20 December: YOU MUST STOP.

Galleria Market, Gurgaon
Two sets of 'being stopped' action exercises
Performers: Amu, Niranjani, Keshav, Pali, Shena
Documenter (Photos & Video): Tarun
Audience No.: 20 to 50 each time

 

We wanted to make a comment on the recent rape case in Delhi. We decided to do an exercise in which a person is repeatedly stopped from doing a simple action. Much talk had been flying around – in the media and even in our own homes - about how girls/women need to stop going out in the evenings, stop working late, stop wearing ‘western’ clothes, stop travelling by bus, stop…

We thought it may just be a little abstract, but didn’t want to do an overt re-playing of the story or anything that resembled a sloganeering street-play. It didn’t prove to be abstract at all. Audiences immediately related what they witnessed to recent events. One gentleman said, “there’s nothing left to be said, you’ve said it all.”

 
We did the exercise twice. The first time we had two scenarios going on simultaneously. One in which Shena simply wanted to move from point A to point B, but was stopped by Keshav, the other in which Niranjani and Pali wanted to touch hands, but were stopped from doing so by Amu. For the actors, internally, as a theatre exercise the experience was powerful and real – somewhat surprising all of us. Aggression, power, avoidance, anger, cowering, hopelessness, fear, need, animalism, violence. 

For the audience, there is no doubt that the intensity and nature of the performance touched and resonated with people. We were repeatedly thanked for what we had done, and were able to speak with a number of people – almost each and every one of them ‘getting’ what we were trying to say and happy to engage in conversation. 

The second time we did the exercise we chose to have three ‘stoppers’ – Niranjani, Pali and Shena – and two ‘stopees’ – as it made sense to have a larger number of stoppers, as the dominant voice. Simple story of Amu and Keshav trying to connect, and being stopped from doing so. Anger and violence bred in those being stopped, while the stoppers found the power and ‘smugness’ of their higher status. At one point, one brave man sipping coffee in a CCD saw the performance through the café window and charged out to stop the violence, thinking that it was real. Nice to know that there are people out there capable of heroism, and not afraid to put themselves out on a limb for a stranger in trouble. Before he smashed Keshav’s face in though, Pali and Niranjani were able to let him know it’s an ‘improv’ exercise – thereby saving Keshav’s life (according to Keshav!).

keshav almost gets his face bashed in...

 Again there was a crowd of people who wanted to talk about what they had seen afterwards. 

This is a Do that is replicable and that resonates with audiences well. However, we are not sure that we need to or want to visit such intense emotional spaces as actors each time. There may be a way of stylizing it, or of containing it in some way – while still keeping it real. However, there is definitely something here that we can build on. (Perhaps without the shaking-like-a-leaf afterwards effect?!)

26th November: Oh the Sweet Smell of your Hair.

Delhi Haat
3 sets of a repeated freeze cycle
Performers: Amu, Rudy, Mallika, Kriti, Uday
Observers: neel D, Roohi
Documenter (Photos & Video): Yash
Audience No.: 10-20 at a time  X 3 times
FREEZES !

I've been so overwhelmed by my first Doggie Do that its taken me a week to get over it and get to writing this. That's my interpretation of the delay anyway- and you know what they say- No Interpretation is wrong.

Amu, Amu's parentals, Rudy, kriti, neel, momo, roohi and I (Uday) met at Rudy's place in Sarvapriya Vihar to decide what to do. Because it was the 26th of November, we toyed with ideas that would be referential to the 26/11 terror attacks. We brainstormed ideas about the dynamics of group formation and rupture. We played with the idea of forms moving through the performance space 'bouncing/bumping' off other people and objects until they made physical contact with one of the others in the group after which they would remain joined until the whole group came together in a conglomerate of bodies. We experimented with the idea of a domino effect. Eventually we decided that we were too few for these concepts to be impactful and to save these ideas for a doggie do with a bigger group. We decided instead to tell a story. We started with an exercise with Amu, Rudy, Kriti in a square, facing each other in a neutral stance. Any movement/sound made (in)advertantly by anyone was to be adopted and amplified by other members of the group as they became congnizant of it, naturally changing it and thus providing material for further chain reactions. I apparently 'cheated' because I  continued shreaking long after others had stopped. Enough of this. We need a story. There's something stuck in Kriti's hair. What? There's something stuck in Kriti's hair and we need to help her take it out.

We settled upon what we thought was a perfectly obvious little story with a series of seven freezes.
kriti was combing out her hair (1) when we saw something gross in it and did not make any attempt to conceal our reactions (2). kriti whipped her hair up and wondered what was up (2).  amu threw up while the rest of us felt simultaneously curious and disgusted, Rudy even tried to touch the damn thing (3). when she reached out to us to help her in a cry of desperation (4) we responded immediately with rudy grabbing the offending object in the hair and the rest of us grabbing onto him to get it out. Veins in our necks throbbing with the static effort of dislodging goo from Kriti's hair (5). You know what happens when you pull something to hard. You get it out.......and you fall in a tumble of arms and legs (6). Kriti bitchily sees us, and instead of prostrating herself to us in gratitude walks off like the Chammak Challo she was born to be. Shocked and Awed..we responded with a good, wholesome, Punjabi "Lae" (someone please put in the pronunciaation key for this.)  The cycle of freezes was to be repeated  5-6 times, each time with smaller gaps between freezes until the freezes simply blended into a smooth series of movements. We noticed a resemblance of the concept to a scene from Pina Bausch's Cafe Mueller (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEQGYs3d5Ys&feature=player_detailpage#t=649s See from about 10:50).

We reached Delhi Haat in no less than 3 cars at about 6.30 and decided to start from deep inside and slowly make our way out. Round one was performed by the four of us with Amu's parents, Mallika, Neel and Roohi as observers. Gathered a moving audience of about 10. Hadn't discussed how to 'end' and we ended up leaving the performance space without acknowleding or engaging with the audience. Observers gave feedback that the concept was esoteric and wasn't allowing the audients a 'way-in' or a hook because it was not at all clear what we were doing. also it was observed that the performance didnt build into enough of a frenzy and seemed to just dissipate. We decided to add a sound to each freeze to add another layer of communication and get more and more frustrated as we went through faster cycles to keep energy high and build a meta story across cycles. Mallika joined us as a performer for round two.

This time the performance space was more enclosed and energy seemed to fill it more fully. We gathered an audience of about 15. This time we engaged with audience members after. The enduring question - "Aap Batana kya chaah rahe the.....Iska Moral Kya tha" This search for a moral message intrigued me. I wonder if the setting of Delhi Haat attracts many performances with a message. Or perhaps public performance has become synonymous with street plays loaded with social message delivery in our city. Someone from the audience volunteered "Ye molestation ke baare mein thaa". The other pervasive interpretation of the performance was that it was an advertisement (the other apparently legitimate reason for public performance apart from 'in public interest broadcasting). The performance seemed to many to be an ad for shampoo, to show how strong Kriti's hair was. It wouldnt break even when four people tugged at it. Or an ad for anti-dandruff or anti-lice solutions.  After speaking with the crowd about their interpretation, the crowd was eager, almost insistent, for us to tell them what our purpose was. And what we were intending to depict. We didn't divulge these details but after the crowd left, some of us in the group felt that we ought to, at the end, tell them what we had thought of. It was felt that after soliciting audients' responses and interpretations, we should in the spirit of an open conversation say what our own thought process was, all the while making clear that this does not mean that this was the only or the right one. Others in the group strongly felt that we should not divulge our own interpretation. Whether we like it or not, people will then leave the space with our story as their lasting impression of the performance and will serve to de-legitimise their own experience and understanding of what they had seen. We decided not to communicate the story, and to revisit this discussion later.

In Round 3 we had a very similar experience. The same quest for moral message as well as the interpretation of shampoo advertisement. One man said, pointing to Amu "Ye Madam to PAKKA juein (lice) dhoond rahee thee". I got into a very engaged conversation with two of the audients who had been quite forthcoming with their interpretations and had asked once again what our intent was. My answer had been "Hamne kuch kiya, wo aapke aankhon mein pada aur kuch aur ban gaya, apne muh se bola ki apne kya dekha, jab wo baat kisi aur ke kaanon mein padee tho woh kuch aur ban gaee". But he insisted "Wo sab tho theek hai, par aapka MAKSAD kya tha. Jab koi Saabun bechta hai to us sabun ka maksad hota hai usse nahana". To which I said "Lekin agar main aapko toothbrush bechoon, aur aap us toothbrush se pajame ka naada nikalo, ya jute polish karo, tho kya mein aapko keh sakta hun kee aap galat hain?". His response was thought provoking for me "Usmein tho phir meri creativity dikhtee hai na. lekin aapka maksad tho toothbrush bechna tha".

For me the experience was significant because it raised important and fundamental questions for both audients and performers. Once a piece of art/performance has been created, does the creator lose ownership of it in terms of what meanings its viewers ascribe to it. More importantly, does she lose all responsibilities to communicate with the viewer on her own process of creation. If our story was about a girl with goop in her hair, and we refuse to engage with that seed that gives birth to this idea are we being disrespectful to our own process of creation by denying the viewer access to it? If the consumer of a toothbrush finds a cool ass way to use it other than to brush his teeth, can the toothbrush manufacturer say "I intended for you to be creative with this. Shaabaash" or is the appropriate response "I never thought this could be used like this. I only ever thought of it to clean teeth." It makes me think of Yves Klein, who painted models and got them to apply themselves to the canvas, losing all control of the form and content of the painting, focussing our attention to the process instead. Klein can, I believe, authentically challenge the search for fixed meaning in his art work and can authentically say "I did not have a purpose in painting this, and whatever you see in this is as valid as what I see in it". Can we authentically say this? and if we can't, should we?