Shanghai Theatre Academy, Shanghai, China. July, 2014. Paper: ‘Performing [as] Bauls: Reimagining Performance, Identity and Spatiality Between Tradition and Modernity’
almost…home…
Conceptualized by Sukanya Chakrabarti, May 2014 Roble Theater, Stanford, CA. May 18-20, 2014 Event Listing on Stanford University: Arts Institute, Sparks Grant page (link) What is home? Where is home? What are the boundaries of home? Are we the bodies that build our home, or are we carrying our homes in our bodies? Through the recreation of memories as performance, we explore how our bodies remind us of our homes and the ways that home gets mapped onto bodies. Conceptualized by: Sukanya ChakrabartiDevised by: Andrea hale, Kuna Sangani, Sruti Sarathy, Yvette…
Yoni ki Baat
Stanford University, California, March 2014 Acted in Yoni ki Baat, Directed by Sindhu Singh, produced by Rangmanch, the South Asian theater group in Stanford University
All this time we could have been friends
Show Dates: February 6-8, 2014 Performer in All this time we could have been friends
Paper on Bauls presented at PSi 19
Stanford University, California, USA. June, 2013. Paper: ‘Tracing the Traceless: Renegotiating Baul Identities Through the Lens of Performance’ Performed in The Symphonic Body (directed by artist Ann Carlson), as part of PSi19 and also worked as student organizer for other PSi events and talks on Stanford University campus.
Out of Water
San Francisco, California, June 2013 Performed in performance pieces Out of Water (devised and conceptualized by artists Helen Paris and Caroline Wright) Reflections As we all stood there at the beach behind a rope that divided us from our shadows watching the sun rise and the waves crash against the shore, I tried to memorize the moment so that I could recall it later when it is no more. I tried hard to sniff the air as much as I could to remember the smell of sand and salty water,…
Jean Claude Carriere: Writing – Film vs Theatre
Organized by Sukanya Chakrabarti Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center. Monday, March 18, 2013 | 4:00pm until 5:30pm in PDT. Jean Claude Carriere draws from his six decades of experience in constructing stories to explain commonalities, differences and the evolution of the two different storytelling modes.
Divided Together
Adapted and directed by Sukanya Chakrabarti Nitery Theater in the Old Union, March 8, 10, 2013 Excerpt from Stanford University: Drama Graduate Student Showcase (link) “Two friends there were – one mind, one heart.” The two men are best of friends till both of them fall in love with the same woman, Padmini, and one of them marries her. She is in love with her husband’s mind, and the other man’s body. In an act of sacrifice, the two men chop off their heads in a temple to the Goddess Kali.…
The Devadasis of South India: Performing Shame in Shame
…shame effaces itself; shame points and projects; shame turns itself skin side out; shame and pride, shame and dignity, shame and self-display, shame and exhibitionism are different interminglings of the same glove. Shame, it might finally be said, transformational shame, is performance.[i] And shame is not only performance; shame is often also a performative identity thrust upon an individual, a group or a nation. As shame also closely intermingles with respectability, I argue through the course of this paper how identities are formed, transformed and even subordinated within the performative…
The Body and Its Memories: The Trauma of Partition in Hayavadana
‘You cannot engrave on water, Nor wound it with a knife Which is why The river has no fear of memories’ – Girish Karnad, Hayavadana The midnight of August 14, 1947 witnessed a separation that defined lives thereafter. The body of a nation was split and sundered – the union of India split into Pakistan, India and East Pakistan (which later became Bangladesh). While families were separated, the nations’ body stored their memories, which were spatialized and brought forth through numerous cathartic writings and art practices in the post-Independence days.…