Category: Project Log
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An Owl in a Library and the Dialogue of Blankness
09 December 2023. Koogai Thiraipada Iyakkam, Valasaravakkam, Chennai. Aparnaa, Krishna and I had met a few times on Zoom to discuss where these efforts could be systemised and taken forward. We made lists of community halls, and even reached out to a few initiatives to see what could be done to realise the dream of…
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Telecom Tea Breweries… The Decoction of the Shows Yet to Come
31 August 2023, out-of-line, falling through the lines exhibition, FICA, New Delhi ‘Out-of-line is a virtual exhibition space that employs the mobile device and the act of calling to showcase sound and text-based works by artists.‘ One of the curators, Suvani Suri, had gotten in touch with Madhu and me after reading the book. They…
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The Theatre of Productivity: Part Five
March 12, 2023. Arsu Colony, Bengaluru This show happened in the middle of the road. A real tea-shop vandi became our tea shop. We walked through the basti with an army of children singing along with us and convincing all the women and children to join the show. Maraa had organised us the show in collaboration…
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The Theatre of Productivity: Part Four
March 11, 2023 – Jangamma Collective, Bengaluru. Maraa had organised the third show at Jangama Collective, which has now turned Rajiv Krishnan’s space into a performance venue. Jangama is ‘a collective of five actors/performance-makers that strive to create work that may speak across cultural and linguistic barriers through their own forms and languages. They believe…
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The Theatre of Productivity: Part Three
March 11 – Koramangala Kannada & Tamil School, Marga Community Hall, Bengaluru Everything about this show was the heart of the Mobile Girls Koottam. The women who came for it from the community were Tamil, in different lines of work – like domestic labour, beauticians, and housework. There were some social activists and artists who…
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The Theatre of Productivity: Part Two
Show 2: 10 March, 2023. Maraa Collective Terrace, Indira Nagar, Bengaluru The first show happened on the terrace of Maraa Collective. They had graciously agreed to house us in premises of the collective. Some of us took the train. Aparnaa was already in Bangalore. Krishna and I drove down to Bangalore with the set materials.…
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The Theatre of Productivity – Part One
March 2023 – On the way to Bangalore As I take you through the next set of shows that happened in Bangalore and what happened to the show in the following months and our way forward, it is going be a lot of personal reflections on “productivity” itself as an idea. We began this year…
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The Mess was Deliberate and Managed – Viewpoints of Making a Space
Narrative Report: Chapter One 11 December 2022, Thiruvalluvar Nagar Community Hall, Besant Nagar There is so much of this play that truly depends on aspects outside the text. The text, while very important, it is also only a framework within which the actors are attempting to open a space. From the moment of the first…
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The Woman in a Nightie, Writing a Script
After the first dialogue draft, all of us felt that the last bit of the play kind of rushed to a finish, also because as a writer I just wanted to get out a draft and get some outside perspective before I finished it. Other than the rush, some of the cast had thoughts of…
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The proscenium inside a community
Fifth Log: 20 November 2022 The idea has always been to break the proscenium and take this show to the heart of communities, back to where our Mobile Girls’ families live, to other workers around the country, to villages and more. Therefore, the stage, whether a vehicle or not, needs to be collapsible and easy…
The Mobile Girls Koottam 