LOOSE WOMAN
A
show in episodes, Loose Woman is about the travels of a woman – into and out of
herself.
We
see her at home getting ready for office and then, on a whim, stepping out of
her cab and disappearing altogether. In ‘Dancer’ she discovers what it means to
not walk the straight and narrow but to ‘side-step’. She even discovers the
looseness of her own mother. ‘The Line’ jolts her into the realisation of how
precious her own looseness really is. Gandhi himself enters her universe. The very ground beneath her seems to shift when she reacts
with the space and characters around her.
She
looks for, she muses, she discovers the possibilities of ‘looseness’ in her
life – of new directions she can create.
Of
course, the underlying reference here is to the heavy irony in the throwaway
expression ‘loose woman’, whose application is rampant in a skewed familial and
social setting crafted by just one sex.
For
the purposes of this show, though, she’s not loose enough….not yet!
A video and sound designer came together with Maya to create this show. Over the months, fresh episodes have been added.
Sound - Sumant Balakrishnan
Video - Santana Issar
Voice - Sudheer Rikhari
Performer, writer, director
Maya Krishna Rao
Baby - the unexpected one
Slo Mo
THE LINE - lines drawn between people in the name of religion
Are You Home, Lady Macbeth?A witch-like woman playfully creates the character of Lady Macbeth but somewhere along the way she finds herself drawn into her skin.But a witch is a witch and belongs not to a nobleman's world. Witch and 'Lady' cannot coexist in the same person for long. So she must either ‘rub herself’ out of existence or re-find herself in another form……A multi media production that swings from the comic to the tragic, and all that lies in between, seamlessly, much like the way witches do. This show was first created as a performance art piece and then evolved into a cross media show.First performed Mar. 2008Live feed and multi media design - Amitesh GroverCostume and props design - Tabasheer ZutshiSound - Samar Grewal, Suchet MalhotraConceived, performed and directed by Maya Krishna Rao
dance theatre RavanamaThere are several strands that have crossed and re-crossed in the making of this piece. On stage we see an actor in search of a character, Ravana, the mythological character from the Ramayana. Why is she so attracted to him while all the world considers him evil? Is it to do with the performer's attraction to a form – Kathakali - a form that depicts Ravana in high scale and grandeur? Every time the actor dips into the ‘world’ of Kathakali she comes out with a further revelation of Ravana….
There are so many versions of the story. According to one, Ravana never died, instead, took the form of a bird and made the forest his home. In another version, Sita is actually Ravana’s daughter, but was given away at birth as he was warned that she would be the cause of his death. So, is the Ramayana actually a story of longing - of a man / father for his lover/daughter. It’s the archetypal story of the lover who is also sibling / parent / child, so familiar in the Greek tradition – Eudipus, Elektra, Jocasta... |
Sound design Samar Grewal
Lights Rajesh Singh
Video design Surajit Sarkar
HEADS ARE MEANT FOR WALKING INTO
A woman sits at her desk with bits of her puzzle – a puzzle that is indeed the world, where life can be hard and its contradictions sharp. She must figure out her puzzle, so she must leave her desk and step out into the world to make sense of the pieces. These pieces lead her to people. The journey is not easy. Sometimes it can be devastating.
A world of power, of degradation of women’s labour and being, of economic hardship, of living under martial law, of people being pushed to the brink of desperation. And of those who survive it through work, is revealed to her. there are episodes from Manipur, the farmers of Andhra Pradesh.
This is a presentation with an exciting form as theatre, video and music fuse to create a multi-media show about our times. Close- circuit cameras project images on multiple surfaces combine with the unusual use of objects, actions and sound
A world of power, of degradation of women’s labour and being, of economic hardship, of living under martial law, of people being pushed to the brink of desperation. And of those who survive it through work, is revealed to her. there are episodes from Manipur, the farmers of Andhra Pradesh.
This is a presentation with an exciting form as theatre, video and music fuse to create a multi-media show about our times. Close- circuit cameras project images on multiple surfaces combine with the unusual use of objects, actions and sound
