3RD MAY – Theatre Jam Hits The Streets
33rd Street, Nanda/RV road, JAYANAGAR
12 PM onwards
Bangalore needs you to express yourself… and the time has never been this right!
Calling Grandsons, mothers, lovers, musical types, creative types, passionate types, etc…
All who found refuge under grand green giants when it rained, and who drove through golden green canopies when the sun shone…
A green impersonator monster with purple font that calls itself Namma Metro is out to get those green giants…
All this happeningright around the corner in Jayanagar…
Would you want to come and say you don’t like this much?
Would you like to do more than that and celebrate the trees with music, theatre and activities that you or others have in mind?
Send out a strong pink heart sign to your city’s green giants.
Stand to protect, and be protected!

THE METRO GUYS PLAN TO CUT 323 TREES ON NANDA ROAD
Want to express your outrage and ouch?

Ideas we have

The string thing…
String your hopes, memories, stories and togetherness together! Bring old pieces of cloth, bedsheets, colorful sarees you don’t want to use, lungis and dhotis…and tie shreds of these together around the trees on the street, to create your protective web.

Doodle Banners
Bring white or near white dhotis or bedsheets that you don’t mind painting on to express what Bangalore with trees meant for you and tie them up for display on the streets between trees

Growing up in Jayanagar, I befriended a tree…
Do you have a tree friend?
Does she have a name?
Did he talk to you on your way to school?
Would you like to reconnect to her?
Bring your own personal message and leave it on the tree on metal boards

www.theatresundays.blogspot.com
www.maraa.in

From the girl in a saree…

For the past few months I’ve been contemplating the whole idea of public spaces and how we’ve been trying to look beyond the constructed usage of the term ‘public spaces’. The jam has inevitably become that space.

Meet, greet and perform…. And that’s what exactly what happened. To start of with Andrea’s exercises - What I found really amazing was how the group enthusiastically participated. I, for one, found the exercises very liberating. In the sense, that it started with movement and body first from the ‘self’ to subtly moving into sharing that space with another, especially the ‘fall – hold’ and the ‘roll-over’ exercise. We did gather some inquisitive gazes, at one point even a truck load!!

But there is some sort of a barrier…wish people would join us at some point..just jump in… or do we come across as an eccentric intimidating crowd? (Just been playing on my mind)

Vahid’s poem – I didn’t catch the name or the entire poem, but I did get bits of it…and that was enough to let my thoughts travel. The off-shot performance was interesting…would want to know what the poet thought of it? I decided to go with adding some kind of sound to it – because I felt the piece spoke a lot about ‘silence’ and how it magnifies thought to some extent (okie that’s a little something I got out off it), so picked a bottle and a twig to add to the movement enthusiasts …it became a piece in itself with the drummer adding his crazy chamaaks!

Songs in Bangla to folk to rock to quawaali…..was a very fascinating mix. From singing mosquitoes and sharing jackfruits!Personally for me, I’m at a state of understanding this crisis of religion, tolerance, violence, secular, non secular, faith, belief and culture. Feel like a juggler trying to find a ‘where’ to walk amidst this clutter, right now it seems to be on a painful fence. And I couldn’t help but enjoy these songs from that fence. (Got a bit surreal…dunno if it was the space, the songs or the theme behind or all of it)

And how could I forget the short piece Ekta read out from Sangamitra, remember ‘the black linen shirt’, I don’t know why it’s queer…it sounded so simple and regular to me.

Deepak’s autobiographical piece – ‘When someone asks me who I am, I don’t know what to say!’, I think someone mentioned this at the Q and A post the performance, but I felt I was stepping into something that had already started. I particularly liked the repetition of certain parts of the text; it put the emphases in ‘quotes’!

The form juxtaposes movements, text and fragments of songs, the method behind the autobiographical dramaturgy plays more on the impulse of movement and thus making it more abstract, yet I would think it is not that different. But I’m keen on understanding the process of decentralizing the individual’s story with spurts of disjoint body movements. Conceptually, as a viewer, I could still make some connections and somewhere draw a parallel with the content. But I wonder how 'fair' it would be to the actor and his story, that’s where I’m stuck in understanding the method itself..when one is directed….how far can you push it to being your own (autobiography), or does it even have to? However, I am interested to see how the piece evolves…

Masrah’s stories from a park bench – phew... glad to be ‘finally’ performing at the jam. I thoroughly enjoyed coming up with the piece over ice-cream and cigarettes at some 3am two nights before the jam. All of us were super excited about sharing our stories, but more anxious about opening the bench out for the audience- hoping someone will want to share their stories. It was rewarding to see so many of them willingly come forward. Thank you guys :0

Coming back to the form, it wasn’t too defined but we made sure it followed a certain conversational feel. But would personally want to see how and where we can take the piece from here.

Soumya and Andrea’s movement number –It was really cool to see how that space just transformed itself into this set for their piece. Hope you didn’t get a bump on your head Andrea?!

For the next Jam, was wondering if we can see how to get the locals from the area involved. Maybe put up a poster or two, Do some door-to-door pamphlet thing? What do you guys think?

Also found out today that they are going to chop some 300 trees around that area – Why…well because of the METRO…(duh) and it apparently happens during the night. Now…am not sure if anything we do CAN stop this mess. But it would be interesting to see how this spills into our performances next jam.

until next,

cheers,

pallavi