theatre sundays

hello all,
before all the excitement frizzles out, I thought it best to talk a bit about the afternoon well spent at Guruskool farm yesterday... Nov 2nd 08 that is

i used "well spent" and I hope that isnt too irritating to some of us who have to share not so well spent moments and times...but please bear with me. I don't, for one see the not-so-well-spent moments as negative. I think dialoging about them will make it an evening well spent :)
a dialog that continues in to and through out theatre lives, theatre selves and as theatre artists.

Lets briefly recapitulate.
November 2nd saw three activities around which our attention and time was centered. A reading of a scene from Shakespeare's Hamlet, a short sketch with voices of personal and universal feminism by Gayatri and yet another short "religious" song based theatrical sharing by Deepak (thats me).

This time, hopefully some better time was utilised (than the previous jam) in sharing and talking about the process of (reading or performing). The reading brought in debates about what a reading should constitute (in terms of "how an actor reads") , why are Shakespeare's works performed/read/ "learnt" and how does one relate to him-as literature or theatre, poetry or life's realities. The performances also had their share of audience prodding and participation.

We had also wanted theatre collaborations within music and music to work in theatre. In some ways, there was nascent amalgamation in the area and we hope this can be deepened. Gopal played his mandolin for my song piece and we then went on to jam a bit with flute, song and strings...I loved the experience of my idea of the song changing form and moving into different spheres...

this jam was different from the previous ones for various reasons, a number of things coming up along the way. ill wait for others to add in this area...

one of the things about why maraa (a collective that we are) wanted to work with theatre this way was because of our individual experiences within theatre spheres... and how we did or didnt want theatre to be a "certain" authoritatively defined way. Open space is what we called it.

I write this blog not as a part of maraa but as a part of a theatre community because just yesterday, i realised that there could be the danger of collapsing into being just one role- that of coming from maraa and being an "organiser". Of course Im part of maraa but i need to shift to the threatre self in me to voice anything pertaining to theatre as an art, and theatre as a evolving performer.
So i'll write about theatre on maraa's webpage too but Ive created this blog so we can dialog here about the art, content and evolutions of theatre, things we can share as performers or theatre enthusiasts. And we can do it ourselves beginning with logging in personally and posting directly.

Do post your views on theatre jam that just passed. Content, understandings, theatre...
plus the process. this is our space to write, challenge, concur, express dissent, celebrate, collate learnings, etc.

Deepak