The First Log – 01 November 2022 by Sam PC

We had been hoping and waiting that we would get the funding from one of the foundations we had applied to, and it was the most exciting news when India Foundation of the Arts (IFA) wrote back to me that my proposal had gotten through in their Arts Practice – Productions programme. It needed to go through a round of budget evaluations before it moved forward and got the funding to implement it.

I had written a stage design script, describing the story, the drama and types of movement we are going for. It is the bare minimum idea of what I am visualising in my mind.

The idea of getting up on wheels and doing this had started to grow in my mind. However, when IFA got back that the funding cannot be used to purchase a vehicle, it put a pause in how I had to imagine how this had to be realised. In just this first month, I have learned a lot about how funding works, audits work, and then how to improvise so the “creative vision” still finds a way, even if slowly, to become true. In that improvisation, I set out on the idea that we first needed a collapsible set, something that could be hybrid whether or not it was actually on wheels already.

The IFA Arts Practice – Productions involvement in implementing this project then becomes the first stepping stone that sets me out on a one year journey of creating different versions of this show to understand what is the best way this can be transformed into a moving space. Some initial ideas are to rent a car and have a set that can easily be packed in the boot and set up in community spaces.

There are ideas that it could be an actual tea shop too that we can rent from somebody to do the show. Madhu had sent us this –

Apna Dhaba run by workers and their families in Vadodara. Madhu was working with a union in Vadodara from 2003-2004. They started a food cart runs by workers’ families. It sold simple Gujarati dishes, all organic with locally sourced produce. The workers had lost their jobs from a chemical dye factory after they struggled against the management for deliberately poisoning their bodies, land and water. She suggested that such a pushcart would keep it grounded in working class politics. The art work on the cart was done by Fine Arts Students in MS University Vadodara.

The only limitation with such a cart is that it will be fairly stable, as in not mobile enough, but there could always be ways of making this travel. Do we need to at some point just buy one of these? Could we rent one of these for a show? Or shall we build something that has a make-shift look of this and can pop itself on any road corner like a circus tent?

The stage-design questions are deepening through a variety of perspectives – funding limitations, political representations, mobility, accessibility, and then of course, aesthetics as a culmination of the rest.

What all could this become?

Here’s a drawing made by Yazhini Manorama, the production manager and my daughter, after one of our many zoom calls with the cast and crew. Her vision for the tea-shop –