is pure torture. Veenapani is patient but I'm making a total hash of everything. My dirty habits take their time leaving and in a panic my voice heads straight for my throat and vocal chords. I've been telling actor's to speak from the stomach, but for the first time I'm figuring out the actual mechanics of making that happen. "Learn to use different resonators", Veenapani says. I'm baffled. On the last day of the workshop I'm aspirating my 'ha' like a champ and suddenly I feel the sound resonating in my chest. My voice hits a register I don't recognise. I'm overjoyed! I manage to move the sound around from my throat to my chest to my head.

For some reason Adishakti facilitates accelerated learning. Maybe it's because we seem to learn faster in groups or maybe it's just the great energy of the place. Everyone is always trying things, so you just pick up stuff a lot quicker. A whole bunch of people make huge progress with their swimming - learning to swim, learning different strokes, handstands, flips - all while we work on our breathing. The swimming exercises take a bit of getting used to since the breathing is not geared towards speed and you don't grab air to the chest, instead you direct it much deeper. I realise that everything, every single thing in the world has rhythm…

What is with these chakras? It really takes a leap of faith to work with them. Initially I was able to concede that these points are directly linked to balance since they are rooted in the spine, but then I figured there's an entire world of exploration there beyond physical matter. While physiology tell us what constitutes our physical body, the inner map of the body is quite different. It's the difference between perceiving gross matter and subtle matter, the difference between the light bulb, the filament and the light itself. There is a self made of gross matter and then there is the subtle self… And here is the big question - how do you become fully aware of that subtle self? I stop myself… Perhaps this line of thinking is out of scope at the moment…

We do small presentations at the end of the workshop. It's amazing to see the learning that everyone takes back. It's also a joy to work with yourself without the pressure of qualitative scrutiny. More than a few pieces move me. There are no less than three rounds of crying. Mysteriously - three pieces involve pornography. One piece is deeply spiritual, it leaves me deeply pensive all evening…

I think we are too easy on ourselves, too satisfied with safety. I think we are too comfortable thinking we know the answers, instead of asking the difficult questions. I ask a theatre senior about his thoughts on Adishakti. "Veenapani operates from a different planet. She sets the bar so high, she's in a different league altogether." I totally agree…

(This article first appeared in the PT Notes November 2010 issue. Read it at www.prithvitheatrenotes.blogspot.com)

Trilogy

2010-06-29T08:19:00.001-07:00

Actors Ensemble India Forum presents
A Trilogy - July 2010 Tour

Of

Dancing on Glass (2004)
Creeper (2007)
Bust (2010)

Actors Ensemble India Forum (AEIF) was born in 2007 and is committed to supporting new writing and innovation in theatre. AEIF envisions a collaborative platform for the writer-director-actor ensemble to create cutting edge work for the stage in urban spaces.

Three Actors Ensemble productions have now come together as a trilogy of plays about Bangalore: the widely-performed Dancing on Glass, Creeper which was developed under a Sarai-CSDS Independent Research Fellowship, and our latest production Bust developed under a Robert Bosch Art Grant. These productions written and directed by Ram Ganesh Kamatham will tour Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai in July.

Dancing on Glass (2004)is a dark comedy that takes a look at the flip-side of the world of call centres and Information Technology.

Creeper (2007)is a zany experimental play about an expert narrator, a mischievous sutradhar and a mysterious box.

Bust (2010) tells the story of three women who delve underground and into the city's history in search of an ancient relic buried beneath a thousand year old temple.

Tour Dates:

Guru Nanak Bhavan, Bengaluru - 7:30 PM Friday 9th, Saturday 10th, Sunday 11th July

India Habitat Centre, New Delhi - 7 PM Friday 16th, Saturday 17th, Sunday 18th July

Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai - 7PM & 9:30PM Tuesday 20th, Wednesday 21st, Thursday 22nd July

BUST!!!

2010-06-24T10:54:00.000-07:00

Bust - premiers June 26th and 27th at Ranga Shankara

2010-05-31T00:55:00.000-07:00

Coming soon...
:-)

Dancing on Glass in May

2010-05-14T00:28:00.000-07:00

Dancing on Glass at Ranga Shankara on Jan 31st

2010-01-24T18:57:00.001-08:00

Dancing on Glass is a dark comedy that takes a look at the flip side of the fast paced IT world. Written in 2004, in the thick of the BPO buzz, the play is an eloquent response to the rapid changes in the cityscape and its effect on two young working professionals. Alternating between raucous humour and edgy drama, the play is an emotionally explosive theatrical experience, and is a must-watch for anyone who has ever worked in a corporate space!

The play is primarily in English and runs for 1 hour and 20 minutes without interval. Dancing on Glass contains some explicit language and is not suitable for persons below the age of 18.

Starring Abhishek Majumdar and Meghana Mundkur
Written and directed by Ram Ganesh Kamatham

Tickets: Rs. 100/- (3:30 PM) & Rs.150/- (7:30 PM)

for Tele Bookings Call 98863 70614
for Online Bookings visit http://www.indianstage.in

A happy announcement - Ultimate Kurukshetra

2009-12-05T00:36:00.000-08:00

I am very happy to announce the official slaying of a monster play. After battling for... (hold your breath) ... six years, I've finished my play. It's called "Ultimate Kurukshetra" and at one point went by the names of "Warsong" and "Forgotten Song..."

I started this play in mid 2003 right after graduating and after much staggering around, much confusion, much fatigue and much suffering... It's done!

I must have thrown the play into the dustbin at least ten times and fished it out the same number of times to restart work on it. (This is of course excluding the times I merely fished it out of the dustbin and put it right back in again.)
It's been a hell of a journey and I've written a pile of plays in the interim. In fact chronologically, it's right back there with Square root of Minus One.

The final strike happened at Adishakti in Pondycherry, where I parked arse at the Sangam house residency for 2 weeks and pinned the play down on paper once and for all! I also did an informal reading with the extremely sporting actors there and was happy to hear the results... which mostly consisted of laughter in the right places. A huge thanks to all of them.

Right... I'm so glad this is off my back. I'm letting it lie for a while, doing a light polish in a few months and then throwing it out of the house to fend for itself. Yipee! I'm off to celebrate for a day before I run back into rehearsal for a Dancing on Glass show on the 18th.

No rest for the wicked I tell you!

Gautam, since you're probably the only dude reading this, I'm happy to tell you that diving into the Mahabharata and coming out alive is possible.
And Arghya, who will probably never read this, keep at it. You're real close.
And to all the sleepless writers out there... Forge on, my friends forge on!

Drifting again

2009-10-20T01:04:00.000-07:00

Drifted about again.
Made my annual piligrammage to the Himalayas.
Went to McLeodGanj. Did a 10 day Vipassana course.
Pretty intense.
Bumped into the Rage gang completely by chance.
They were trekking up to Triund. I was too fried after the meditation to do anything.
Floated back to B'lore.
I think I'm in love with my life.
Or I think I'm in love with life.
Or I think I'm in love.
Or I'm so alive.
Or I think.
Or I.
Am.

Going for Bust - (RBEI 1)

2009-09-22T08:12:00.000-07:00

My blog has once again, gone official! I will now be reporting monthly progress on a new project of mine, working title - Bust. The project has been enabled by an art grant from Robert Bosch India. (RBEI)

The idea for the play hit me quite by accident. As good ideas often tend to. I was doing a duck-walk-frog-jump-run-till-you-drop Sunday workout in Cubbon Park with my crazy climbing friends at Mars Adventures. While I was wondering whether my hamstrings would explode, I happened to chance upon a statue that was set amidst a bunch of colourful flowers. I was amazed at the beautiful sight. Endorphins tend to make everything really wonderful… I also realised that I had no clue whose statue it was. Which set me thinking - Who's statue is that? This line of thinking led me to the next observation - I think my hamstrings just exploded...

Later in the day... one thing connected to another and an idea took shape.

Bust takes the audience on a journey into the city of Bangalore through the eyes of eminent historical persons who were a major influence on the city. The sutradhars of the play are actually characters drawn from the city's history. This enables a polyvocal clash of cultures, timelines and narratives, conflating past and the present against a contemporary urban backdrop.

Which seems to be a pet theme, come to think of it. I suppose this is a continuation of the tricks I was turning in Creeper. I think that the polyvocal approach facilitates risk taking. It also liberates you from dull things like consistency of voice and sanctity of authorial meaning, instead, throwing you into the exciting terrain of shifting language. It might be exciting to create a text - as Barthes puts it - that is "a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture." So while Barthes announced the death of the author in 1968, we can get on with the business of playmaking in the year 2009 minus many burdens, posthumously or otherwise.

The fun thing about a lot of my projects, is that they tend to be inherently polyvocal. The text serves as the springboard for writer-director-actor dynamics. Meaning is created through this negotiation and eventually, it also the audience that supplies a live meaning in performance. This is what makes the theatrical experience so live, so immediate.

At the moment however, it's time to put on my research hat, saturate myself in all the available material and then sniff out the way forward. I've got a few leads already, so I'm off to do a pile of interviews and start snooping around… Here we go! Damn excited!

a couple of poems

2009-08-08T08:57:00.000-07:00

so apparently, i kinda-sorta-maybe remember how to write poetry
so here goes...

Cold

She watches me
Eyebrow raised
Eyes and hands clutch
Warm sheets against us
Between us
Cold rain
Lashes the beach outside

I walked with you
Retraced the steps, his betrayal
In the cold rain
With you
Caught and killed your ghost
For you

But her eyebrow stays raised
Her warm flesh
Won't bend to mine
She doesn't like the cold
Of my ten thousand ghosts
___________________________

Kitchen

I would have loved you in the kitchen
Would have snuck-up behind you
To place an electric kiss
On the back of your neck
As you chopped tomatoes
(That was our first kiss.)

I would have loved you in the kitchen
On the counter maybe
Breakfast in bed
Pleasantly interrupted
With sparks of an impromptu tangle
Cornflakes forgotten

I would have loved you in the kitchen
While you were making a health shake
Complaining about your diet
The state of your eyebrows
And why I was not going to stay for lunch

Somewhere in the snowy mountains
A butterfly flapped its wings
And the momos I remember you for
Unwrapped themselves into
Hungry corpses
And settled down for dinner with us

I know I could love you
But I'm so far away now
And can't seem to catch your eye
Across the crowd in the kitchen

Monster plays and other things

2009-07-14T22:28:00.000-07:00

so... i'm in b'bay and it's raining endlessly...
i dreamed of an ex-girlfriend, can't remember which... i have a stomach upset...
i've got travel itch... and i've got a pile of deadlines coming up.
and with that relevant preamble i want to talk about "monster plays"
i have two of them on hand at the moment - Ultimate Kurukshetra and Into Stone

what is a monster play?
a monster play is like an unhealthy relationship.
you pour your heart, blood, guts, brain, sweat, self and soul into the play for years and years and years. and years. - and all you have to show for it is fatigue...

i just did a reading of Ultimate Kurukshetra and for the first time i have hope for these two plays. i started writing Ultimate... in 2003 and the reading was early this month. i can't even begin to imagine how much time i've spent on it.
hearing it read out loud produced a huge sense of relief! and trawling through past entries on my blog, where i've cheerfully announced completion of draft after draft of Into Stone, all i can feel is sinking despair.

a monster play refuses to be complete. just when u think u've pinned it, it either expands or contracts and then u're back to the start - with too much material, or too little. with a fat draft, or too lean a draft. a real mess.

at one point last year i was going so crazy that i was writing both plays simultaneously. and as anyone who has written a play knows, that's asking for trouble. anyway, the point of this diatribe is to reassure myself that - monsters can be slain!

and ultimate... is in my sights. for the first time. in six years.

what's a bit funny about ultimate... is that i can feel myself in it in a rather odd way. i can hear my voice as it was six years ago. it's like hearing myself when i was right out of college and saying - fuck this, let's do something really ground breaking! - which is always the kind of statement that lands you in trouble!

and there's trace elements of other plays in it. stuff that i was thinking about, things i was going through. many elements of crab that i had idiotically tried to write onto it. hearing the reading was like hearing an echo from the past. and strangely enough those echoes are exactly what are screwing me senseless on into stone. 'other selves' that creep up on you now and then.

sometimes i wonder how i mange to connect everything to everything else. and how that same instinct has given me splitting headaches and the highest buzzes while writing. that amazing sense of interconnectedness. that sound you hear when all sound stops. that soul freezing hum that is the machinery of the universe, chugging along.

anyway, its' nose to the wheel for me. and it's back to the most basic test for a playwright. you may have the skill, but do you have the stamina? if ghosts can be slain, so can monsters.

Project S.T.R.I.P.

2009-06-11T00:27:00.001-07:00

Limited run:
@ Prithvi Theatre: 16th - 21st June 2009
@ Sathaye College : 27 - 28 June 2009
@ NCPA Experimental : 1 - 5 July 2009
Tickets: 26149546/39895050/www.bookmyshow.com

3 months went missing

2009-05-04T23:50:00.000-07:00

Umm... Where did Feb, March and April go?
I guess it disappeared somewhere in between my shuttling between B'lore and B'bay.
What's new... Well let's see...
I've been writing furiously. And when that happens, stuff happens.
It's been pretty uphill, as always.
I think this is that strange consolidation phase, you go through before stuff happens. Because right now, nothing is happening!
So when does stuff actually happen then?

In other news, I've written two plays. One of which will be staged in Mumbai mid June. The other will have a rehearsed reading in Bangalore early July.

Draft Five - Into Stone

2009-01-30T05:17:00.000-08:00

As the dramaturgical cliche goes - less is more.
I'm done. I quit. Now to stage this darn thing...

Forgetfullness

2008-12-02T07:55:00.000-08:00

Just some random pics from the travels...

The women of Maitree dairy in Rajasthan...

Cotton farmers in Warangal

and ... Bollgard II Cotton - GMO

Into Stone - draft 4

2008-11-28T10:41:00.001-08:00

It wouldn't let me sleep.

So I did what any writer suffering the birthing pangs of a particularly difficult play would do... Fish the play out of the garbage bin, down a few frappes, pop a few red bulls and camp in front of the comp.

And it worked. I passed out for a few days after... But I think I've made my next breakthrough on the play, and draft four emerges!

The challenge has always been on the second half of the play and for the first time I felt a degree of coherence in the madness. I also realised that I was cramping the play by forcing all the action into three performers. After the reading in Bombay, I felt the need to "open out" the play and let it breathe a bit. Which seems to have payed off. Now enough back-patting... I have some stuff to think about...

One of the things that often frustrates me whenever I watch a play is the appallingly slow pace of most plays. Maybe this is a subjective thing, or maybe it's because as a playwright I find it difficult to watch a play without probing into it's construction as I'm watching it. I often find the best plays immerse me in their world so totally, that I am not allowed the time to pick at the seams. Conversely, other plays plod along and I find my attention wandering to the set, the lights, the time and where we're going for dinner.

The beauty of the theatre is the ability to create stage images. Unlike cinematic images, these images are live, charged and electric! They don't have the precision and range of the cinematic image (ECU, ELS) but what they do posses is live energy. I've seen over 50 plays in the last few months and it's really got me thinking about my own craft.

I think our ability to assimilate information is high. Our brains don't come apart at smash cuts, jump cuts, split screens, quick intercuts etc. We process information, and we process it fast! I find myself throwing out mountains of expositiory material in favour of lean, pointed action. And I think it's gotten to the point where the play moves along at a somewhat blistering pace. And I think one of the things that I have been trying to do is to combine the electricity of the live image, with a certain pace...
(Or maybe this is just my own version of "hearing the notes that aren't played" ...)

Anyway, I'm a firm believer in "leaving out" things. The trick is trying to figure out what to leave out. And the trickiest part is discovering something in the text and then burying it again! The beauty of this is that it still stays with the play... giving it a certain density, a certain crackle... that I really love.

Hmm... talking craft into the echoes of cyber space again.

Anyone out there?

Oh crap!

2008-10-16T01:57:00.001-07:00

Man I have completely NOT lived up to my promise of posting once a month! Ugh!Anyway... quick recap. Lots of travelling - B'bay, Pune, Panjim, Bangalore, Calcutta, Delhi...

Nothing fantastically new to report at the moment. Seen lots of plays and reading like crazy. Also been drinking way too much coffee!

Wrote this really funny short play. Had fun writing comedy after so long. Trying to find my writing rhythm again. And in the process I've rediscovered my freestyle rhythm. I'm good with the three stroke-breathe rhythm, but I'm tiring easily. Need to work on stamina. Picked up some really nice climbing gear. So now I'm fully equipped for a serious climb - the only thing is I have to "actually" climb!

Creeper at the MetroPlus Theatre Fest in Chennai

2008-07-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

Creeper creeps to Chennai, we perform on August 9th, 7.30 p.m at Sir Mutha Venkata Subba Rao Concert Hall, Harrington Road.

More details at:
http://www.thehindu.com/mp/2008/07/21/stories/2008072150650100.htm

Into Stoned

2008-07-16T08:26:00.000-07:00

Well the reading was a disaster. Thanks so much to everyone who showed up and gave their time to make it happen! And special thanks to Q for hosting it!

I think the problem with the play is that it is just doing too many things at the same time. And I seem to be unable to balance the play out at this point in my evolution. I'm unable to let each story fully realise itself and have ended up squashing the entire action into a 90 minute format. I've also come to realise how vulnerable a play really is...

A play is an organic entity, capable of dropping dead on your hands if you don't treat it right. This brings up my "dead" play tally to "three" and I'm not at all keen on pushing that number up.

Annoyed and unhappy.
Bleargh!

June was a flop

2008-07-05T06:13:00.000-07:00

I sadly report that nothing happened in June.
Many things were planned, but nothing actually happened.
So I'm sorry to say, that there is nothing worth writing about...

In other related news my bi-monthly "I'm sick of this city!" flu came on big time and as a consequence this update comes to you from rainy Mumbai!

Moving on...
My B-grade horror film script is done. I had a chat with my actors about what I had in mind and the script meeting quickly turned into a lunge for ice cream after ice cream - since there was no alcohol nearby. Seems my scrpit was a bit too... er... what's the word... er... me? for the team and as a result I've temporarily shelved the project. Here is the concept teaser, badly photo-shopped by me.

The film might be considered a post-modern narrative that explores identity, gender, communal harmony, cliff-diving, 10m air pistol shooting techique, the other, the other one too, denial, Pashtun socicultural pornographic discourse, and involves a man unable to sleep, a psychotic clown who won't stop smoking (think Captain Spaulding's clingy ex-clownbitch-girlfriend) and the innards of a dead cow. This kind of specialised narrative style is other wise known as B-grade rubbish.

Sadly, this film won't take off for a while due to terminal artistic ineptness on the part of the director, who thought he could do a David Lynch. On a positive note, I did a screen test with the cow and it's innards performed superbly.
Interested producers please talk to my agent.

Aside: I really really need to CLIMB, but everything is bloody wet! Argh.

Ok, some good news. After screwing around with the Into Stone text endlessly, and ingesting at least 30 frappes, I've got a draft that reads decently. And I am now confident it can be read out loud without causing me to leap out the nearest window.
Reading is scheduled for 4:30pm on Tuesday the 8th of July at Qs. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it won't be a horrible unintelligible mess that will effectively signal the end of my pointless playwriting career. All the same, I am going to stay away from windows till after the reading is done. Nervous and scared, but who's to say how it will turn out.

Oh, I was in Rajasthan last month. That's where I took the picture of the tree. Pretty much changed my life, really got me thinking about lots of things. I think it helped me finish the play in some ways.

I'm pretty low now. I'm going to go and eat some Sancha ice cream.
Will do a serious update on how the reading went soon.

One year - and I've finally bloody pinned it!

2008-05-01T05:23:00.000-07:00

Into Stone - Draft 2 is officially complete.

My head hurts, my eyes hurt, my heart hurts, my fingers hurt, my stomach hurts, my knees hurt... I'm exhausted.

I am so glad this play is over.
One year, I've bashed away and I feel like I've run a marathon and then walked up a mountain, and then down the other side, and then swum across a bay, and passed out on the beach... (pics later)

That's it - I quit.
From now on it's only sex comedies.

--------

Er... on second thought - scratch that last whimper/whine.

Well, to be honest the journey is not over yet. I think the text needs to be put aside for a while. Thanks so much to everyone who kept me going. :-)

In other news I've found an interim project that is worth pursuing, B-grade horror. I am going to make a sick and gory short film. Bring on the blood and low key lighting!

Hahahahaha!

The final Creeping

2008-04-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen this play so far (this is the 10th show!!! where have you been?) now is your chance!

A few quotes:

"… the characters appear to transform into two pieces broken from a single soul — the soul of the city." "…the cast is brilliant."
- Deccan Herald

"Two related observations strike the viewer immediately about Ram Ganesh Kamatham’s work, of which, I think, Creeper is his most mature statement to date. One, the freshness of the language, his finely tuned (and not simply caricaturing) ear for the English that Indians actually speak; and two, what might be called the startling 21st century 'now'ness of the worlds he asks us to live in. If such a strong emphasis on the contemporary might easily lead (and has led, in the work of others) to another desperately trendy mishmashed disaster of a play, Kamatham succeeds through a deft and even classical engagement with form, edgy humour, and a darkly political seriousness of purpose. It’s not for nothing that in Creeper, Kamatham riffs off an old Sanskrit tale of horror and morality; his is not the triumphant celebration of Indian arrival that you see so often in the local and foreign press. We might even achieve our dream of being a hyper-modern, powerful, rich and even 'first world' country, Kamatham seems to be telling us, but it might in the end turn out a nightmare."
-Vivek Narayanan

"Ram Ganesh Kamatham's Creeper is not only a bold play in the manner in which it produces theatrical meaning, it speaks with immediacy to all of us who have felt orphaned in our own city, who experience it as a story of aching loss and dispersal, rather than as a steel-chrome-glass narrative of rising and shining. Abhishek Majumdar and Mallika Prasad do more than live up to the script's demand for actors with immense stamina and range. They attack the first half of the text with astonishing panache, energy and comic timing, while also plumbing the emotional depths of the surprisingly different second half with poignancy and heartrending conviction. Not to be missed, particularly by anyone asking if theatre in English has a future in this country."
- Anmol Vellani

"The acting was spontaneous – Abhishek is exceptional in his frenetic, anxious intensity as the outsider in Bangalore and Mallika is spirited in her natural, refreshing nostalgia as an old Bangalorean."
- The Hindu

"Ceeper provides a fascinating insight into the way in which individuals living in highly industrialized cities begin to internalize ideas, relationships and through systems more commonly associated with technology and machines. The interplay between the characters' notions of mortality and the permanence of the virtual work is particularly sharp."
- Lyndsey Turner, International Associate, Royal Court Theatre

Thoughts after the seminar at Ninasam

2008-04-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

The seminar at Ninasam was a real eye-opener.

It was everything a seminar should be - a place for sharing ideas, a place where the desire to shoot and choke someone to death is legitimate and a place where there is a lovely forum to slug, sludge and smash each other to pieces within a constructive framework.

Having said this - here are my (two bit) observations:

1. The defining moment for me was the address by P. Sainath - responded to by Shiv Visvanathan.
Of course it's easy to fall over and slobber over Sainath and the towering individual/superstar/icon that he is, but for me the gripping rejoinder by Shiv was what made the argument balanced. (I was reminded of the classic Brutus versus Mark Anthony - head versus heart clash - but that's just my cheesy brain making the arbitrary connection.)
I've been whining about icons, how there are no role models, how there are no more mighty heroes that we can look up to. Well I just met two pure blooded Titans at the seminar - Shiv and Sainath.
Individually they didn't make complete sense to me. Sainath hammered us with sentimentalism and emotional blackmail, slammed dismal facts in our face and generally made us all feel like myopic urban armchair intellectuals – even going so far as to prescribe the appropriate individual responses to his speech. Shiv reduced things to processes – speaking of the insidious transformation from victim to patient in the public forgetfulness of tragedy via the Bhopal disaster – literally giving emotion a tight logical-slap in the face. For me these two heroes emerged from this fusion – the clash of the Titans. Two individuals who were saying the same thing, asking the same questions (and holy crap those are tough questions): Who benefits? Who suffers? Who is excluded from this lovely thing we call progress? (Ironically neither of these Titans are theatre practitioners, which bothers me a great deal. But more on this later.)
These two individuals are asking such staggering questions that I feel it is almost imperative to react… When the great minds and thinkers of our times are asking us such hard questions, how in hell do I respond with my art? Can my art even begin to answer the scale of these questions? Can my theatre effectively respond to this towering duo - this journalist and sociologist?

2. Theatre practitioners are woolly headed wimps.
(I include myself in this happily irresponsible generalization.) If I am to receive this accurately: According to Makarand Sathe's interview of Vijay Tendulkar, Tendulkar says that it is innately natural for a man to want to hit a woman. Sathe goes onto qualify that he does not believe that to be true and elucidates this further in his play (which I missed) but is left-hooked by woman in audience (I don't know her name) who objects strongly to her body (woman's) being used as a battleground for aged men's' sexist agendas. Put this argument next to the magnitude of the Sainath-Shiv struggle and we suddenly want to innately hit all three of these people. I'm not junking their debate – I'm stating the absurdity of this argument, timed as it were, just after the Shiv-Sainath statements. My point is that while the non-theatre crowd is gripped in such compelling contemporary debate, I found the theatre crowd screwing around with abstractions, advancing the incredibly irritating liberal humanist agendas that we seem to have hard-wired into our court-jester skulls.

3. Theatre practitioners are woolly headed wimps.
Yes, this deserves additional qualification since this is something I am personally grappling with. There was a really funny agit-prop piece that I saw that was apparently written after the Gujarat disaster – Yeh Dil Mange More – if I remember correctly. It was so funny. The actions revolved around a bunch of goofball fundamentalists (abstractions of the VHP, Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and so on…) who were building the ideal Hindu Rashtriya who did many silly things – the funniest being repeatedly kick one character's bum (Bahubali! – thum gadhe ho!) whenever he messed up. I loved the performance, but I hated with a vengeance the black-and-white-intelligence that surrounded the piece. It was like resistance for dummies: Fundamentalist = BAD, MNC=Pepsi+Coke= EVIL, GUJARAT = tragedy = national shame.
With all their dramatic weaponry wielded, the best they managed was reductio ad absurdum.
I think what I am personally struggling with is this: is that all we can come up with? As artists – even at the agit-prop level, what dramaturgical engagement can you cite that is more comprehensive than expression of sentiment, what can you deliver that is more than just biting satire, what can you personally do, that takes your piece above textbook resistance and into incisive dramatic insight? I loved the piece that was performed, I was so very annoyed that the piece played absolutely safe and never once took any risks. Which brings back the question to self: How is my art effectively responding to Shiv and Sainath?

4. What good is a liberal humanist agenda?
I've run into this debate on more than a few occasions and have managed to pin down a few thoughts. At the International Residency we all wrote down a list of verbs that (as writers) we wanted our plays to perform on the audience. We then ranked what were the most important verbs personally and as a group. It was a lovely exercise, some of the ones I remember were: entertain, educate, mesmerize, provoke, challenge, smash, brutalise. I think "entertain and educate" produce Broadway/West End Musicals and I think that "smash and brutalise" accounts for writers like Kane and Barker. I think I was hovering around the "provoke, mesmerise, challenge" area. What I'm getting at is "entertain and educate" can easily turn into "avoid confrontation and placate all parties…" in which case one might as well be writing episodes of Friends. I think I need to be working a lot harder to respond to these questions, and I mustn't give myself the luxury of "Let's keep it simple and funny." Of course I could give myself that luxury, but then I’d just be a woolly headed wimp.

5. There was no young urban voice in the seminar.
I had to keep pinching myself to convince myself that the year was not 1986, especially when some speakers were talking about IP, the impact of television on theatre and contemporary theatre practice with such outdated arguments that I really began to wonder how much of a yuppie urban techno-brat I am. I really respect my seniors in theatre, but I think I'd like to volunteer for the job of whacking some of them over the head with my plays to remind them of some of the problems of the 21st century! (And I pray that someone will be around to do the same for me.)
While some of them stand around squeezing tomatoes and ejaculating over King Lear, Mr. Sainath is asking me what I was doing when farmer suicides crossed the 400 mark in Vidharbha, while over 500 journalists were busy elsewhere covering the Lakme Fashion Week. And while Mr. Shiv is slapping me up with this brain busting observation: "The socio-drama of India lies in the eventless events – erasure, displacement, obsolescence and triage. Democracy needs to constrict them in new ways beyond the standard theatre right and left." – A senior theatre practitioner had this gem to offer: "Is TV a torchbearer of late capitalism parallel to the role of the novel in the 19th century?"

Well that's enough of a rant. I wish we had more time to attend more of the sessions, but anyway the show went down well. Creeper raised more than a few eyebrows I suspect. Time to take another whack at Into Stone…

Important note to self: I am not a woolly headed wimp.

Creeper creeps to Ninasam

2008-03-14T08:11:00.001-07:00

Starring Abhishek Majumdar and Mallika Prasad

Written and directed by Ram Ganesh Kamatham

Sunday 23rd March (7:30pm) at Nani Arena

Centre for Film and Drama, 5th Floor,

Sona Towers, 71, Millers Road, Bangalore

Wednesday 26th March at Ninasam, Heggodu
as part of the Not the Drama Seminar - Theatre Practice in India Today

by the Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai

"There is a box on stage."

"There is a light on the box."

"We do not know what is inside the box."

Creeper is a modern re-imagination of the tale of Vikram and Betal. The play slams this mythos into a contemporary urban setting with a racy text and powerhouse performances – creating a shadowy world that is immediately recognizable yet bizarre and entertaining.

Adrift - Maddeningly Close (IS-2)

2008-02-28T18:14:00.000-08:00

January was rubbish. Not much work on the play.
Did a very small trip this month. Went to Ninasam in Heggodu and then went on/back to Gokarna over the weekend.
Had a blast scrambling on the rocks towards Half-Moon beach.
Came across another 'devaru' rock - Jatayu again.
Did a proper sit down research session on the historical thread of the play and pinned the year down to 1681 A.D. Reasons later.
Two playwrights have accused me of "thinking too much" when I was whining to them about the play for the hundredth time...
I've decided to switch off my brain on Into Stone - and let my heart loose...
Ahem - the last time I did that I wrote a 2 hour long love story...
I suspect the same will happen this time, but then again, if I'm not thinking about it... then I needn't worry about it at all. (Until playwrights accuse me of writing about the same emotional themes again!)
More later...

Drift - Close to kill (IS-1)

2007-12-26T21:35:00.000-08:00

Been drifting for a while…

Here's the general 29 day route – a lot of places only in transit
Bangalore - Delhi - Rishikesh - Shivpuri – Devpriyag - Pauri - Shivpuri – Rishikesh - Dehradun - Delhi – Mumbai – Ratnagiri – Malvan – Savanthwadi – Mapusa – Panjim – Maragao – Karwar – Ankola – Gokarna – Hubli - Bangalore

I'm pretty tired. Will let the multimedia do the talking.
I have to finish Into Stone ...

Delhi show of Creeper went well.
This was one of the profiles we used for the show. It's really old - ancient even. Quite a sight.
Don't want to get on the wrong side of this piece of equipment!
Belting Mughalai food at Karims was great.
And if I'm in Delhi, what's to stop me from hopping onto a bus at ISBT and heading for the mountains!!!

Ganga Base Camp - Alpine Star, Shivpuri. Awesome place. Highly recommend it for any enthusiastic white water rafting junkies. It got pretty cold. Played a lot of volleyball. Sat around the fire a lot. Met Jackie - the stupidest dog on the planet. He stole my shoe and hid it somewhere. Udit's brother called me a Sufi. A group of tekkies from Noida were at the camp singing and dancing the whole night. On the way back I did a bit of Kayaking. And one run on the raft. Managed a half-roll with the kayak. The river is a small universe... The current is really strong. I jumped into the Ganga from the raft, right into the rapids before the camp. I was laughing. I am an idiot.

Linked up with Udit and hopped a Commander to Pauri.
Saw this at the bus stop.
Pretty unsettling. Creeper still on my mind I guess. :-)

Lot of clouds at Pauri!!! But you get a 180 degree view of the Himalayas from here. Drank lots of coffee. Wrote a quickie children's play at Udit's computer institute. Kept troubling Seema Ma'am for a computer. Signal returned to my phone - but the LCD nearly froze.

Beyond... beyond beyond... Higher than anything...
Far above the nowhere ladder, over the sun...
Breathe breathe breathe ... Everything is full of infinite detail...

Plucked some oranges. Rained heavily.
Roads unsafe, so parked here. Won't make it to Bombay in time for Thespo.

Hit Dehradun. Wandered around the Forest Research Institute.
Um... I guess this sign means well... But I think we've lost something in translation.

And speaking of strange signage...

Hehehe...

Managed to catch this snap at FRI...

I think I might be shooting a bit better.

Evening in Dehradun. Drank Rhododendron juice at a fair.

It's heaven!

Um... Er... Went shopping???

Landed in Mumbai - from 3 degrees to 30 degrees.

Went at Into Stone with a vengeance.

Drove Q mad by sitting in front of the laptop for four straight days.

"What will you give the boatman?"

Took a private bus to Ratnagiri and then an ST bus to Malvan.

My poor back. The mighty Sindhudurg fort.

Stone stone stone...

Gokarna. The site of the aerial battle between Jatayu and Ravan.

Um... A rather short battle I suppose.

My dramatisation:

Muahahahah! - Bachaaon bachaao - Hic... Hic... I'll save you! - WhackSmashBash - Mayday! Mayday! May_ Splat. - Muahahahah! - I've been winged! Pani pani pani pani...

And so on...

The place where Jatayu was chillin before he decided to take on Shiva's number one devotee.
Bad move, old vulture man. Awesome chimney route here. Wanted to free climb it - but good sense prevailed. Must come back and do it with belay.

I asked a local what these were and he conveniently replied - "Devaru" ... SO... I'm interpreting it in my own way. And declaring that this stone contains the wing, bone and liver of Jatayu.

Man I need some sleep.

Happy new year all!

Creeper in Delhi

2007-11-29T23:02:00.000-08:00

Starring Abhishek Majumdar and Mallika Prasad
Written and directed by Ram Ganesh Kamatham

Wednesday 5th December (7:00pm) at
LTG [Little Theatre Group] Auditorium
Copernicus Marg, near Connaught Place
New Delhi 110 001
(Metro Station: Mandi House)

"I am the sutradhar!!! I am pulling this string!!!"

"I can still hear him in my head.
The change of scene did me some good.
But ten minutes after I got back to Bangalore...

I'm back to where I was.

I'm growing too old, too quickly."

Creeper Production Notes (IFS-8)

2007-11-22T11:58:00.000-08:00

Starring Abhishek Majumdar and Mallika Prasad

Saturday 24th November 2007 (7:30pm)
and Sunday 25th November 2007 (3:30pm and 7:30pm)
at Ranga Shankara, 8th Cross, 2nd Phase, JP Nagar, Bangalore - 78
Tickets: Rs 100/- available at the venue
- Contains explicit language
- Not suitable for persons below the age of 18
- Late entry not permitted
- Call or sms: 9845602265 for tele-bookings

And now that we have the PR out of the way, a few thoughts on the process. This production of Creeper is driven by a couple of central ideas. The most visual element, is the use of a painting by Edvard Munch to inform the rehearsal process.

What I love about the Vampire is the delicious ambiguity that energizes the image. Munch's painting has a strong emotional charge that supercedes the immediate need for biography and context, presenting us with an abstracted symbol, leaving our own imagination to do the rest.

This image also fits perfectly within another idea that I've been working with, right from the start of this process - the idea of Vikram and Betal as a single entity. With this production, the character of Vikram and Betal are reduced to a set of behaviors that alternately manifest in the narrator and the sutradhar, weaving between the two.

The Betal idea is explored as one of ravenous hunger, of a desire to feed on something-anything. Rarely is the Betal able to consume actual food, instead devouring memories, emotion, images – launching itself into repetitive activities that loop endlessly. The Vikram idea is viewed as being under the compulsion to physically feed, but never to find solace in the consumption of actual food. The Vikram is under siege by the Betal, having to constantly acknowledge it, often as a person suffering some kind of mental illness.

Of course, the behaviors keep dancing around interchangeably in the two acts – almost as if the two story-tellers in the play are the battleground on which Vikram and Betal have chosen to slug it out. The two characters inhabit a mindscape that is in constant flux, swinging into extreme tangential behavior and then looping into repetitive cyclic thought.

I also hope that this time the second half of the play will register better. Once the play itself swings into repetitive cycles – the meaning as such, begins to transmit itself through juxtaposition. You no longer have the comfort of saying - where is this story going? – but might have to ask – what is going on right now? The comfort of a linear tracking narrative is supplanted with the edgy spinning narrative and you are suddenly thrown into a Munch painting where questions like - who is this character? – lead to dead ends, and again the question - what is going on right now? – opens up a world of meaning…

And I think this is great question to ask not just at an individual level – but at the level of a city. What is going on right now, in a city that suffers a severe identity crisis, that is in such flux that its character might be described only in relation to another thing – a city in dialogue.

I do hope to see you at the show this weekend. And for those of you in Delhi, we travel there on the 5th of December for the Independent Fellowship final presentations. I'm off now, to break a leg, or both if possible.

A happy ending (IFS - 7)

2007-10-06T09:21:00.000-07:00

Well sometimes you spend hours and hours looking for something and it is right under your nose. After driving myself up the wall trying to find a point of entry into the playtext, scribbling endlessly on scraps of paper and staring vacantly at the monitor – I realized that this was pretty much what I needed by way of a point of entry.

With all the inward looking on this text – I thought it only natural to write the play as a meta-narrative – with two writers engaged in the process of writing.

The text scrambled into existence fairly quickly and is being speedily eased into performance. I don't want to say too much at this point – since I'm in rehearsal and am discovering the text anew. Also, I really think a play should speak for itself!

What I will say is that I've managed a satisfying positioning of the Vikram and Betal idea that is immediate and relevant. I view these two characters as a single parasitic entity – one cannot exist without the other. This formlessness manifests dramatically as an inability to say for certain who is who, within the course of the play. Additionally the duo find themselves rooted in contemporary Bangalore – a city reeling under a period of rapid growth and development - a 'cosmopolitan city' that is clearly split down the middle – with a cultural rift that is steadily widening.

I've used a very simple linguistic approach to the play – that of counterpoint and contrast – positioning differing 'linguistic genres' to create tension and dramatic movement. The language of nostalgia slams into the lingo of online pornography – the description of an exorcism ritual, slams into the voice of the cyber stalker – orkut meets Amar Chitra Katha – a cold rational voice is set off against the obsessive-compulsive online addict.

I think what really crystallized this play for me was an incident on October 2nd. I was on my way to rehearsal and was caught up in traffic. I was on my Kinetic and realized the jam was caused by a fight that had broken out on Castle Street, diagonally opposite Brigade Towers and Globe Stores. A couple of guys were slugging it out – and the visual was immediately recognizable – a local South gang versus two Northy guys on two-wheelers. It was a pretty dumb fight – punches, scuffles, some filmi kicks and a helmet being swung into someones head. A cop was standing right opposite, very deliberately turning his back and suddenly very diligently directing traffic. And I really wasn't amused by this circus – with Kannada and Hindi expletives being flung at each other. And I took the typical apathetic middle class route – got past the jam and got the hell out of there and on my way.

I'm not an expert. I'm not one to pass quick judgment, but I think this incident pretty accurately describes what Bangalore is going through right now. And I think the text responds to this situation dialogically – placing a nostalgic 80s Bangalore voice against a rabid 21st century Bangalore voice.

I also hope that the play explores the futility of both positions – of retrogressive xenophobia and the other of glowing 'development propaganda'. The futility of saying – "Who are all these people screwing up my city?" – and "Welcome to Bangalore the world class global hub."

There's loads more – a mixture of two distinct dramaturgical styles that takes the technique of counterpoint up to the level of a formal experiment, the use of metaphor and symbolism – but I'll leave all this for the actual play to do, for poetry is that which escapes the paraphrase.

I do invite all of you in Bangalore to come see the show.

It's alive!!! - Creeper - a new play

2007-10-01T06:30:00.000-07:00

Well guess what!
It's here - raw, corrosive and ready to bite - I am happy to announce:

Creeper

written and directed by Ram Ganesh Kamatham
Saturday 13th October 2007 (7:30pm) and
Sunday 14th October 2007 (3:30pm and 7:30pm)
at Ranga Shankara, 8th Cross, 2nd Phase, JP Nagar, Bangalore - 78
Tickets: Rs 100/- available at the venue
Contains explicit language - Not suitable for persons below the age of 18 - Late entry not permitted

Synopsis
This is a story about two people in this city.
She is writing an essay and trying to understand an ancient demon.
He is online all the time, exploring dark corners of the Internet.
She is the expert narrator, he is a mischievous sutradhar. These two story-tellers have amazing stories to share. Problem is they don't agree on how to tell the story!

Creeper is a modern re-imagination of the tale of Vikram and Betal. The play slams this ancient cycle of folk-tales into a contemporary urban setting – creating a shadowy world that is immediately recognizable, yet bizarre and entertaining.

Darkly funny yet poignant, the play freewheels between the old and the new – creating a landscape that happily contains – pornography, literary theory, orkut, Chandamaama comics, exorcism, blogging, a B-grade television serial, Bram Stoker, Silk Smitha, foul language, Kurt Cobain, a big tree with a Barbie doll nailed onto it and a magical box with something inside.

Currently in its experimental avatar, Creeper will open in a bare bones production in less than two weeks. Do come and see it... And please don't bring the kids!

Creeper - a new play

2007-09-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

Creeper

written and directed by Ram Ganesh Kamatham
Saturday 13th October 2007 (7:30pm) and
Sunday 14th October 2007 (3:30pm and 7:30pm)
at Ranga Shankara, 8th Cross, 2nd Phase, JP Nagar, Bangalore - 78
Tickets: Rs 100/- available at the venue

Contains explicit language - Not suitable for persons below the age of 18 - Late entry not permitted

Call or sms: 9845602265 for tele-bookings

Stone, sights and sphincter (IFS – 6)

2007-09-10T10:23:00.000-07:00

'Ars Poetica'
The goose that laid the golden egg
Died looking up its crotch
To find out how its sphincter worked.
Would you lay well? Don’t watch.
X.J. Kennedy

With this theme in mind for the month, I offer up a fix of some random photographs, and a few extracts from Into Stone.

I suspect that the Vikram and Betal text is in dire danger of being stillborn. I think my sphincter probing might have hit a critical internal organ. I'm still tinkering with it, but might switch mediums to fully realize the scope of the idea. Decision pending...

And now onto the tour...

A view of Edinburgh castle from inside a graveyard. There's stone everywhere and this stone is in possession of some really amazing 'memories'. One of the things I'll have to do is recreate this characteristic 'atmosphere'. There were dozens of memorials and each of them had a story to tell. I liked the spooky idea of the stone doing two very different things in the same picture – one structure is built to keep everyone out, the other is created to keep something inside.

A doorway of a castle in Nottingham. A mad mixture of stone is used here. You can even see the colour changes and how the door is constantly being reinforced with different kinds of stone at different points in time.
Metaphor: the stone structure as an artifact of 'cultural memory' is composed of different and conflicting accounts of the actions it has witnessed – the space is a site of continual historical dialogue.

A closer look at the patterns shows the differing 'contours' of the stone. When writing the scenes set in different time periods, I was tinkering with the idea of the 'contours of speech patterns'. Modern speech being jagged and cutting, the older scenes use sinuous or extended patterns. You might get a sense of this in the extracts.

Extracts from Into Stone

The present
Uttara: So what about you. Married?
Young man: Nah! Still free. Single. (pause) Mildly eligible.
Uttara: Mildly?
Young man: I have my dark secrets.
Uttara: Tempting.
Young man: All coming together. This place, meeting you.

Mythological Past
Old man: I saw him in the stone.
Satya: You saw him?
Old man: I make no claims. I just… I saw a sense of him… a thing… I don't know how to explain. Sight… For a moment.
Satya: You felt his form.
Old man: Yes. Yes that's it.
Satya: And you saw it dormant within the stone, waiting to be coaxed out.
Old man: Yes.
Satya: (pause) You never saw him then.
Old man: I didn’t?
Satya: How can you see the un-manifest? (pause) You saw what you did because you stopped seeing yourself as separate from the universe. You stop seeing the self, you see the infinite.
Old man: You have been chewing too much betel nut!

Historical Past
Maraj: A holy man up in the mountains Missus – he teach me this game.
They used to play it with the bones o' the dead.
This the hand o' fate. And this the souls o' the people.
Is all up and down – one life thrown in the air, or dropped. It's religious.
Young lady: Oh. Should I be playing it then?
Maraj: Sure Missus – I just made up the whole thing.

This is a stone prison(literally!). A very strange kind of limestone is used here and it's as if the rock has melted, giving it a droopy and gloomy kind of feeling. It as if the rock is old and tired and melting away – very different from resilient red laterite.

This is a completely bizarre object! It's a piece torn from a Luftwaffe jacket, purportedly from a downed WW2 Pilot. I'm not kidding or making this up! Mentioned the Iron Cross in an earlier post – definitely something to write about at some point. Spooky feeling, holding this thing...

This is a painting by Piotr Mleczko on display at the Polish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith. I totally tripped out on it – because it does visually what I'm trying to do dramatically. It mixes time frames and iconography, cohesively. I love the idea of a self split across time – the Christ-like head carrying a spear (of destiny?) - the anachronistic construct of the soldier figure. You need to be a bit 'stoned' to do this.

And talk about ostranie!
Strangely, the rick has Maharashtra license plates. Hehe...

The 'familiar' when set in a new context becomes 'foregrounded' - and as a consequence strange and unnatural, allowing us to re-experience the ordinary.

I spent about ten minutes laughing at this! Surreal!

That's it for now.

I stop my rhetoric and get down to actually writing!

The Speech a.k.a. Huh? Wha? DUH!!!

2007-09-07T10:29:00.000-07:00

I drank too much coffee one night.

So then I said to myself – what is the dialogic relationship between language as carrier of meaning and memory as a reconstruction of perceived meaning?

Then I said to myself – Get a life.
It's Saturday night and you're online, reading about post-modernism.
Your computer is too slow.
Your brain is too wobbly.
You need to free up some hard disk space.
You need to buy a few more RAM chips.
Haha, what a stupid pun.
Ok, for a start – free up some disk space.

Then I went rummaging among file structures long forgotten, folders long neglected…

I found 1.9GB of forgotten video.

Then I said to myself – Here is some 'found' material. It is 'found' in the sense that it has been lying forgotten for a few years. It is time to allow the 'other' to operate…

I said – Arranging this material is a process of re-visiting a set of events that occurred. No one can say for certain what really happened, least of all 'the eye' staggering around via the camera. So the 'edit' of the piece is about memory and the impossibility of capturing it objectively – the frame, the 'eye' - preclude any attempt at clinical documentation.

But what does it all mean? To ask – but what does this all mean, is to miss the point entirely.

Ha! Convenient.

It's not a documentary, it's not rehearsed. It's a docudrama of some perverse variety.

A polyvocal clash…

You are full of crap – I said.

I say – I have had too much coffee.

Then I said – People always object to all the foul language in my plays.

I say – I often use foul language as a means of conveying psychological violence. Yes, it's a self- defeating paradox. My characters curse to draw attention to the constructed psyche that resorts to cursing. I foreground swearing as a linguistic genre and rob it of the ability to hurt, hoping to draw attention to my characters – who are often hurting and hurting bad – the reasons for this hurt, constitute the 'meaning' of the piece.

Then I said – All right. That's a lot of rubbish. How can you possibly use language to carry 'meaning' if you're busy robbing it of meaning? What kind of writer collapses language? You might as well drill a hole in a boat and try to row it at the same time.

I said – Uhhh… Well… Ok. Let me just pause that paradox loop for a moment.
So if we're in cacophony, in polyvocal mayhem... does an attempt at structured communication polarize the communication? Or does it all sink into Ionesco like yak-yak-yak-blah-blah – much like the Orator who appears at the end of The Chairs?

In linguistic mayhem, how can 'meaning' operate?

So then I sat and edited this short.
And I deny all responsibility for it.
And I remain intrigued by the argument.
And it's brilliantly stupid stuff... Especially without the preamble!

And I have had way way to much coffee…

NSFW - Contains coarse language. Requires audio. Video quality is rubbish night shot.
ROTFL - Too funny man... Hehehehehe...
As a Nobel Laureate once wrote : "quaquaquaqua with a white beard quaqua outside of the time of the extent that from high of its divine apathia its divine athambia its divine aphasia"

Rehearsal - the Nonologue (IFS – 5)

2007-08-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

I've just discovered that discussing work in progress is a very sensitive issue.

So many things remain in constant flux in the making of a text, that any 'left-brained' activity that tries to rationalize this process too much, can sabotage any hope of a meaningful creative journey. A text is vulnerable in its 'draft state' and is still in the process of being born – so I'm toeing the line here and reporting on some of my work.

Also I've just spent a huge twelve hour burst hammering away at Into Stone and thought I'd call a time-out and report progress.

I spent most of my four days of rehearsal at the residency engaging with the second act of my play – and specifically the collision of the three stories – in what is a potentially a scene of absolute theatrical mayhem.

For this to make any sense I'll just share some facts about the play…

The play takes place at night, and moves between three timelines:
- present - 2007
- mythological past – somewhere in Treta Yuga
- historical past – 1857

The action occurs at a stone fort by the sea, which is
- a beach resort in 2007
- a shrine in the Treta Yuga
- a colonial bastion in 1857

In ACT 2 the space is a prison that exists in all three timelines.

This is a summary of the essential structure of the piece – with regards to time and space.

The reason I've chosen these three specific timelines, comes from the investigation of the space itself (Fort Aguada) and is best summed up in a sentence that I discovered in conversation with my director Raz.

The investigation of a space must address the necessary confluence of its present, mythological and historical contexts.

Why? The space is as I mentioned earlier, polymorphic – so to explore all the possibilities and contradictions that it has to offer – I felt the narrative needed to represent the entire array of activities that might have taken place. The scale of the play needed to be able to devour the space it was investigating.

The play then exists in triple layer – three stories within the same physical space.
At this point everyone had a headache…

Why these contortions? Each timeline represents a 'voice' - a 'discourse' if you like - and I'm fascinated by the possibility of allowing these voices to mingle and collide – as it happened in real life for me.

On questioning the space - one minute you're being hit with a mythological explanation (this was once the site of a temple where Ramachandra stayed during his exile), next minute it’s the ground reality (it's just a touristy beach resort) – then it's legacy (yeah, but it was once a colonial military structure). This polyvocal clash of worlds is what has been keeping me engaged.

SO – if the place is constant, but mutates over time, what does this do to character?

In this play as space mutates over time so does character. All credit to my actors in rehearsal (Vincent, Abhin and Farzana) because after a day of grappling with this idea – it made a fair bit of sense.

Each actor plays three roles. A character in this plays consists of a primary self – one who owns that particular story and two secondary selves – one for each other story. In one secondary self, the attributes of the primary character are distorted by power – a negative version of the self. The other secondary self – is a weak and ineffectual version of the attributes of the primary character – a minor self.

Why? My notion of character in this play emphasises the importance of 'now' – the present. Going back and forth in time can easily diffuse the immediacy of the concerns. You might get the cyclic indolence that suggests the sentiment – "Aw the same stuff happens again and again, why bother!"

Cycles exist – but the human element remains as alive for every iteration of the cycle.
So we get the characters :

Uttara from the present
who is
- young lady in 1857
- Priestess in the Treta Yuga

Satya from the mythological past
who is
- young man in 2007
- Dom in 1857

Maraj from the historical past
who is
- old man in the Treta Yuga
- SK in 2007

So the play involves three stories and nine parts to be played by three actors.
This was when everyone had their second headache. (There was no third - you go numb now.)

Also, in the second half of the play – the stage space is a prison. This prison exists in all times. If I were sitting in this cell and I were to collapse time – could I see everyone who was ever in that cell? What if I was once there, in another timeline?

To take this hallucinatory concept onto stage, in the second half of the play the stories collide – characters begin to wobble, mutating between selves and the plot jumps across timelines.

Why? Juxtaposition.

If each self is a voice – then a question posed by one voice, is answered by another version of the self. If a self is threatened it retreats into its minor self, or attacks by turning into its powerful version. The prison - becomes a howling scream of nine voices – a roar of voices across time and space.

And we've christened it, the nonologue!

We spent the first two days of rehearsal getting our heads around the play. I wrote a bit of the lead up to the nonologue over a weekend and we spent the next two days of rehearsal putting that extract on its feet.

I was hoping to get through all the complexities of the piece through the rehearsal and this did happen. The actors physicalised the action and I needed much less brain-bandwidth to orchestrate dramatic movement. Now I'm working on the second draft and taking a shot at the crescendo of the play – the orchestration of nine voices – the nonologue.

Hopefully now that I've got all the homework done – it's just a matter of emotionally experiencing each moment and fleshing out each instant of the play. No easy task – but hell – looks a lot easier now.

International Residency 2007

2007-08-24T03:38:00.000-07:00

So here's a brief account of my experience at the 2007 International Residency for Emerging Playwrights at the Royal Court...

Week 1
I arrived in London and met the whole team at the Royal Court. There were eleven writers from eleven different countries – a quick glance at all of them
Olivier Choinière (33), Montréal, Canada
Katerina Rudčenková (31), Prague, Czech Republic
Ram Ganesh Kamatham (me - 26), Bangalore, India
Elie Kazam (37), Baabda, Lebanon
Noé Morales Muñoz (29), Mexico City, Mexico
Paul Ugbede (27), Jos, Nigeria
Maria Manolescu (26), Bucharest, Romania
Jean Tay (32), Singapore
Vanessa Montfort (31), Madrid, Spain
Lorenz Langenegger (27), Zurich, Switzerland
Wael Qadour (25), Damascus, Syria

Highlights of the first week included a meeting with playwright David Hare – who spoke from the heart about his experiences on writing about the conflict in Palestine and how impossibly difficult it is being a playwright (its true!).

We also had an incredible session with playwright Martin Crimp, who walked us though a few illuminating exercises about his obsession with language – we focused on two extracts from Carol Churchill and Harold Pinter – both ferociously political writers. What fascinated me is the extent to which both writers have experimented with language and structure to serves ideological ends. This also explained a lot about Crimp's own dramaturgy. Honestly, Crimp is the Merlin of UK dramaturgy. He's a wizard, with his long white hair but more importantly with his sophisticated writing style.

We also saw a couple of productions – a previously unseen play of Harold Pinter called The Hothouse at the National, and Tony Kushner's behemoth-opus Angels in America – Part 1 at the Lyric Hammersmith. And a quirky production called Food by Joel Horwood at the Battersea Arts Centre, about the topsy-turvy trajectory of a celebrity chef in his quest for perfection. The week ended with a night out at Shunt, thanks to its Artistic Director David Rosenberg which was an awesome night club underneath London Bridge. It was a true case of underground counter-culture, with long musty corridors and dark corners under archways!

Week 2
There were three big highlights in the second week.

The first was the meeting with Harold Pinter. (So there you go, I've met a Nobel Prize winner – I can die happy now!) The session was thought provoking for many reasons.
Pinter urged us to speak out and directly challenge oppressive power structures in our respective countries. He also offered his view on the UK involvement in the invasion of Iraq. It prompted me to question the relative importance of individual opinion in different cultures. (To be stark in Bangalore no one really gives a shit what you say, unless you say the wrong things.) I offered the instance of Ratan Thiyam as someone who creates extremely political theatre but in a symbolic and non-confrontational way. I'm no expert on Thiyam, but what he has managed to achieve in Manipur is remarkable. Pinter acknowledged the validity of that approach, but urged 'directness'. This is still something I haven't figured out, but will probably engage with in greater detail, in the play I'm working on.

The second was a chance encounter with a Polish radio operator from World War 2. As part of an exercise called London worlds – international writers paired up with UK based writers and explored a corner of London that offered a self contained world. This was remarkably similar to the process that I used to release the play Into Stone – with my trip to Fort Aguada. The basic idea is to saturate yourself in a physical space and respond dramatically to the stimuli that you receive from the space.

Well Louie – the Polish radio operator we bumped into had more than a story to offer – he actually pulled out photographs of his old army unit and I recognized the familiar outlines of a number of the planes in the photos– including Spitfires and Flying Fortresses. Then he pulled out two objects that literally blew out my skull - a German Iron cross and a torn piece of a Luftwaffe flying jacket. – both carrying the Nazi swastika. There's definitely a play in here somewhere, when I get around to developing this idea.

The third was a trip to the Tate Modern Art Gallery with my director for the residency, the most excellent Raz Shaw. We managed to see the Salvador Dali exhibition and one painting in particular – the Invisible Man hit me over the head with an idea for my play.

Dali paints a surreal landscape with what appears to be a disembodied man floating in it. But what is most striking is how parts of the man are actually merged into the landscape, what appears to be a waterfall, is actually the fingers of the man's hand.

It occurred to me that elements of character can actually be embedded within the external landscape of the piece – in a sense the subject occurs as a result of the mixed perception of the fore-grounded body part and the backdrop which negatively defines additional features. That's a lot of bullshit for – everything's mixed up, but you can separate individual elements on a closer look. End result – surreal and scary!

We also saw Rafta Rafta at the National – where Harish Patel was going on about 'tatti' – and about ten people in the audience were falling off their chairs. Also ran away from Othello at the Globe, which is the advantage of being a groundling.

And everyone went on a day trip to Brighton where the beach was full of pebbles and there was an awesome ride called the Booster on the pier which shoots you up a hundred feet in the air and spins you about while doing so. A memorable moment occurred when suspended upside down a hundred feet up in the air, the sea and pier became the sky and the sky became the ground – quite a Dali moment.

Week 3
This week was when fatigue was really beginning to hit. Highlights included a meeting with Tom Stoppard who spoke a bit about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, and how great work is often created in the complete absence of the knowledge of dramatic technique. We also had a meeting with Simon Stephens who did a neat workshop on dramatic action, and whom I prodded a bit about his play Motortown. I quite like the play which is really hardcore and revolves around a soldier who has just returned from serving in Basra. In fact I quite like Simon Stephens as a writer and as a writer-mentor and will be keen on seeing where he goes from here. I also wandered around St. Katherine's Docks with my writer's writer Meredith Oakes and had baked scampi for lunch.

We then dived into rehearsal which I will deal with in more detail in another post.

Week 4
The last week was the culmination of all the work done so far. We all presented ten minute extracts from the work we had been doing in rehearsal. It was an awesome presentation with 10 minutes from eleven different worlds presented at the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs. Three hundred people showed up to see it! This was a bit weird because I presented a section of the play which was really the toughest part well into the second half, which was not in the least bit audience friendly.
We were working on moving between the three stories and finding ways to make the collision of stories coherent – which we did, (at least it got clearer in my head). This extract however is coherent only with knowledge of the play itself. A lot of people who saw the extract went – huh, too complicated to follow.
This annoyed me a bit because the extract was really about the breakthrough we made in rehearsal and not really a neat cut and dried ten minute trailer for the play. Of course it was complicated, why do you think I needed to workshop it!
But anyway all I can say to anyone who was befuddled – wait till you see the play at full throttle, it will all make sense (or if I goof off will continue to be nonsense permanently!)

We were all pretty sentimental by the end of the whole thing and I really miss the whole gang of writers. Apparently we were quite a politically aware lot and many of us were writing either covert or overtly, about specific political issues. I do wonder where we will all be in a few years time!

Edinburgh
That's all for the International Residency. My next stop was the Edinburgh Festival where I had a chance meeting with David Greig the Scottish genius playwright. He's really quite amazing and his plays are really in a different league.
I managed to see a weird mix of things. I saw a brilliant play called Long Time Dead by Rona Munroe at the Traverse, which was remarkably similar to my own play Crab!
It was a controlled and beautiful character study that made me wish I was a better writer on Crab!
I also managed to see Will Adamsdale: The Human Computer – a daft interactive stand-up piece that was really funny. I ate some haggis which was fun in a masochistic way.
Also saw a guy on a ten foot unicycle juggling fire, a man dressed like a tree levitating a crystal ball, a bunch of American Indians in full costume playing the Braveheart theme, and many many drunk Scotsmen.
What better way to end this most intellectual sojourn than a trip to the Circus of Horrors where I saw some pretty crazy stuff that's not discussed in polite company.

I snuck in a quick trip to Nottingham to do some climbing – but the weather was poor and I ended up doing indoor climbing – where I discovered I was fat and incompetent as a climber after a month of English Breakfast and non stop writing. The fact that I am a lousy climber is not a new discovery, but it sure as hell doesn't stop me from loving it!
Now onto redrafting – Into Stone, due in three months!

I landed near Hyde Park (IFS – 5 ???)

2007-07-11T08:18:00.000-07:00

Here's where things start getting interesting.
Here's when there's nothing but smooth rock face soaring upwards, with the occasional crimp, gut-wrenchingly out of reach.
Here's when there's no more scree or moraine… just a sheer wall of ice.
Here's when your lungs give out, your knees start to buckle and your brain starts locking into repetitive half-thoughts, spiraling out of focus.

And so on…
(I think I haven't gone climbing in a while and it's showing!)

In a few days I begin battle testing the latest play at the Royal Court's International Residency for Emerging Playwrights. I will be working with collaborators to flesh out the text and move the text onwards from the first draft.

No details yet. But will do a weekly update kind of thing to track progress. More in a bit...

I flew off on one of those tangents (IFS – 4)

2007-06-29T22:35:00.000-07:00

As is often the case with creative ventures you start out searching for one thing and end up finding something quite different! My Vikram and Betal quest is still in progress, but is likely to peak into a presentable draft only in September.

However this month I do have fascinating stuff to share on my other play, which recently popped into existence, so this month's post will be a sidestep into another play-world.

As I mentioned last month I was exploring multiple stories within a single location across time. The trigger for this was the discovery of a really interesting space, Fort Aguada in Goa. The most fascinating thing about the space was that it seemed almost polymorphic. In fact even without considering history, the space in present times shape-shifts quite alarmingly.

I visited the tourist side of it, the area near the lighthouse, which predictably was hot, derelict and full of tourists. It was pretty depressing, the kind of sadness you feel when you see stone ruins. (I got the same feeling when I was at Elephanta caves. There's something profoundly gloomy about seeing broken statues, litter and metal railings steering tourist traffic appropriately away from ten meter drops and uncovered wells.)

The other side of the fort was occupied by a five star beach resort. Strictly off limits for the budget backpacker. The stone here was neatly reworked and polished to create a nice colonial feel and was inset with some pretty nifty electrical lights. Typical five star lawns, with five star daddies and mummies and kids all on holiday. This part of the fort sat right on Sinquerim beach and by night is dazzling, visible all the way up to Baga. It's also an awesome walk in the evenings. There's this ship anchored near the bastion for some reason, and it gives the place a really magical feel.

The side away from the lighthouse, is a prison. I tried heading there, but there were guards every twenty meters, giving me dirty looks. So I decided against going all the way to the gate and called it a day and made a beeline to Brittos and a seafood platter.

So there it is, in a day, I see three very different avatars of the same space. A historical monument built in the sixteenth century, part magical retreat, part shanty tourist attraction, part prison! And then I got thinking how this would translate dramatically.

I worked with three stories.

One set in the present, one in a fictionalized historical past and the other in a fictionalized mythological past. The idea behind this was that the single space conflated multiple discourses, and that putting each of these voices into a dramatic-situation would create the necessary 'conflict.' In a sense, the dramatic movement consists of the voices of mythology, history and the present, intermingling, clashing and eventually resolving within the space. Inextricably tangled within the space are the protagonists of the three stories, who are confronted with tough choices.

I'll say no more about the play itself, but will post it to the group by the 12th of July, and hope it will do the talking for me. I do welcome constructive feedback!

What I will say about the play, is that one of the agendas was to deliberately mix the present context, history and mythology. As a result, metaphors are set up within the dramatic structure of the play, and do not merely sit prettily in dialogue. I've seen too many 'well intentioned' plays purporting to explore some social malaise that proceed to bomb the audience with every piece of information about the problem being explored. I've read Pinter's Mountain Language and One for the Road and I suppose in retrospect, I'm toying with much the same technique, although I'm a bit allergic to agitprop. This approach to theme is far more effective and is provocative and exciting.

Letting the theme permeate the form of the play is a favored device of mine as it opens up dramatic exploration of ideas, like no other medium can. You can debate all day about totalitarian states, but share a moment with a character who is facing the full wrath of such a situation and an immediate emotional connect occurs.

This is my theatre – edgy, unsettling, dangerous...

Some more pics from the trip...

Three people sitting on the bastion - inspiration for the 3 characters. And the anchored ship.

A view of the prison from near the lighthouse.

The bastion, the stone...

Tangents eventually make a circle (IFS - 3)

2007-05-15T09:42:00.000-07:00

I've been on an eclectic reading/mad travelling spree and instead of delving into the V&B text this month, just thought I'd share some tangential insights I've discovered of late. This is a bit of a travelogue-esque post.

I've been reading some translated Sanskrit plays of Bhasa, specifically the Pratimaanataka aka The Statue Play. A dull sense of familiarity began to creep up on me as I read the play and to my horror I discovered that I had actually studied it in my first year of college, although in Kannada. (Horror, because it seems I was not asleep in the last bench, as I imagined I would be, and actually remember some important bits.)

This is relevant with regard to my earlier post, where I mentioned the punning of character names in the openings of Sanskrit drama. (The term used in the book is paronomasia, which on further investigation is a synonym for pun – so much for that!) Pratimaanataka begins with an oblation that by paronomasia introduces many of the names of the characters as well as the name of the play itself. This convention is diabolically difficult to replicate in English and I've been wondering how it could manifest in modern writing.

The other discovery (continuing on my exploration of cyclic structures) is the convention of framing the play as an interrupted ritual. The prologue of most of these plays invariably has the stage manager welcoming the audience, only to be interrupted by some commotion from backstage – either an actor bringing in news of some import, a commotion and so on. This convention kick-starts the play into a mode where the audience is privy to the covenant of willing suspension of disbelief for the performance to unfold.

What is a bit frustrating in these translations is an annoying sensibility that seems to impose a five act structure onto all plays. I'm finding that the content has been slammed into a formal structure, where clearly there is another system of thought implicitly present. This is something I'll be encountering a lot, I predict, and I will often be guilty of the same myself. This is also something that will necessarily inform how a retelling of the V&B tale can be validated in a modern context, as regards to content as well as form – how to walk that tight-rope between transposition and re-imagination.

Moving on… I visited the Chottanikara temple near Ernakulam. It was truly an awesome experience. I'm viewing it as a playwright and also at some level as a student of psychology – so I'm not really going to go into the formal religious side of it.

Suffice it to say, it is an immersive collective experience that strongly utilizes spectacle and ritual to effect rudimentary behavioural changes, some pronounced, some subtle. It is very difficult to interpret the effectiveness of this 'treatment' when the validity of the whole system is problematic. It cannot be viewed as a truly scientific system, but to disregard it outright in complete blindness to its strong socio-cultural roots does it a great disservice.

My rational self was continuously seeking to impose limiting frames around the phenomenon I witnessed – catatonic/paranoid schizophrenia, clinical depression being only some of the terms that sprang to mind.

Additionally I was able to see some physical manifestations of the so called 'possessed.' To be frank it felt like being in a mosh-pit full of metal heads except it wasn't an angst-ridden teen band playing but a bunch of Mallu priests working the crowd with drums and conches and the head-banging was being done by a set of wild looking Mallu women in saris. Disregarding the obvious political incorrectness of that insight, I think I am trying to emphasise the overwhelmingly cathartic fervour that was being generated by the ritual.

For me the real terror of the space manifested in the movements of a little boy who seemed to be suffering some kind of motor impairment, perhaps due to a mental illness – especially in his inability to use his fingers properly. He seemed to be unaware of his fingers and toes and was crawling around on his wrists and knees, with his toes pointed unnaturally. And of course the clincher is the tree of nine-inch nails and dolls, which knocks even the most hardened cynic into a state of extreme unease!

My fear is that engaging with this material can so easily degenerate into a freak show of superstition, or even worse a cultural parade of indigenous mumbo-jumbo. It's so easy to take details of this experience and weave a B-Grade tale of dayyalau-bhootalu (er… that's a Telugu colloquialism I can best translate as spooks 'n ghosts) but that's just superficial and small minded. Working this system for spectacle or shock value is cultural prostitution of the worst kind.

What I do find compelling is engaging with an ancient socio-religious knowledge system that anticipates cathartic psychiatric treatment and continues to exist today!

One funny thing about the place though is how they keep setting off fire-crackers unexpectedly. The sudden loud noise really startles you! I would think this is in keeping with the shock-therapy trend established by the space.

The deity herself is fascinating – acknowledged as changing forms depending on the time of day and worshipped as three different manifestations. The theertham is blood red and was flung around quite a bit. (I'm tempted to translate theertham as holy water, but would then be guilty of the same literary dilution that I've been cursing in the translations I've been reading.)

Sadly no photos are allowed inside the temple premises. But I did mange to take a hurried snap on the way out. (My photographic skills are just below zero as is evident.) I can add to the mood of this photo by telling you that my two main thoughts were extreme joy on seeing the exit to the temple and also extreme doubts as to whether I was still in the twenty-first century after all that I had seen.

Heading further south to Varkala however brought me back to the twenty-first century with a jolt. The part of the beach where I was loitering about was full of foreign tourists and I felt like I had walked out of medieval India into modern Frankfurt. It was tough to find a local in the area! Anyway, no findings here except for excellent tandoori marlin and this surreal sign.

Let me enhance the mood of this photo by telling you that I now felt that I had walked out of medieval India into modern Frankfurt and then into some alternate universe where everyone is a little mad. I figured it was time to leave Kerala. :-)

I've also ended up re-reading Yuganta and continue to admire Irawati Karve's slicing insight into the Mahabharata. Her realist, biting and often cynical stance on the characters of this epic is something I'm truly enamoured by. What I admire is her ability to take the given details of a mythological scenario and come up with an extremely believable spin, that cuts through the ornamental elements of the tale and instead lays bare the character motivations that drive the scene – rendering the scene an abstraction of an essential human problem and as a result – relevant!

Point to remember – cut through the jazz of the mythology and find the human problems embedded in the story.

Another stunningly amateur photo of a bastion…

Here I became obsessed with the red laterite stone used at Fort Aguada. And I'm digging around to find out more about it. I wasn't sure what the information was for though, but the texture of the stone is incredible. I wonder if it would be possible to climb a face made out of this kind of rock.

However I think this stone thread will go into a different play. The basic premise of this other play I'm working on is that a single space can conflate multiple discourses – basically I'm exploring multiple stories within a single location across time.

Been a bit of an iffy transient kind of month… Most of my brain time was spent working on this laterite play which is on a tight deadline. More on V&B in due course…

Oh and a random quote to end... It's a lovely line. I'm thinking about it in the V&B context.

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die."
- H.P. Lovecraft

The fruit of immortality (IFS - 2)

2007-04-14T03:40:00.000-07:00

So we all know that Vikram has to get Betal down from the tree and in the course of things a story is told. Vikram answers correctly, the ghoul escapes and we’re back to square one. And this is captured in a series of twenty five tales… But where does the story really begin, and where does it really end?

I’ve been reading a version of the text by John Platts, translated to English from Hindi (where the tales are called Baital Pachchisi) which was translated from the Braj version, which was originally the Sanskrit text - Vetala Panchavimsati. The origins of the English text prompt two conclusions – this text has been translated many times rendering it pretty full of holes and inaccuracies; there is no really definitive English text.

Sadly I do not know Sanskrit, so digging up a comprehensive text is an archeological exercise (which I might pursue later if I find any leads) and I will continue working with the text I currently have first published in 1881 and with an Indian edition printed in 2000. A quick disclaimer – I’m basing my conclusions on a slippery text so I don’t know how much of what I’ve deduced can be authentically verified. The plan is to engage with enough matter to use as a point of departure for my own re-imagining. I’ve made the archeological side of it a second priority for now. However I would really appreciate any advice or pointers or information on this front.

The text opens by establishing Vikram as a wanderer figure. He is ruler of Dharanagar. But he has left the throne having chosen to “wander from land to land and forest to forest.” In his place his younger brother Bharthari rules. The story snap-shifts gears and speaks of a holy mendicant who chances upon a fruit of immortality gifted to him by a deity. He gives the fruit to his wife, who freaks out. “This is a great evil we have to suffer! For becoming immortal, how long shall we go on begging alms. Nay to die is better than this; (for) if we die, then we escape from the trials of the world.” (All direct speech in the text sounds like this – god help me!)

So the mendicant says immortality is a gift for the King. So he gifts the fruit to the King. The King is pleased and rewards him for the gift and decides to bless his queen with eternal youth and gives the fruit to his Queen. The Queen gives the fruit to her ‘paramour’ – a certain kotwal (an official of the court). He in turn gives it to his mistress – a courtesan. The courtesan - thinking like the mendicant - decides that immortality is a gift for the King and presents the fruit to the King. After this passing the parcel session the King challenges the Queen on the fruit. She lies and says she ate it and (predictably) the king produces the fruit that has come full circle and calls her a liar, to which the Queen has no response.

The King in true dramatic fashion says “The perishable wealth of the world is of no use whatever; for through it one must ultimately fall into hell.” (The usage of hell here is such a clear indication of conflicting theosophical sensibilities, continually at work.) Bharthari says – I quit – eats the fruit and assuming the guise of a devotee retires to the jungle.

This sets-up for the return of Vikram to his throne, but not before an encounter with a demon that was sent to guard the throne in his absence. But more on this later...

For now I remain fascinated with this seemingly innocuous tale of the immortal fruit. I immediately reacted to its predictability. And then found its circular narration mildly interesting. But I wasn’t really sure of why we were being told of Vikram’s brother and this strange fruit. Then the placement of the story allowed me to make a connection.

By placing this mini-story at the prologue of the text, the authors of the piece are hinting via metaphor at the essential construction of the entire text. Viewed as an extraneous preamble it becomes superfluous and can be ignored. But regarding it as a self-referential device (much like the punning of character names in the openings of Sanskrit drama) the story becomes an incredibly stunning prologue to twenty-five tales of the ghoul. If we view the ‘fruit of immortality’ as the symbolic equivalent of an orally transmitted story, the story becomes richly dialogic with the main cycle of stories.

And isn’t this the nature of stories? Handed from the old to the young, from the oppressed to the powerful, given with devotion as the token of lovers, received with dismay as the machinations of infidelity, causing suffering, sorrow and joy in equal measure in differing circumstances?

I feel that the radial nature of Indian mythology is richly present in this set of stories, within stores, within stories… And like all classics, the end may well be predictable but the journey undergone in one cycle of the tale is the most interesting aspect.

By placing the story of Bharthari as a prologue, we are given a taste of things to come. In addition to presenting us a miniature structure of the larger tales as a reference point, it raises several thematic concerns that are explored later. Sexual infidelity, suffering caused by dishonesty, the nature of responsibility and the futility of material gain – all enclosed within a fantastical world of moral collapse.

This story is a microcosmic prologue within the cycle of tales, and for the writer in me – food for thought in creating my own little microcosm of the world around me.

My next venture... (IFS - 1)

2007-04-14T03:34:00.000-07:00

The story of Vikram and Betal has fascinated me ever since I first encountered it, either in the Amar Chitra Katha comics or the Chandamama magazine, where I eagerly read it with a mixture of fascination, awe and horror.

The story has called to me again and I will be spending the rest of the year searching for a way to tell the story as I see it, within a dramaturgical context. Before the words reinterpretation and retelling become leveled at this venture, I must say that it is only mildly involved in an archeological effort to exhume a set of medieval folktales. I prefer to view the whole process as a re-imagining of the myth within a modern urban context – the end product being a play script.

Much of my initial efforts have been to immerse myself in the world that the original text evokes with a view to finding useful points of departure. Once this immersion begins the writing process has kicked off and that's where I hope I can share all the excitement the process has to offer. This is primarily a creative venture, an extremely personal one, but I hope to be as inclusive as possible on this journey. I'll be documenting most of the physical journeys with photos and will share notes that inform the creation of the text.

At the outset I'll be looking to explore a few core issues. The relationship between Vikram and Betal lies at the heart of the story. It sets up the primary frame for the rest of the twenty five tales that follow. This essentially antagonistic dynamic seems to me the engine that will drive the entire content of the piece. Personally I always thought that the two characters were twin sides of the same coin - dual personalities forming one entity.

One is the king – the one who sits on the seat of all knowledge and as a consequence must grapple with morality to ascertain his fitness to the throne. The other is the ghoul – the undead force that teeters on the brink of insanity and is above all moral considerations, but subjects the more temporal aspect to its constant self-defeating inquiry. This duality is fascinating when applied to larger systems and contexts, where so called forward movement has stalled into cyclic degenerative patterns. Drawing the appropriate parallels, with due regard to the suggested philosophic import, at the same time keeping the aesthetic in mind, will be the challenge.

Additionally I'll be consciously exploring the form of the play and toying with a dramaturgical technique known as polyvocality. Polyvocality uses multiple linguistics strategies which simultaneously co-exist within a single play. This form resists the notion of a single authorial voice in a narrative, supplanting it with a number of variable discourses. This is an attempt to resist categorization into a particular genre and at the same time foreground the dramaturgical form as not merely a carrier of content.

The resultant piece I hope will do justice to the cyclic narrative of this ancient frame within a frame story.

Crab at the NCPA Experimental

2007-03-08T05:14:00.000-08:00

After a successful opening at Writer's Bloc...
Crab is on again ...

March 31st, April 1st, 2007 - NCPA Experimental
April 5th, April 6th, 2007 - NCPA Experimental

Tickets are priced at Rs. 150/-
Call 22824567 for booking.
Email qtp@vsnl.com for more details.

Reviews

Ram Ganesh Kamatham’s Crab runs in every direction: the narrative scuttles back and forth in time, skips from character to character, pokes at the problems of urban life and even mountaineering. The set recreates both metropolis and mountain, and helps realise the emotional pitch and intensity of the tautly written script.
- Outlook

What stands out is Kamatham’s spare style – his frugal use of words fuels tensions even as it reins them in, resulting in a controlled piece of drama…
… Arghya Lahiri’s artful direction and aesthetic use of light – shadows and stark pools of light charge an atmosphere that’s already bristling with emotion…
- Time Out

… makes apparent the difficulty of communication and the sheer power, need and joy of it.…
… explores the intensity, pain and fragility of relationships against the backdrop of the alienating concrete jungle…
…Arghya Lahiri’s direction is austere but sharp and lucid. The design is stark and arresting…
…luminous with poetic lines and a very intricate, very delicate filigree of emotions…
- Mumbai Mirror

A director’s coup with superb casting.
- Tehelka

… sky bound, with harsh bursts of firecracker dialogue…
… Crab has four characters, but one who matters. Zamiel. The existential heir of Meursault in his remorseless commitment to the truth and Gregor Samsa in his love that is deeper, more willing to take risks. In 2007, when achievement and success are defined by measly measures of employability, disposable income, group dynamics and other corporate-speak, the “alone-ness” of Zamiel is even more stark. And therefore quite darkly romantic…
- Indian Express

Premier of Crab

2006-12-10T06:17:00.000-08:00

CRAB

Wednesday Jan 17th, 2007 - Prithvi, 6 & 9pm
Friday Jan 26th, 2007 - NCPA Experimental, 7 pm
Duration: 1hr 30mins, no interval

Written by Ram Ganesh Kamatham
Directed by Arghya Lahiri

Synopsis

Rocky polishes a pair of boots. Jojo smokes. Priya is packing up.
Zamiel is climbing, wandering, searching...

Three lives twisted in different directions because of a fourth. Grappling with a world hanging in mid-air. Locked in a world where things move sideways.

Cast: Ankur Vikal, Freishia Bomanbehram, Ali Fazal, Devika Shahani Punjabi

Produced by Q Theatre Productions

Part of Rage’s Writers’ Bloc 2, presented by Hutch, supported By Jindal South West Foundation and Royal Court Theatre, UK

Chronology of Work

2006-07-13T01:44:00.000-07:00

To the question - "How many scripts have you written?" - Please find response below... (My eternal thanks to everyone who has been a part of these performances.)

Early Works - One Acts, Sketches (1996-2000)

1. Omlet (1996) - Whistance '96 (Second Best Play), Teachers Day '96, Prize Day '98

2. Topaz - The Making Of a Movie (1996) - Inter-House Dramatics '96 (Best Play)

3. Chateau de La Indigestion (1997) - Graduation Day '97, Fresher's Day '98

4. Mob Mentality (1997) - Cascade '97 (Second Best Play)

5. Remember The Time (1997) - Whistance '97 (Best Play)

6. G-Factor (1997) - Inter-House Dramatics '97 (Best Play)

7. Storm (a.k.a. Untitled So Far) (1998) - NIE Times Playfest '98 (Best Play, Best Costumes), Public Show '98

8. Plagued (1998) - Inter-House Dramatics '98 (Best Play)

9. Amazing Stunts With No Plot (1998) - Prize Day '98

10. Arcana : The Secrets Of Catharsis (1999) - NIE Times Playfest '99 (Best Poster)

11. Nedsity (2000) - incomplete

Later Works - Stage, Radio, Film (2000 onwards)

1. Square Root of Minus One (2001) - Culmination of workshop process conducted by the RCT (StageRite Theatre Festival, October 2002) Square Root of Minus One published in StageRite Seven First by Samuel French Ltd. (ISBN 0 573 100152)

2. The Dead Metaphor (2001) - Experimental production (Thespo III - Bangalore and Mumbai, December 2001 - Outstanding Original Script Award, Thespo III – Christ College, Jan 2002)

3. Flash! (2002) – Written on commission, unproduced

4. Minus One (2002) - Writing credit on the full length feature film Minus One. (Premiered May 2005)

5. Straitblackjacket (2002) - Written on commission from Artistes' Repertory Theatre (ARTY (Artistes' Repertory Theatre Youth) Annual Summer Workshop Production, July 2002)

6. WE ARE WATER (2003) - Radio play developed through virtual workshop. (Broadcast on BBC World Service Drama, May 2003 - Rehearsed reading at Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London, July 2003)

7. There is No Spoon! (2003) - 35 minute short film, as part of Third-year Media Project at Christ College (February 2003)

8. Forgotten Song (a.k.a. WarSong) (2003) - w.i.p./ see Ultimate Kurukshetra

9. Dancing on Glass (2004) – Experimental multiple-format performance (Premiered at Black Coffee Theatre Festival, July 2004 - Performed at World Information City, November 2005 and Bangalore Habba Theatre Festival, December 2005 and December 2009. Discussed as part of the Performance Studies International Conference held at NYU in November 2007. Performed by Theatre Rasa Nova in San Francisco October 2010 and in Los Angeles in June 2011 - Nominated for 6 META Awards in March 2011. An extract of Dancing on Glass was published in Multiple City - Writings on Bangalore by Penguin India )

10. Rubbish (2005) - Short play written on commission, unproduced. Received the Special Jury Commendation in Creative Writing, January 2009 at the TFA Awards

11. Snakes & Ladders (2005) – Culmination of a four month theatre workshop with the Journalism students of Christ College (January 2005 - July 2005 - August 2005 - won five inter-collegiate awards over thirteen shows)

12. Teddy Bear (a.k.a. Worm) (2005) - incomplete

13. Crab (2006) - Premiered as Part of Rage’s Writers’ Bloc 2, presented by Hutch, supported By Jindal South West Foundation and Royal Court Theatre, UK - Ranga Shankara Theatre Festival, October 2007 - Rehearsed reading at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in Feb 2011)

14. Glass (2006) - work in progress - film adaptation

15. Loosing Lucy (2006) - musical, work in progress

16. A Dog's Life (2006) - Children's play about co-operation that reinterprets Romeo and Juilet with dogs in the lead roles

17. Into Stone (2007) - w.i.p. developed at the Royal Court International Residency 2007

18. Sigh (2007) - short film

19. The Speech (2007) - short film

20. A long time ago, right now... (2007) - Children's play about the importance of value systems that reinterprets the story of Krishna and Sudhaama

21. Creeper (2007) - Developed under a SARAI-CSDS Independant Fellowship. Premiered in Bangalore and Delhi in Oct-Dec 2007. Premiered in Chennai at the Metro Plus Theatre Festival in August 2008. Invited to Bharat Rang Mahotsav - the NSD Theatre Festival in Jan 2011. Translated into Marathi as Mangutivar Mayasabha by Irawati Karnik and performed in Pune, Mumbai and touring parts of Maharashtra

22. Eras (a.k.a. Negotiating for Time) (2008) - Short play written on commission for the Karnataka State Dept. of Tourism

23. Rani ke Sena (2008) – 30 minute documentary film commissioned by the NGO Srijjan, profiling the story of the women of Maitree, a successful rural enterprise in Rajasthan

24. Ultimate Kurukshetra (2003, 2008, 2010) - An ant's eye view of the Mahabharath. Developed at the Adishakti Theatre, Pondicherry as part of the Sangam House Residency, December 2009 under an Asif Currimbhoy Playwriting Fellowship. Awarded the Sultan Padamsee Award for Playwriting in August 2011

25. Slide (2008) – Short play written in response to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai on 26th November, 2008, unproduced. Received the Toto Award for Creative Writing in 2010

26. Project S.T.R.I.P. (2009) - Satire on the politics of development. Premiered in June in Mumbai. Performed at the Ranga Shankara Theatre Comedy Festival, Bangalore, November 2009. Performed at the Kala Ghoda Arts festival in Feb 2011

27. Wanker (2009) - Short play, unproduced. Received the Toto Award for Creative Writing in 2010

28. Alone (2010) - Short play, unproduced

29. Bust (2010) - Premiered in June 2010 at Ranga Shankara, Bangalore. Developed under a Robert Bosch Art Grant. Performed as part of the Bangalore Trilogy in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai in July - Dec 2010

30. Muse-i-cal Magic (2010) – Writer - Children's play about the importance of self-discovery

...

Lost in worlds - Excerpts

2006-04-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

*
I went climbing. Two thousand feet above the sea. In the clouds. And in the clouds there was a ladder. A single ladder. Starting from no where and going upwards to nowhere. I cried and cried because I could not climb it.
* Faustus from Snakes & Ladders

*
You think I'm a cold hearted bitch don’t you? I'm not. I'm practical. I've stopped reading this stuff. "Child gets electrocuted, farmer commits suicide, plane crashes, trains collide, woman gang raped."And you don't give a shit. Read the comics, do the crossword. Then one day, "Boyfriend smashed by lorry." And you can't ignore it."Died alone. Future cancelled. Survived by bereaved bitch. Plans of marriage dashed. Dreams gone absconding."Why can't it be someone else?
* Megha from Dancing on Glass

*
See I'm lumbering along right. And we're done clearing one section of trees. All of a sudden we hear shouts of "Fire fire!" And we all freak out and begin the emergency procedures. We run the elephants to the river and get them to spray water on the trees. To prevent the fire from burning the lumber stores. And then we see it. Hell would have been cooler. No licking tongues of fire, no dancing flames. This wave of super heated air sweeps in and everything explodes. One minute tree. Next minute whoomp and there's an outline in flames and then it falls. Everything started going up! Four hundred year old trees explode. Molten sap flies all over the place and lands on screaming men and panic stricken elephants. The men nearest the tree line light up like leaves and fall to ashes. That was hellfire… that was volcanic wrath eating the trees. And who should come walking along doing his cool hero walk through the inferno with his magnificent bow?
* Daksha from WarSong

*
Stay with me. Just over that way is a tiny plateau. It’s off the main path. There’s a heart shaped aquifer there. Gorgeous. A little heart shaped, cool waters. With the moon on it, the surface looks like crystal. I’ve pitched my tent there. I’m staying the night.
* Zamiel from Crab

*
I wanted to see why they say cats always landed on their feet. So I used to throw Kitty off of different heights, to see how she landed. One night I climbed up on the roof with her and threw her into the pool from there. The problem was that my Dad had drained the pool that day while I had been at school so I didn’t know about it. And you can’t make out at night because the pool lights were off. So instead of splosh! I hear patchack_
* Pandu from Square Root of Minus One

*
You are lying. You are a liar. You are a liar because you are lying. You are lying because you are a liar. Is that true?
* Agent Orange from There is No Spoon!

*
The game is such. Now what’s important is that they find you. You must not find them. It defeats the purpose of this mad quest. If there is such thing in the world. Any world. Ah! Alas! Fie on it! S’wounds. S’blood. The existential angst that hovers around us like a gloomy mist, often curls around and about the spirit like strings of phlegm spewing out in slow motion as you sneeze. In such circumstances we must travel the world, travel the worlds, in search of that one blissful truth which will still the soul like a hiccup that happens just when you’re swallowing water. Hic. Ah! Alas! Fie on it! S’wounds. S’blood.
* Fu from Straitblackjacket

*
Perhapsthereturntotheprimordialsoupisnotmetaphoricalinthesensethatthereturntothe basicsisnotwithoutsomequandaryconundrumquasiquantumquestquestioningsoulscorching (pause) dilemma. The sacred cow is my nemesis.
* Khan from Rubbish

*
The carnival was life. But with time, life slowed down. One day three people were on the Ferris wheel. They fell asleep. The Ferris wheel fell off its hinges and rolled away. It left two spokes sticking out of the ground. There was a bright flash of light.
* 17 from The Dead Metaphor