Take-away from an Immersive theatre experience on Mother- Daughter

Tantidhatri is India’s first Women’s Performing Arts festival, its first edition was held in Pondicherry in 2012 and the second in Bangalore in 2016. The third edition, which i attended, was held at Rabindra Tirtha in Kolkata. Tantidhatri aims at being a space of engagement for artists, thinkers and groups that are committed to women’s work in the field of performing arts. It is the sisterhood of “The Magdalena Project” https://www.themagdalenaproject.org/

Structure of the Festival

Although it was a five- day intensive workshops, performances, talks and critiques, the spirit is more universal which is not bound by time and space. This year’s theme was “Energy”, more so on ‘Feminine energy” but did not restrict the invitation to only women. It was a confluence of artists from all genres, races, traditions and countries. The workshop was being conducted in two ways - masterclasses and the Daughter Workshop. I attended the five day intensive production oriented workshop on Daughters facilitated by British director Jill Greenhalgh (who is one of the founder members of 33 years old “The Magdalena Project”). I chose to work more towards a process driven, performance oriented workshop so as to learn the technique and to get to perform (exhibit) my piece at the end.

Mother- Daughter Workshop - Jill Greenhalgh

Jill’s inspiration for the Mother- Daughter was born of the desire to stage intimacy and the complex dyad of mother/daughter relationship. She believes in presenting the authentic voices and embodied knowledge intrinsic to women’s experience. This work has been explored in Japan, Cuba, Wales, Brazil, Ecuador, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark and Spain with professional and non-professional performers of all ages.

I have been an educator for 7 years, where i also taught drama-in-education and sociology to trainee teachers in Mauritius, it was overwhelming for me to realize that i am an artist- educator because throughout the workshop all i could think about was the ways in which i would take my learning back to the classroom to transform teaching and learning.

There were many activities which had an immediate implication in the classroom, for instance:

Speed writing : Our first day of the session with a speed writing activity on two prompts, “The daughter i am…” and “The daughter I want…” which was for 2 minutes each. The basic premise of the activity is to write for 2 minutes without lifting the pen and to not think too hard. The idea behind the activity is to just write what comes to us naturally and not to pay much attention on the structure. Later, we underlined prominent or important words and phrases from the pieces we wrote. We shared our work in the circle which then helped us to be non-judgemental of others and ourselves. It helped us to start off the day by creating the culture of a safe space.

Telling stories through objects: As a pre-workshop preparation, we were to select and collect objects that would be resonant of our mothers. Photographs, letters, piece of cloth, flowers, books, artifacts etc constituted some of the objects that most of us had brought. I carried few photographs, shawl and a book to the workshop. These objects were important for the performance as we were to use these objects to tell our stories (which reminded me of ‘show and tell’ exercise the Primary school does). Preparation was so important as it helped us to be in control of ourselves and our stories.

Objects Installation: Just selecting and bringing the object isn't enough. The way it is installed should tell a story in itself. So the next step was to keep working on installing the objects in a way that would satisfy you and would intrigue the audiences as well. So we kept trying until we were satisfied even if it meant changing the installation multiple times.

Collaboration: We were 11 of us from various parts of the world, Serbia, USA, Lithuania, UK, Bangladesh and India (Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad and Kolkata). 11 people with different sensibilities and skills, understood the need to collaborate and help each towards betterment. We were partnered up with different people each time to provide constructive feedback and to help each other grow. Towards the end of the workshop till before the performance, everyone felt safe in letting their emotions flow uninhibitedly. There was a mutual sense of respect between the professional and non-professional performers of all ages.

Performance space and style : The structure of the performance was unique, something that i have only seen before but not experienced. Each participant was given a table and a chair on which we had to have our objects installed. The tables were placed on the staged. It was not the traditional proscenium style performance where the audience would be seated at a distance from the performer, instead if we could think of it as an immersive style (something which we employ during Personal Project, genius hour presentations), where the audience would step onto the stage and choose to sit wherever they want and listen to whoever they want. It was an experience which was overwhelming because the performance is unparallelled when it is one-on-one interaction. And to add to that, there was Jill’s daughter Meg playing the grand piano which transformed the way the interactions would go. As a performer, i could choose what story (we were to collect 10 stories of our mother and grandmother’s relationship with us) to tell and how. I saw people reminiscing with joy and tears after listening to each of our stories. It is inexplicable in words, it could only be felt with all honesty and humility.

6. Preparation, Preparation and Preparation along with taking control of yourself: Although the workshop was spread over five days, there wasn’t enough time for preparation but the idea was to utilize the given time to prepare to the best of your abilities. And everyone aced it towards the end even though some of us were not sure of the same at the beginning. We were to work with our respective mothers over the phone and it got really challenging as our day used to start at 7:30 am and end at 9:30 pm. Amidst other performances, talks and critiques, we were struggling for time. But post- workshop which used to end at 2:00 pm, Jill was always available to help us out and guide us through the work. Being available for your learners in the same space is an essential element which was reinforced. She encouraged us to question our mothers in the most respectful and innocuous manner as possible so as we get the material for the workshop. The art of asking questions which I teach my students from grade 6 till 8 was put to test here. And i realised that it is not easy to ask intimate questions because you expect a certain answer and that is the caveat. It is important to respect the words of the respondent at all times.

7. Story writing and Telling the tale: As much as one may like to listen to stories, it is not easy to write and recount one. I have liked writing but mostly about personal journeys and have liked to share it with readers who are intimate and known to me. But here i was, a performer who had to write about the personal stories of my family which is difficult because one tends to look at one’s family through a lens of bias. I had to be as truthful and respectful about my stories. The trick to this was to identify the main pillars of my stories. Selection of the stories was even more difficult because others had traumatic, joyful stories to tell and somehow somewhere i doubted my stories. It didn’t take me long to stick with the stories i had selected as i felt that those were important to me. I may not be able to apprehend the reaction of the listener but the stories i had selected were of immense importance to me. I was glad that i stuck with my decision because my listeners were eager to hear what i had to tell. I performed the stories applying the technique of intended silences, eye contact, intimate voice modulation and honesty. And at the cost of being boastful, i must say that it was a successful performance.

Besides the workshop, the festival was interspersed with performances - dance, theatre, music and art forms from all across the world and India. It was a beautiful confluence of traditional, indigenous art forms of India like Mudiyettu (dance drama from Kerala), Baul songs (Bengal), Panvani (endangered art form of storytelling from Chhattisgarh), Odissi (performed by an Italian) and contemporary works in dance-theatre and music by likes of Jyoti Dogra (Mumbai), Kolkata theatre, Seema Kohli (Artist). Similarly there were performances by artists from Serbia, Japan, Korea, France, Spain, Cuba, Italy, UK etc. (The schedule of the festival attached)

Post performances, we would have interaction sessions with the artists that were really engaging as one could inquire into the struggles, art technique and experiences of the artists and art forms. It was heartening to realise that people had flown half way across the world just to be a part of the festival and to present their work-in-progress or thought provoking pieces. Just the spirit of sharing, exchanging and collaboration of artists from different walks of life opened my mind to a great extent. Art is beyond time, language, space and place. There are people world over who are taking initiatives to protect and promote cultural heritage. It provided me with much material for my Grade 8 lesson on Culture (currently going on). It also provided me with a list of resource people, who i connected with, eager to collaborate with me on school projects and personal front as far as my independent practice of the art is concerned.

I remember a mentor of mine once stating that educators need to be explorers, risk-takers and have new experiences. This will feed them with new ideas and make the classroom come alive. This was one of my humble attempts at re-innovating my pedagogical practice.