Lady Macbeth Revisited

Multimedia Performance at National Theatre Festival, Kerela, March 2009

Performed & Directed by Maya Krishna Rao
Live Feed & Multimedia designed by Amitesh Grover
Lights by Goutam Majumdar
Stage Management by Satyabhama & Varun Sharma

Installing Imaginations

February & March had me engaged in tutoring an input for NSD Final Year Design students. This involved a scale-model building exercise, devised for students of theatrical design, that sought to arrive at the performative space/site/set by chartering their course through the development of Installation Art. Using the idea of 'the installed' - object, material and media - the conceptual and practical approach to building spaces-that-perform and experiencing them as viewers and performers was significantly intervened and altered through un-installing, re-installing and multi-installing. The students involved were Gagan, Gaurav, Kumara, Panchal and Praveen.

Artist Residency, Switzerland July-December 2008

Artist-in-Residence
Open Showing

Three artists, from Switzerland, South Africa and India, have come together to collaborate on 'HOME' - a multimedia art project that challenges the traditional location of home and identity in stasis with shifts, translations and explosions. Set up as an interactive installation, video clippings and sound start playing the moment a viewer walks in, and keep changing with his/her movements within the space. The viewers are then in control of and controlled by what they see and hear relative to their location within the installation.

Artist Residency, Switzerland July-December 2008

Still More Gratis Diaries

Having watched and enjoyed the power of participative art through a simple idea in my first piece, I got determined to explore its potential further. This time I struck collaboration with a Swiss dancer Cornelia Luethi and a video expert with Theatre Der Kunst, Michel Weber.

Relating to the themes of Home/Away, both Cornelia and Michel pitched in different ways. Born in South Africa and migrated to Switzerland as a child, Michel still makes an occasional trip to his birth place even as he prefers to live and work in Switzerland. Discrete ideas of Janm-Bhoomi (place of birth) and Karma-Bhoomi (place of work) have complicated the answer to where his Home lies. Cornelia, on the other hand, has not set foot upon foreign soil, but hopes to get away. Is she in paradise, to be lost soon? Issues of relocation, explosion of identities and conflicts between self and ‘the other’ (native and foreigner) are the paths we set upon. On 15^th October 2008, we put up the second work in the series ‘Welcome Home’ titled ‘Storybooks & Spices’.

Two tables were set up with their respective Lcd screens back to back. A closed story book was placed on one table. Nine different spices spread on pieces of recent Asian newspaper cuttings were placed on the other. Both these selection of objects/materials represented our mobile homes for us – the book was read to Cornelia, the child, by her grandmother, while spices help me find comfort while cooking in the most distant and alien of places. Linked with each page of the book and a spice, were our narratives and responses on Home on the Lcd screens. Viewers were asked to take a seat in turns and read the book or pick up a spice. Cameras on top recorded the movement of their hands on the tables as they turned a page of the book or picked up a particular spice. They then sent a signal to computers which then played a specific (pre recorded) video clip corresponding to the page the viewer was at or a spice that they had picked up.

Conceptualised on the same lines of interactivity as the piece (‘I Need To Keep Moving’) before, this video installation also sought participation from the viewer and responded to their actions as they discovered our mobile homes.Viewers could begin reading the book from any page and proceed in any way, backwards or forwards. Cornelia’s movements on the Lcd would be played in reverse or fast-forward correspondingly, leading to a whole different set of associations between progression of pages of the story and her responses for every viewer. Each of the spices on the second table played narrations in a similar fashion. They could be picked in any order, and the narrative that followed on the Lcd – memories from my personal and familial history, ritual meanings the spice embodies or facts about the places or people who make them – was arranged in a corresponding mapped grid structure.

In response to hearing the narration specific to a spice, while some viewers respectfully placed the spice back on the table (honouring the wholeness of the video art installation, as it were), a few others felt the need to pocket them. While some were more interested in reading the book in the order of progressing pages, others preferred Cornelia’s responses to each page over reading the book first. Ofcourse, they still had to turn a page to see response in video.

Artist Residency, Switzerland, July - December 2008

More Gratis Diaries

July and August gave a rhapsodic start to the residency – consecutive Open Days at my studio where I introduced my past work, the rich and unforgettable experience of being part of jury at TheatreSpektakel, Resident Artists’ rendezvous at Winterthur and meeting some very interesting artists from varied fields including sound, dance, video and dramaturgy. With September began the second phase of my residency, where I began to focus on developing a series of work centred in/around what Home means in the contemporary predicament.

I kick-started this phase by putting up my first work tilted ‘You Need To Keep Moving’ on 13^th September 2008. This also happened to be Rote Fabrik’s annual Open Day Studios, where over 50 artists opened their doors to share their ideas and work in progress with others. Set up as an interactive video feed installation, viewers were free to walk into my studio and respond to the installation for as long as they wanted.

The moment they walked in, they were caught in a projection on the wall facing them. Their bodies were doubled and mirrored when they moved within it. The faster they moved, the clearer they saw their multiple image. But, their mirrored body disappeared as soon as they stopped moving, leaving behind only their own body in the projected frame. Conceptualised as a durational day long piece, viewers discovered its meaning through a playful act of multiplying and mirroring their moving selves, only to watch them disappear against their (lonely) single bodies in stillness. If the ‘self’ is the first home of the body and the mind, perhaps this is what Home is today: perennially shifting, visible only in transit, fated in stasis.

Over 50 viewers (aged 9-70yrs.) interacted with the installation in one single day and responded in unique, inventive ways. I was personally grabbed by how many of them wanted to shake hands and hug their mirrored selves; ofcourse, the mirrored self vanished the moment they completed their embrace.

On a broader level, this showing explored a fundamental question I have been grappling with for some time now – in the wake of Reality TV, Disney worlds, and Second Life in cyberspace, can Performance Arts deal with the hyper-reality of our world? In other words, is it time that performance arts woke up and redefined itself, by reconstituting the very nature of performance as we have traditionally understood? Can we begin by looking at the relationship between the viewer (voyeur) and the performer in new ways? Is it possible to eliminate the distance between the performer, the viewer and the performed? Can we and do we see a performer in a viewer and a viewer in a performer? The idea behind ‘You Need To Keep Moving’ sought to achieve this precise state – to turn the viewer into a performer and to turn his/her response into a performance.

Artist Residency, Switzerland July-December 2008

Gratis Diaries

I was greeted by a nippy Zurich summer on a lazy morning of 12th July. Making my way into the city before it had woken up, I was struck by how crisp it was. Welcome to Europe, I chuckled. I was escorted to my studio the same day, which nests within a stark, bold red brick building abandoned by a textile factory early last century. Titled Rote Fabrik (Red Factory), it is spattered by graffiti that, at first impression seems to be slovenly but playful - a respite from city’s exacting landscape – only to reveal to a careful eye how each animated corner carries a nifty anecdote about authority, religion, sex and just about everything else. A capacious double-pillared hall with two majestic windows opening onto Zurich lake, the first floor studio bearing my name on its door was divine for artistic indulgence.

I conducted two Open-Days soon after. Over 50 Artists – visual, sound and performing – and curators attended the evenings in which I showcased my past work. Intriguing interactions followed the presentation; one artist couldn’t help being beguiled by the ‘theatricality’ of contemporary Performance Art in India. Its what helps us young artists bridge the yawning gap between an overbearing traditional performance past and a nascent urban performing sensibility, I explained. She smiled.

Theatrespektakel began mid-august amidst great fervour. An over-arching festival embracing all performing arts (and not just theatre) boasted of stunning shows from Brazil, Indonesia, New Zealand, South Africa, France, Germany, India and Switzerland. Being the youngest part of jury (having free entry to all shows as a result; half the article’s title should begin to make sense by now!) was less daunting than I imagined. We were a quadruple-nation cultural quintette – South Africa, Egypt, India, Switzerland (Swiss and French part; a miracle we emerged from our award discussions smiling!). It was heart-warming to discover how, despite our apparent differences, anxieties soon melted away as we candidly confessed what we loved and hated, often to my surprise, the same things in the same order! Perhaps goes to show how the language of art can render distances futile.

I also attended a Residents’ Meet at Villa Strauli, Winterthur. It proved to be a fabulous opportunity to meet other artists-in-residence in Switzerland from around the world. Rainer Duvell, sculptor and architect from Berlin, conducted a workshop on perception after which we visited the studios in the lovely villa, once home to Winterthur’s soap-manufacture giant!

Over the past weeks, I have met many talented artists for the work I wish to develop here. Laura Klaus (a dancer from Argentina), Cornelia Luethi (a dancer from Switzerland), Martin Wigger (sound artist from Switzerland), Stephan Komitsch (video artist from Germany), Sophia Stepf (Dramaturg working in inter-cultural discourse from Germany) and Michel Weber (video artist from South Africa) are few among others with whom I will be striking a collaboration in the coming weeks.

This Artist-in-Residence programme is jointly supported by Pro Helvetia and IGRF.

Children's Theatre Workshop

May - June 2008

Maxfort School, New Delhi
Organised by I Entertainment
Conducted by Amitesh Grover

New Delhi Television Interview

I was interviewed by NDTV (New Delhi Television) as part of their recent feature on profiling young and emerging artists on India's contemporary Art landscape.

NDTV.com
interview

Paper Presentation at Not The Drama Seminar

March 2008

I was invited to present a paper on 'Experimental Theatre' at Not The Drama Seminar organised by Prithvi Foundation and hosted at Ninasam. After a 2 1/2 hrs flight from Delhi, a 10 hrs train journey, a 3 hrs bus ride and a further 45 mins. mini van drive, i finally arrived at Ninasam. Forget the seminar, the place has its own glorious story to tell. Below is an small excerpt from Rustam Barocha's article on the phenomenon written for a newsletter titled "Theatre 4 U" that was distributed during the Prithvi Festival of 1997.

FAR away from New Delhi, where decisions about Indian culture are becoming increasingly centralised, there is a relatively unknown village called Heggoddu in the Shimoga district of Karnataka. Secluded amidst paddy fields and the area's hut plantations, this village is perhaps best known for an institution called Ninasam, which administers a theatre school, a repertory company, a film society, and a workshop unit that has spread theatre and film culture to all nineteen districts of Karnataka.

K V Subbanna, the modest visionary who has been the guiding spirit of Ninasam since its inception, [has] enhanced [it] through socialist principles of work and production, to demenostrate how it is still possible in India to "serve" people through our culture. Ninasam focuses on theatre work implemented through the training of fifteen students a year at the Ninasam Theatre Institute, and concretized through the productions of Ninasam Tirugata, an itinerant repertory company that has performed in all nineteen districts of Karnataka. In this unfortunate scenario, where the village provides the basic material for consumption in the cities, both at home and abroad, it is positively stirring to see how Ninasam has reversed this trend. Instead of using rural resources for production in the cities, it has selected some of the finest examples of urban culture, and disseminated them to rural and mofussil audiences through the state. The purpose is not to educate the illiterate with "high culture", but to make available what has been denied to them, and in the process, question the very categorization of culture on an elitist basis. This has also prevented Ninasam from becoming another Santiniketan, an eternalized vision of a harmonious life, so rhapsodically envisioned by Tagore, only to corrode into the rotting bureaucracy that it has become today.

KhojLive 08 - International Performance Art Festival

Duration 30mins.
Video Installation & Performance
Created and performed by Amitesh Grover
Subsequent shows of my degree show in London, now developed further.

HAND OVER FIST - Perpectives on Masculinities

An improvised socio-political caberet

6:30pm, 10th & 11th Dec. 2007
Abhimanch, NSD, Delhi
Duration 1hr.
Produced by UNDP/Directed & Performed by Maya Krishna Rao/Sound by Ashim Ghosh/Video by Amitesh Grover

Electronic City

Duration 1hr. 15mins
Written by Falk Richter
Produced by Max Mueller Bhavan/Goethe Institut New Delhi
Directed by Amitesh Grover

Premiere -
29th, 30th Sep.2007 Max Mueller Bhavan, Delhi

10th National Theatre Festival -
7th Jan. 2008 PLDM Auditorium, Mumbai
11th Jan 2008 Bahumukh, NSD, Delhi

Teaching term at NSD begins

New term begins. I have been assigned two jobs. First, to continue taking lectures on Modernism and Visual Culture with the first year. Second, to devise a new 'multi-media' input for the senior batches. Both assignments are very exciting.

The first one has been modified a little. Last year, I began by talking on Modernism/Modernity as a distinct period and as an umbrella for the Arts. I discussed two initial (and to date, dominant) branches of modernism in drama - realism and naturalism. Later into the year, I covered Ibsen and Chekhov in detail and connected their grammar to visual arts (Fine Arts and cinema) in order to broaden the engagement with Modern Theatre. This time round, I have been suggested to include lectures on autobiographical writing before arriving at dramatic text. Maxim Gorky fits in well here; his work transformed personal history into writing and declared the emergence of self as a site for narrative for the first time in literature. I will be citing excerpts from 'My Childhood' and contrasting them with Gandhi's 'My Experiments With Truth'; another autobiographical piece, though poles apart in form and intention. Any readings/references/suggestions for this purpose are welcome.

Devising a new 'multi-media' input seems more challenging a job. NSD training has had this as a scant and scattered input till now. Pressing need is felt to give it form and structure, though I have been forewarned that this move might not find favour with many in-house. There still seems to be present a significant lobby that sees little (if at all any) point in experimenting with live and recorded media. Further, an organised open debate on the issue is being averted for reasons not clear to me yet.

I plan to structure the input in a dual mode; theory and practice. Theory will include an orientation to the post 1950's theatre and the emergence of Performance Art or Live Art. I will conduct a brief presentation on the following:

• Artists - Growtowski, Peena Bausch, Robert Wilson, Allan Kaprow, Robert LePage, Paul McCarthy, Coco Fusco, Paulina Olowska and others

• Groups - The Wooster Group, Forced Entertainment, Blast Theory, Complicite & others
  

• Major movements - Happening, Fluxus, Body Art, Action-Poetry, Conceptual Art & Intermedia

The practical aspect will involve the following exercises in the order in which I describe them below:

1. Introduction to equipment: Hardware (computers, cameras, projectors, wiring, projection surfaces) Softwares (graphics, editing, compiling, applying)
2. Conceptualisation & devising an appropriate rehearsal methodology
3. Scratching (Rough runs of parts to test whether it works)
4. Preparing for the show
   

Hope this works

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Theatre project at a high school, which involved exploring Shakespeare in animation

Manavshtali Auditorium
Date: 29th April 2007
Time: 6:00pm

Duration 1hr 30 mins.
Produced by Bhatnagar International School
Conceptualised & Directed by Amitesh Grover

This performance explored the use of animation to compliment the play of appearances and deception in Shakespeare's 'A Mid-Summer Night's Dream'.

Animation was used for two purposes -
a) To build Nature in space that reacts in relation to the characters on stage. It conspires with the world of fairies, erupts and fades away at will, and a moment later, bullies and laughs at the royal class.
b) To tell a story about the artisans that Shakespeare never wrote. This little piece of animation was squeezed into scene changes, where the artisans find themselves alone in the palace and get tempted to wear the crown and unwind on the throne.

The intention was to open up possibilities for animation as a devise to contribute to the narrative, space and structure of the play.

Memorable Equinox

On-site, Digital & Live Performance

Produced by The British Council, Delhi
Sculpture Mantra, Charbagh, British Council Delhi
Date: 12th, 13th April 2007
Time: 7:30pm

Duration 1hr.
Performed by Jhilmil Hazarika
Video/Animation by Mukund V.R.
Conceptualized & Directed by Amitesh Grover

A site specific project based on Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape. Semi-autobiographical, the performer tracks herself through video clippings of herself which she recorded at different stages of her life. Tape labels, which stand in for memories, are selected when she invites viewers to 'touch' a part of the video frame which plays a corresponding video. They are her own narrations at and of an age only accessed through the celluloid now. She hears, remembers, agrees, disagrees and calls herself a liar, complicating the process of judgment and truth - who do we trust, her or her in her own recordings - as the viewers hop from one clipping to another in a random manner.

Provided are photos of the site (daytime) and the show.

Performance Pieces (2003-05)

A Chess Player - Performed by Imran Khan
Directed by Amitesh Grover

The National Highway - Produced by NSD
Video Designed & Directed by Amitesh Grover

Address: City Mumbai - Directed by Anuradha Kapur
Lights Design by Zuliekha Chaudhary & Amitesh Grover

Karanabharam - Performed by Jeoul Ryo
Directed by Abhilash Pillai
Sound & Video Design by Amitesh Grover

I HATE MY BODY - 8th Sep.'06 Degree Show at WSA,London

Performance and Multi-media Object Installation piece on contemporary ideas for masculinity.

Duration 30 mins.
WSA Auditorium
Created & Performed by Amitesh Grover

Performance Text

Its a festival today.

My festival.

I marry.

The war of mahabharat Yes, that silly war kauravs and pandavs or whoever
fought for pride power honour hollow halo hallucinatory hell heap rubbish

A million men dead A Slaughtered stalemate Yet neither winning losing on it went the great war
forever
forever
forever
forever
forever
forever

Until the pandits spoke arjun pandav is to be killed soon pandavs shook pleaded for a way out
If sacrificed before dawn any other man from family, they whispered, death of arjun may be avoided a condition but there was – sacrifice a man complete.
A man complete a complete man complete a man

Arjun himself, lord Krishna or arjun’s son hiravan
Hiravan
Oh poor hiravan
Oh my husband hiravan
You didn’t have to
He agreed

condition; the pleasure of a the night with a woman as wife.

Ha, Right wife for just a night?

Krishna, oh too clever KrishnaNaari he becomes, woman, weds hiravan Lets himself be had that night Till hiravan can no more have walks to his death at dawn Howls, pounds her chest, breaks her bangles, her mangal sutra, rubs her sindoor off , tortures her body.
And after the applause, Krishna abandons the body of woman

I am

that body that lived that half that night. born 1942

two month pre-mature non identical twins sister carol dies died five days pre-maturity weakly child easily to succumbed illness schooling missing rosemary appears 1946 1950 1952 1980 robust than I scholarships many her schooling none I my childhood better people imagine life for the potential female-to-male transsexual is undoubtedly easier than for the male-to-female one. My body remembers AmmiI am leaving

300 my body remembers 300 a day that is my target
Three hundred rupees a day.
My area - two blocks of market east of chandni chowk signal and the signal itself is my area.
rekha shares it with me. I hate Rekha I like rekha.
tried poisoning her food once. Makes the most money not because she is more beautiful. Not me. thankyou god for what I am. I am lying. fucking slut. She makes the extra money in the evening on .i.t.o bridge. She has two there, a cult following. suckers and fuckers. 100 rupees a fuck, 50 for mouth. I have never. against nujjo ammi’s dharm. change gharana. But lying isn’t. i lie for her. whenever she reaches back late. 10 percent cut for each lie from her fucks. Plus free laughs the stories behind her fresh bruises from her fucks every evening. born with a terrible sense of humour she is.
bruise sisters we are. Bruises I have two as well
ammi burnt me for not having made my 300 mark one day
So now I don’t have to make an effort to remember my target. My body remembers.

Tom boys, from the old days,
have always been accepted and treated with good-humoured tolerance, while feminine boys teased as sissies, were and remain subject of derision. My younger sister and I played with both boys’ and gil’ toys but once I had my own pocket money and was able to buy my own play things masculine toys pre-dominated. In spite of being obssessed with toy soldiers, planes and wrestling games on play stations my sister did not become a transsexual, while I in spite of dolls, did not become a normal woman. My best pals were a boy (whose electric train I shamelessly have never returned) and an self-assertive, confident girl. I never cultivated the friendship of frilly girls. I was at all-girls schools and lived with my sister, mother and grandmother – even the cat was female. My father was in the merchant navy for most of the time, so female influence was strong and male influence correspondingly weak. My condition could not therefore be ascribed to a lack of female environment I adored mum while wanting to be like my dad.

The Performed And The Projected

28th April 06. Duration 30 mins Performed by Karen Mcleod Video & Direction by Amitesh Grover VLP Open Day. A video workshop exploring live video feed and improvisation.

Research Paper

2nd Term, MA Visual Language of Performance, Wimbledon School of Art As a whole, this paper extends and explores to a greater depth the subject matter initiated and outlined in the first term proposal while introducing newer areas of focus and exploration that might seem appropriate for the sake of further investigation. As before, it continues to work in a two-fold manner: the phenomenon of trans-sexuality being its context along with a continued investigation in a rehearsal methodology in order to realize the context as a performance art piece. The first term paper was informed by the practice of and legend behind the Indian hijra community. This served as the initial point of departure for a case study in trans-sexuality as it exists (and that has existed for centuries) in the subcontinent, where the mythology of the hijra lends its legend to the community’s continued presence and struggle on the margins of social sphere. This paper broadens its scope of discussion of trans-sexuality by citing etiological and other discourses in western and other primitive societies and discusses the current dilemmas that surround the transsexual phenomenon. The first reported sex-change operation took place in Germany in 1931. Trans-sexuality, or that later came to be known as ‘Gender Dysphoria’ had previously been viewed in psychoanalytic literature as an undifferentiated perversion. It began to claim attention, both within popular media and medico-worlds, with the much publicized surgery of Christine (George) Jorgensen in Denmark in 1952. Harry Benjamin, US endocrinologist, asserted that Jorgensen’s claim was that she ‘was a woman trapped within a man’s body, which was indicative of a unique ‘illness’ distinct from transvestitism and homosexuality, perhaps conditioned by endocrine factors, and not amenable to psychotherapy.’¹ Trans-sexual, who? While the term was used by Cauldwell (1949c) before it was pulled into mainstream jargon by Benjamin, several discourses exist on the rationale behind trans-sexuality today. The dominant one views it as a biological phenomenon, though it also acknowledges its occasional advisory support from psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytical experts. Medical diagnosis rests on behavioral observation which is assessed in conjugation with physical evidence (characteristics of the opposite sex manifest in the body) and a medium - term (pre and post-operative) ‘patient watch’. Hormonal alterations of the nervous system of developing fetuses seem to cause the disconnect between the gender mapping of the brain and the physical sex of the body. This discourse has increasingly gained support within the camp as it rationalizes trans-sexuality as a naturally occurring phenomenon (for as long as man has lived) and not a socio-psychological aberration, or gender perversion. It emphasizes distinction to be made between the gender, the sex and the gender appearance of an individual. It roots gender in the internal identity map of what a person believes oneself to be and notes sex in the physical genitalia the person may seem to possess/ be born with. Gender appearance, on the other hand seems to be a coalescence of social forces affecting the image and behaviour of the individual concerned. By thus discretely slicing these aspects of gender-construction and perception, it asserts that a trans-sexual is at odds with his/her body. He/she possesses the brain of a gender within the body of the opposite physical sex he/she is born with. Thus, as the individual grows older, repulsion for the body he/she is born with becomes increasingly unbearable and sex-change then, becomes the ultimate corrective measure. Most current debate revolves around the legitimacy of such a discourse. While critics point out the lack of hard evidence; self-diagnosis still being the primary ‘symptom’, they also cite cases of the ‘con’ – outright deception on part of patients who conjured accounts of misery in compliance with previous case-based medical research in trans-sexuality in order to appear suitable for a surgery. Post-operative success rate still leaves much to be desired, which leads critics to compare this phenomenon with ‘the temporary solace in consumer spending (the illusions and promise of consumerism)’ and ‘the transitory euphoria of a drug-induced trance’. Because most confessions are expressed in how gender is socially and culturally perceived and verbalised, critics believe that transsexuals are ‘in the danger of becoming surgical junkies as they strive for an idealized sexuality via surgical commodities.’² The exact number of transsexuals in any given population will probably never be accurately known, the best current estimate lying at one in every thirty thousand. Trans-sexual, the mythic Apart from the Indian hijra community (the legend of which was dealt in considerable detail in the previous research paper), other pre-modern societies also seem to have records of trans-sexuality, though in varying forms and practices. Gallae, the Phrygian worshippers of the Goddess Cybelle existed in ancient Rome. Once decided on their choice of gender and religion, physically male Galle ran through the streets throwing their lopped genitalia into houses as a ritualistic act. This was considered a blessing by the household that received them which, in return, nursed the Gallae back to health. Gallae then, ceremoniously received female clothes and assumed a female identity. Winkte, among the Sioux could assume the complete roles of their preferred gender. Physical females lived as male warriors while physical males lived their lives as women, where the male castrated himself by riding a horse on a special hard saddle to crush his testicles. Most pre-modern renditions of trans-sexuality seem to have been sheltered by mythology and nourished by ritual beliefs, while its modern comprehension is disseminated by medical journals and, as will be briefly alluded to under the next sub-heading, the media. Trans-sexual, celebritism and the media While media opened careerist opportunities for the likes of Jorgensen, casually called ‘the transie matyr’ and brought the case of trans-sexuality out of its closet, its penchant for sensationalism has helped little to spread awareness about the subject. ‘The tragic case of a woman who was once called Donald (People, 5/11/67), I want to be a man again (Sunday mirror, 1/5/83), Sex-swap girl wants to be a guy again (News of the World, 7/3/93)…This attention is a double-edged sword for transsexuals. Individuals may be personally and professionally damaged by the exposure they receive, while the readers are entertained, though very rarely enlightened.’³ Trans-sexuality and my show As is evident from the above stated research, much as it may be legitimised by medical discourses and psychoanalyses, contemporary understanding of trans-sexuality remains as obscured as its preceding mythic acceptance in pre-modern societies. Its ambivalence resides deep in personalized narratives of self-perception, its strength in watching the gender rules bend and its ambition in freeing itself for expression. The narrative for the performance is a collage of personal accounts of transsexuals collected from varied sources, while the presence of visual projection is being conceived as the presence (and simultaneously the absence?) of the other; a recurrent theme within trans-sexuality whether expressed in terms of gender identity, genitalia, opposite-sex acceptance and/or the romanticisation of the post-‘transitive’ life. My practical work with video projection in performance space in the 2nd term has helped me realise key ideas and revealed clues for further development in a defined direction. The theme of ‘borders’ for The Marcel Project gave me an opportunity to investigate the intriguing juxtaposition of the virtual, the (materially) real and the animated movement in performance space. By projecting parts of my body (severing them, virtually) onto pieces of my own clothes (physically, really present) that are worn over them, I not only was able to comment (without textual, aural support) on the historical process of clothing (forcing it to expose the skin it is meant to hide and thus relate to the theme of ‘borders’ permeably) by ‘reversing’ its function but also was able to explore alternative surfaces and textures for projection. The animated ‘mini me’ ran and stumbled frantically through the scattered imaged of my body-in-parts, trying to search for an exit from the (discursive) labyrinths of my own body. The workshop broadened my exploration by identifying the following aims: · To re-examine the operative hierarchy within the process of direction: Traditionally, the director occupies a central position in the development of a theatrical piece. S/he is the primary interpreter of a text, pins down its meaning in form and style and leads the performer/s to embody his/her ideas in working towards a performance. I need to challenge this traditional notion and location of the director as the ‘captain of the ship’ and transpose it instead, to a shared, collaborative, decentred and in this way, disseminative space. · To enable the director to become an active participant in the performative space by feeding live stimulus through multi-media. I am inspired by the collaboration between visual artists and performers in the area of contemporary dance and movement. The element of ‘liveness’ and ‘chance’ in performance arts is heightened when fresh stimulus (visual or aural) creates the opportunity for newer associations to occur as the performance unfolds. The Process · Stage I We started with a (minimalist) piece of text a couple of days before the workshop. The piece of text chosen for this workshop is given below. It was excerpted from an ancient Indian religious prose (Shivpurana, Basavanna 703) that addresses the legend of Ardhnarishwar and is to be re-read in the context of my exploration of the contradiction that exists in the eastern practice of trans-sexuality and its legend. The performer freely related to the piece within her respective cultural position by penning down incidents and memories from her own life as well as researching other pieces of text/poetry etc. that connected themselves to the given context. I, on the other hand, constructed imagery and sound through which my engagement with the piece was best expressed. For this, I pre-recorded and reproduced images of the performer verbalising phallic and castration related anxieties and animated each reproduction in ways that would marry the visual with the text. The self that hovers in between · Stage II We met on the day of the workshop with the researched material. The performer took the lead by beginning to perform and inter-weave her memories with other narratives that have been collected through other sources. As she made her path into the piece, I began to interact with her performance by feeding live and recorded images in the performance space. Interestingly, the chronology of the performance events was decided by the order in which they were hand-picked out of a jar by the members of the audience each time the performer broke. This element of ‘chance’ allowed the performance narrative to be re-arranged and told in a manner unique to that time and occasion. · Stage III We identified the moments that worked for all of us – the audience, the performer and myself through a process of feedback and analytical discussion and highlighted the ones that displayed potential for further development. Achievements of this workshop: · We were able to devise a methodology for creating original performances that are sourced from the performer’s and director’s lives and are a result of their collaboration. · We were able to heighten the ‘liveness’ of performance art by opening up space for ‘incidental’ interaction to happen between the performer, the director and the audience in performance through the interface of body, technology and participating audience. · We were able to take the relationship between the real (body of the performer) and the virtual (projected images) a step further by constantly re-imagin(in)g the performer with multimedia intervention. Further development of work I am in the process of devising a piece for performance based on the knowledge of my research and practical work. This paper builds a theoretical framework within which my show is to be developed, whereas my practical presentation shall entail detailed description of the proposed show itself. Amitesh Grover Notes: ¹ Dwight B. Billings and Thomas Urban, The Socio-Medical Construction of Transsexualism: an interpretation and critique, Blending Genders: Ed. Richard Ekins and Dave King: London, Routledge (1996). ² Dwight B. Billings and Thomas Urban, The Socio-Medical Construction of Transsexualism: an interpretation and critique, Blending Genders: Ed. Richard Ekins and Dave King: London, Routledge (1996). ³ Dave King, Cross-dressing, sex-changing and the Press; Blending Genders: Ed. Richard Ekins and Dave King: London, Routledge (1996). Bibliography 1. Richard Ekins and Dave King (Eds.), Blending Genders: Social Aspects Of Cross- Dressing and Sex-Changing, London, Routledge (1996). 2. Julia Epstein And Kristina Straub (Eds.), Bodyguards: The Cultural Politics Of Gender Ambiguity, Great Britain, Routledge (1991) 3. Ward Ivan, Castration: Ideas In Psychoanalyses, United Kingdom, Icon Books (2003) Michael Huxley and Noel Witts (Eds.), The Twentieth Century Performance Reader, London, Routledge (1996) Further reading Julia Epstein And Kristina Straub (Eds.), Bodyguards: The Cultural Politics Of Gender Ambiguity, Great Britain, Routledge (1991) Stanton B. Garner, Jr., Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology And Performance In Contemporary Drama, New York, Cornell University Press (1994)

The Marcel Project

30th March 06, WSA

Video/Object Installation in Loop created by Amitesh Grover

Inside out The notion of borders, permeability, migration and re-representation fragments this piece as the clothes are turned inside out and become the skin on which parts of my body appear. In a strange sense, the over-turned clothes now adorn and celebrate the body they omitted, only to expose the skin that is distinctly marked – culturally, politically and in terms of gender. This work is as much a response to the domineering status that clothes and fashion (read: branding) have historically enjoyed, as it is a (discomforting) acknowledgement of an omnipresent gaze. By virtue of placing the work on the floor, the viewer’s gaze implicitly becomes a part of the larger gaze that hands out merits to its subjects (mini me!) with a high alertness to magnetic uniformity in appearances and the resulting power to pull, even as it strives to perpetuate a resistant, elusive local flavour to conforming material objectification.

Why theatre?

I have often been asked this dreaded question:
In a world where television, films and the digital media have pretty much taken the cake (and perhaps devoured it too!), why did I choose theatre?
And worse, why am I still clinging onto it?

Well, my response(s) might never get politer than this...

I occasionally ask myself how many different ways there are in which I can talk to people around me, talk about something that I feel needs some cautious address, some time to be spent on, some thought...

The first and obvious way is that we get together and chat, but people in this circle of communication are often limited (to friends and family) and the nature of conversation is often informal, unstructured, bound by social protocols and easily usurpable (I know I invented a word there!), at most times, by all the witty and humour-abled species (no, no offence meant...infact, I am usually grateful to them for having rescued situations from embarrassing whirlpools!), while on the other hand, lectures, talks and seminars may be too (academically) ordered and individually channeled, leaving little room for collective participation and the fun of
spontaneity. Television and films have a wider reach but operate industrialistically (another invention there), which means finance, networks and resources are huge considerations that have to be negotiated, if not surrendered to. Documentaries, short films (and films emerging from, say, the dogma movement) succeed in getting around a lot of this, but in the end, do need basic film equipment (camera, technicians, editing studios etc.) that again requires financial
investment, something a person like me is incapable of. Staging walks, protests, dharnas privileges clarity of position and seeks to collect and display support in numbers for the actual staging to happen, something I will never have the guts for. The internet is free - err...but is not tangible, corporeal - its anonymous virtuality being its boon and its bane as well.

So, what am I left with?

What began as a hunch is becoming a reality. Theatre is increasingly becoming precious to and for me because one only needs to be willing, and I really mean just willing to make it. We may start with the minimum - say, just a performer and then, add on dimensions to the extent we can, we are able to. It might not be as convenient as a chat with friends, it might not reach as many people as mass media is able to reach and it might give birth to more confusion and
questions than cut out neat, precise answers and solutions with governance or legal predilection for implementational value.

In fact, it is('nt) funny how I usually enjoy rehearsals far more than a show. They also are performance-of-sorts for me; actors do a scene while directors watch, then directors perform the scene while actors watch, questions are raised (about general social phenomenon or
pointed character/person psyche specific) and problems cited, relationships in fictional and factual spaces (between cast, crew, text, visuals, sounds etc.) are lived and re-lived, heads banged into one another for that one moment not working or for not being able to find the right word, action, visual, whatever, and the ecstasy of discovery (if any). Infact, what do we do in theatre, if not invent a reality (of a completely different nature) by ourselves that interacts with the everyday reality of ourselves and our audience. I think this is what I enjoy the most in theatre - creating this reality with others, for the sake of another that we live everyday.

Also, before we hail theatre for being the (aesthetic) mommy/child/battle ground of all other art forms, being capable of inviting, gathering with open arms other art forms and pulling them together in its belly, it is first, foremost and al-ready, for me, what other forms of communication discretely are. It is informal yet structured, determined yet spontaneousus, discursive yet entertaining, grounded in space and time (the place of performance) yet free of its tyranny, introspective yet empathetically remonstrative, protest-ive (inventions! inventions!), capable of different levels of address (from a collective to an individual) and most of all live, corporeal yet imaginative, ephemeral. It could be each one of these or all-at-once.

Yet, this is not an argumentnt in favour of theatre against other forms, but merely a personal preference for it, keeping in mind my own limitations (of finance, of other social disabilities and the like) as a person. Nor is this any justification for theatre's limited means. I do believe theatre could do with far more human, financial, infrastructural and technical support than at present might be allowed/accessible to it and a lot more good will have been done then. But, while all these elements are becoming vital for its generic growth and survival, they still aren't (and never shall be) essential to making theatre.

All is dispensable, but for (an empty) space, a performer and somebody watching!

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

Term I, 2005-06, MA Visual Language of Performance, WSA

This research paper aims to work in a two-fold manner. First, it outlines the context in which the research is placed and second, it seeks to develop a methodology by which the context of research will be developed into an original, multi-media performance through the process of rehearsals with performer/s.

The context of this paper is the examination of altered gender identity in the wake of trans-gender practice and trans-sexuality. The Indian hijra community serves as the initial point of departure as case study of trans-sexuality as it exists (and that has existed for centuries) in the subcontinent and the mythology of the hijra that lends its legend to the community’s continued presence and struggle on the margins of social sphere.

Gender realities are a major construct of our surrounding social realties. I call them a construct, and not a naturally occurring phenomenon as is traditionally understood to be the case. Like all social realities, that are a product of evolution of human beliefs and ideas through the thread of tradition in time, perception and practice of gender (and gender roles) is also a derived idea. Its manifestations are as varying and distinctive as there are different cultures and civilizations. It is hardly an exaggeration to state that gender identity is as much discursive as it may be biological, and by that very nature open to interpretation, beliefs and local practice. By this very logic, gender identity then becomes subservient to the complicated expanse of the human predicament rather than dictating its very nature. Gender identity (and the emerging gender role) now stands, not as eternally unshakeable way of being but an option of expression of self that one can choose for oneself. This paper will deal with the issue of trans-gender identity and how trans-sexuality and its performative practice subvert (and often advertently re-iterate) the performance of traditional and modern gender roles in eastern and western cultures.

This research paper is interested in exploring the ambiguous nature of trans-sexuality through the legend of the ardh-narishwar in Hindu mythology. Half-man, half woman, this avatar of lord Shiva has been hailed for centuries for representing the perfect state of being. If this legend lends a mythology of origin to the hijra community, so does it harbour ideas that question some elementary belief systems of the community itself. The community prides itself in absorbing and re-gurgitating the ‘feminine’, trying its best to overcome and override its masculinity by castration and other less biologically extreme ways. In this way, most sects end up re-emphasizing the Indian gender stereotype by adorning sarees, bangles and keeping long hair, believing that by this apparent transformation, the (performative) identity of other gender is attained. This paper attempts to relate to (and in this sense, return and revise) the idea of the trans-sexual by (re) visiting the metaphor of the ardh-narishwar today. It seeks to investigate the growing difference between the legend and its communal manifestation, and contrast the idea of the transsexual in orient and occidental cultures. It asks whether there may be (or has been) an alternate (gender) identity (and a third gender?) made possible through and in the practice of trans-sexuality, and in this way talk back to the dichotomies of the ‘he’, the ‘she’ and overlapping identities of the trans-gender.

In an age where most creative production is bound by financial and administrative considerations and perception and address of artistic endeavours multi-layered, fragmented and suffering from media onslaught there are limited options that theatre, or performance arts, can choose from.

One of these is the return of performance arts to the intimacy and trust in address (and in space) of a performance that only the local and traditional arts could boast of. A single performer (at most two) putting on personas of characters in order to tell a story in a folk idiom, where the distinguishing line between the performer as entertainer and actor with his personas and characters never gets blurred. Bertolt Brecht has often quoted this phenomenon in his development of the ‘alienation effect’ for his actors.

But the method to develop this ‘return’ needs to be re-invented afresh. Unlike the Grotowskian belief (where the ritual of the actor is sufficient to invoke meaning in performance), it is evident today that a single actor-body in performance is no longer sufficient to express and invoke multi-layered meanings. Multi-media and the need of the (ephemeral) image need to take charge where the actor may not go. But unlike the present approaches which see multimedia as another support tool for the performer, I conceive it to be a presence and thereby an intervention of the performer who does not perform, namely the director.

The rehearsals may happen in three stages.

• The performer improvises pieces in a collage-like fashion with text (factual and fictional) and materials, identifying and experiencing moments where s/he engages fully with the context in the first stage. In this stage, emphasis is to be laid on the psychological and physical engagement of the performer with the context, where the director locates moments how, when and where this engagement can be interrupted and challenged with media.
• Spatial and multimedia stimulus is to drive the second stage of rehearsals towards developing a non-linear, multi-layered narrative exploration through the confrontation of the actor with the media. It is here that the possibility of conflict is to be explored between the actor and the surrounding space and media. This stage should be able to construct a skeletal structure of the final performance.
• And the third stage may see the grind of runs wherein the collage is pulled together to chart out a performance journey.

The aim of this methodology is to create a directorial and performance aesthetic that emerges from the organic truth of the makers prioritizing the interaction between the performance and its audience and to investigate the creation of alternative relationships between pleasure and culture. It also seeks to relocate the position of the director as a conceptualiser, facilitator (of design in space and media) and a non-performing artist. As is evident, the latter part of this paper prepares a map of practice ‘on-the-floor’, the premise of which needs to be tested before any degree of reflection is possible.

Bibliography

Braun, Edward, The Director And The Stage: From Naturalism To Grotowski, Great Britain, Methuen London ltd (1985).
Butler, Judith, Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits Of ‘Sex’, New York, Routledge (1993).
Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism And The Subversion Of Identity, New York, Routledge (1990).
Foucault, Michel, The History Of Sexuality Volume I: An Introduction, Hurley (trans.), New York, Vintage (1980).
Open University, Popular Culture: Form And Meaning Block 4, Unit 16 & 17, Pleasure, Great Britain, Pindar Print Ltd.(1981)
Sullivan, Nikki, A Critical Introduction To Queer Theory, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press (2003).


Further Reading:

Delgado, M. Maria & Heritage, Paul, In Contact With The Gods: Directors Talk Theatre.
Bloom, Michael, Thinking Like A Director: A Practical Handbook.
Shepherd Simon, Theatre, Body And Pleasure.
Bachellard, The Poetics Of Space.

And this, more recent thoughts around the same subject...

The whole idea of picking up an existing theatre text and asking whether it needs to be adapted or not, bases itself on the traditionally central importance and presence of a text in the first place. It is a condition to begin to do a play that all of us have assumed (with well-founded reasons for it to be so, ofcourse) : as performers we must look for a piece of text (classic, contemporary or unheard of) and then begin to build our performance on (and sometimes) around it.

More often than not, this is an attempt to make up for our own lack of writing/scripting skills - we would have written the plays we perform if we possessed the talent, being the popular belief!. We pick up words that already have been through a crucial filtration (the act of publishing, previous performances, reviews etc., their quality of test and critique rest assured). We then find it more objective (convenient too, may be?) to engage and disengage (in parts) with the words and thoughts of the script-writer through our process of rehearsals and our eventual performance.This is all very well. But if we, as theatre directors, acknowledge our limited play - writing talents, yet feel the need to re-write and adapt, that stems out of our will to contemporarise our performances, is then adaptation the only way?

I am currently in the middle of a project that might end up addressing this question.

The project, led by Douglas O’Connell (MA Tutor, Visual Language of Performance, Wimbledon School of Art) began with an idea - investigating 'safety' in present London. And underlying is the methodology we are following to work towards our performance:

Step1 – to interview people on ideas of safety and record these on tapes.

Step 2 – edit these interviews individually (in audio format) to build a narrative (linear or non-linear), convert them into soundscapes and discover links, overlaps within them.

Step3 – pick-out the overlaps and frame/invent a live performance around it by:
a) choosing or writing pieces of texts (narrative, poetry, reports…anything that is relevant), b) selecting and creating images and moving pictures/graphics for the projected media
c) designing space and creating atmosphere with all the above elements in it

Step 4 - rehearsing with actors and with all of the above elements

Step 5 – uploading the soundscapes (with interviews as narratives, refer step – 2) on a pre-selected site on the web (the site that is up already to publicise the play) and encouraging audience members to download any soundscape (which they most relate to) onto their i-pods, mp3-players or burn them on to a disc. (for people without one, very basic and cheap mp3 players are available at ticket counters)

Step 6 – the structure of performance:
a) on the day of the show, audience members are asked to collect at various points in the city, to locate a performer there and immediately put their ipods,mp3 (which already has the soundscape) on.
b) follow the performer through the city as they listen to the soundscape, to the site of performance and witness the successive performance in that space.

As you might have noticed, the piece restricts its target audience (only techno-savvy and techno-willing can participate). Nevertheless, the piece goes well beyond the obvious implications of the word `safe(ty)' (the interviews are to explore personal and private notions, fears and activities attached to the word where the interpretation of the word `safe' is broad-based and open-ended to facilitate all understandings of its layers). It is also intended to play around with the function of technology (in this case, our ipods and the like, that create self-absorbing/obsessive `safe' worlds) that actually, increasingly isolates us rather than connecting us. As theatre workers, this project is evidently pushing us out of our own safety-nets too, by challenging our conceived ideas of building, rehearsing and performing theatre. And in so doing, it intends to transcend the conventional 'safe' notions of how a theatre performance works or should work.

We are still in the middle stages of this project and the parameters are shifting as we are progress…

Of The Past & Present

The following is extracted from an article I wrote for a theatre magazine (in India) recently. Its a collection of thoughts on the relevance of adaptation of texts in theatre today.

...All of us have come across ‘period literature’ of varying nature and intensity. A sensitive piece of period literature, that would have been very contemporary when written, not only illustrates its own times (in painstakingly minute physical detail), but also becomes a breathing slice of the times it is written in. I often love to, for example, smell a Premchand situation and character while reading his pieces.

But the issue of representation of a period acquires several dimensions once a text is picked up by the Arts – Performing Arts, Fine Arts or the Media. While Periodisation is perhaps at its most authentic in say, a museum that preserves utensils, clothes, coins, weapons etc. of a certain period, it begins to get framed and negotiated as our medium of viewing changes. A documentary or a photograph of a period might capture a period with the least artistic and interpretive aspirations. But as one moves to narratives (that can include personal accounts, stories and plays), Fine Arts and Performance Arts that attempt to deal in and with a period, these very aspirations play a huge role. Plays and films often seek to recreate the text’s atmosphere, situation and characters hoping that this would invoke the period in question. Reverence for the creator of the piece (in most cases, the ‘sacred’ writer) automatically bars the possibility of thoughts and ideas that re-contextualise the piece, fearing that this might compromise the creator’s merits!

By its very nature, historisization is necessarily a subjective act – of the mind that expresses (that, which documents, fictionalizes or illustrates), of the publisher, the producer and of the time in which it is read. This issue of representation of a period, especially in Performance Art, is not without problems: the first and foremost being authenticity. While a script or a story may instruct about its times’ social fabric through a situation, plot, characters and language, comprehensive knowledge about the period in question is still inaccessible. Other sources like documentation in books are pieces of information. They can inform us about building material, clothing, lifestyles but can not sensitise us to their lives. Unlike the classical dances, theatre does not even possess a preserved grammar of gesture and performance that, to some degree, becomes a visual (behavioural) and aural characteristic of a particular period.

So, for representation’s sake, performing groups tend to imitate how representations before theirs have been constructed i.e. in films, plays, paintings etc. and in the process end up becoming a copy of a copy of a copy….! (The kotha scene is a classic example –one only needs to visit the raw business-like quality of a kotha to contrast it with Bollywood films that have always played this scene with a decorative sensuality to seduce its viewer.)

Further, the same story or script is picked up in different times and inevitably performed differently even if the intention is to recreate the story’s period precisely. This could be the result of increasing information, evolving performance formats, technological advancements, social and commercial commitments and an ever-changing sub-conscious understanding of the world we live in. A two-hour play is barely manageable today while a full-length (3hr.) was a norm not so long ago. Let alone the times when plays ran for an entire day or the whole night! (They still do, but in parts of the world that are very different from ours).

The piece of period text is then, an instrument – of expressing the writer’s sensibilities, the producer or publisher’s intentions, the performing group’s commitments and its audience understandings. This inevitable subjective permeation through individual and social frames, uncontrollably and (un) consciously upsets the process of looking at a period objectively. This makes it impossible to access the period in question in its authentic entirety. So does this mean that period plays cannot be done?No, and yes. No, because it is an impossible and hollow task (Apart from showcasing the skills of an actor or a director, it serves no other purpose). Yes, because it can be extremely useful in re-assessing our situation today. And this is possible only through the process of adaptation. We must ‘touch’ the performance of period texts in ways that transport them to our current times. This can happen through directorial, authorial, actor-al, visual and/or aural interventions.

Adaptation can mean different things at different times. Representational alterations without touching the text - Anuradha Kapur’s Antigone used video illustration of Gujarat riot victims to re-locate Antigone’s testimony and Peter Brook’s Mahabharat played the epic out in a savage, primitive land. Interpretation confrontations - Dinesh Thakur’s Anji extended the closure of performance by hanging herself where the play-text ends at a monologue before. And Text re-writing, devised and improvised pieces - Roysten Able’s Othelo built a whole structures on and around the original piece. These are examples of interventions that place the viewer’s contemporary sensibilities within a period text. Even the much-cursed commercial interests - the romanticised notion of the ‘wild, wild west’ and the international sale of the traditional and exotic India, make representations belong to a ‘global’ age!

And it is only here that the performing team actually contributes. It is not only in what it does but how it does what it does that it shares its presence with the author and the audience. Its only when these texts, especially period-specific ones, have been engaged with, through the body of the performer and the mind of the performing team, that they would cease to be false museum pieces and breathe a life of their own. Adaptation, then becomes truly a social and political act that is ‘performed’ between the performing team and the audience. Only here will ‘Periodation’ cease to be a false attempt in looking at a period objectively or at constructing hollow notions, types and images of a particular ‘times’ in question. Instead, it will begin to be an instrument through which we can debate our today by looking at our history, our present through our past. Adapt-less performance pieces are illegitimate (or rather legitimate) children of popular myths, mindless belief-systems and the ever-exploding media kitsch...