Basic Theatre Exercises and a talk with Nathan
Duration: 00:40:14; Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1; Hue: 83.230; Saturation: 0.099; Lightness: 0.313; Volume: 0.111; Cuts per Minute: 4.797; Words per Minute: 64.993
Nathan: Hmm, body massage.
Nathan: Okay. Everyone sit in a circle. No, a slightly bigger circle.
Nathan holds the ball in his hands.
Nathan: Okay, now whatever this is, change it. Make it into something else and pass it. And what you... recieve?... [Static] Use it, and then pass it on.
Woman: What you recieve, use that. If you recieve a ball use that ball for the first time, and then —
Woman [Speaking about Nathan]: See, he's changed it.
Man: Come back soon, your child is crying.
[Nathan laughs]
Nathan: First it's a snake, then you can make it into something else.
Man: First a snake?
Nathan: Yes.
Woman: Ball...
Nathan: What is it? A ball?
Nathan [Laughing]: Loose connection.
Nathan: Okay, that was very easy....
Man [Imitating a seller at a railway station]: Channa, murmurey, first class channa, Channawalla, channa...
Man 2 [laughing]: I was going to do that.
Nathan: Why are you working with the back?
Woman: He's a mechanic.
Someone else: He's checking if the cable is okay.
Woman: The cable isn't clear, so he was making it better.
Nathan: Okay.
Nathan: I've put it in the water. Okay....
Sudhu: This is the circus space right? Now circuses, what kind are they? What do they have in them? Tell me...?
Someone: Acrobat.
Woman: To balance.
Sudhu: Now what is happening is that you are actually seeing all these things — you're actually watching a ____ on a motorcycle, jumping in through a fire. Now with these, if you aren't actually seeing them. You're seeing —
[cut]
Sudhu: Like how this juggling happens. One, two, three, four things are being juggled....
[cut]
Sudhu: (So you're showing that you're walking a tightrope and that you lose your balance and you fall, that your life is in danger). You have to walk this rope like you've taken your own life into your hands. We're actually not going to walk on a rope —
Nathan: Three is good.
Sudhu: Okay, groups of three. Come. Form your groups. You'll have three minutes to think—
[Group Discussions]
{Massive chunk in the middle to transcribe of a group discussion]
Sudhu: Okay come. Start.
Man: Can we use all these things?
Sudhu: Of course, you should use all these things.
Sudhu: We're come back like a circus. We'll take a small break. Here, there is one more thing. On this set, there is one element —
Nathan: So, but now when I am talking, who am I talking to? Am I talking to camera, am I talking to...
[Undististinguishable]
Nathan: To the camera?
Sudhu: Welcome to India, Nathan, once again. What made you come here this time?
Nathan: Well, as you know I've been here numbers of times before. I think probably for me what is most exciting about this particular trip is the chance to be working with not just Janam — I mean Janam I have a close association with — but to be working with a group that is as active as Janam is. And I'm really excited about the opportunities that that's going to afford in terms of working with a group that has ... basically is already an active, thriving theater.
Nathan: And it's an opportunity for me to work in a context... I haven't really worked like this in India before. You know I have many years of background in India, but most of my more recent work has been in the United States, has been in Mexico. So really this is kind of a very unique opportunity for me to be working with Janam, working with a theater that is, that already has a long and well established history and to be working in a cultural environment that I am comfortable with, that I am conversant in. And so it's ... in a sense, it's kind of a coming home for me. It's a coming home to do the work that I've already been doing but to do it in essentially my home with a group that I have been developing, over the years, a strong relationship with.
Sudhu: This time in India we'll be working on the play to mark the tenth anniversary of Safdar's matyrdom. Similiarly in Mexico, early this year, if I am not mistaken — last year.
Nathan: That's right.
Sudhu: You had worked on a show, a performance to do with the matyrdom of poet? Could you tell us about that?
Nathan: That was a project... In a sense, I don't know, I don't necessarily mean to say that that's a dry run for this, but the circumstances are very similiar. I worked in Mexico on a show that commenrated the tenth death anniversary, the tenth matyrdom of a indegineous poet from Southern Mexico who really combined art and activism in the same way that Safdar did. Or in a very similar way.
Nathan: He was a poet by the name of *****Alexandra Cruize Martinez******* and he was a well published, well eshtablished poet. Very young, even younger than Safdar. He was twenty six years old and was a very up and coming, rising ... I don't want to say 'star' but a very up and coming poet, who, at the same time, was very concerned about the rights of indeginous farmers, of indigenous people in Southern part of Mexico. And, I'm not sure how familiar you are with Mexico or the political situation, but the ruling party, much like the congress, has been in power basically since independence. Same party, very entrenched, very established, very conservative. And Alexandro was actually a member of an opposition party and was really using his poetry as a means to bring some critical awareness on, to these farmers about their own rights.
Nathan: And, in the case that we were working on is that the he wwas helping these peasants to reclaim their water rights. There is a very dry part of Mexico where the large land owners were using all of the water for sugarcane, for these big cash crops and the peasants farmers really had no water. And so alot of his poetry had to do with water, had to do with the fact that, you know (--------------) in Spanish, you know, water is life. And so he had been working on behalf of these peasants and using his poetry as a means to mobilize and bring critical awareness to issues of water and how the importance of water. And ultimately, mobilized, organised these peasants. They took out a march, and went to the government ministry of water and agriculture and successfully got a petition signed, got a bill signed to give them greater access to the water. And on that very day, he was assinated.
Basically by the opposition government — sorry. By the opposition, by the mainstream parties whose vested interests he was challenging. And so in the same way, he was killed for his art, he was killed for his work. I mean, people realise that art is subversive and he was a person who did not believe in art for art's sake but really believed art was a tool, a means of bringing critical awarenes for empowering people. So in the same way, Safdar I think — and not just Safdar, but the work of Janam bringing critical awareness to art and using art as a means to engage people on a level. To bring some awareness, to bring some critical understanding and mobilise people to action.
And so I really see strong paralells between what ******ACM (name of poet) was doing in Mexico and what Safdar was doing. And so really it is great opportunity for me to bring the experience that I had last year to this project and to really look at ways in which art can be affectively used, the way janam has been using it. To bring some kind of critical understanding and mobilise people to see things in a new. Because I think for me that is what art is able to do most so effectively, is that it takes a form and bring — It allows people to think in a new way. Art kind of disturbs people's ... or can disturb people's way or patterns of thinking and gets them to think in new ways. So that's kind of what I'd like to be seeing happening here.
Sudhu: and what special skills do you hope to get into, um, what we'll be doing. I mean, in other words, what's the kind of work you've been doing all these years?
nathan: essentially, my work has kind of been using visual performance meida. i do puppetry. I use kind of masks. I use kind of large visual elements. And for me puppetry, when I say puppetry I mean gian puppets. I mean things that are larger than life. Ten feet, twleve feet, between three and four meters tall. Big elements. And really, for me, bigness is kind of a celebration of life. It's kind of larger than life. For me puppetry is kind of theater of the impossible. And really, it allows us to create and manifest our dreams. And I think that os much of our time is spent constricted by what we think possible.
And giant puppetry is a way for me to just kind of break those boundaries of what's kind of possible and empower people to think beyong what is... A friend of mine in the United States, talks about — what she says is I'm not interested in what probable, I'm interested in what's possibe. And to me that's kind of what giant puppetry does. It break through our realm of no, we cannot. This cannot be done by us. And it says no, you can do this. We together can do this. And what puppetry does is it brings people together. You don't just, it doesn't just take one person to make a giant puppet; it takes a whole community of people working together.
And so what I really would love for this project to be is a team effort, a collaboration. It's people putting their creativity, their sweat, their hands into a project that builds community, that transcends the boundraries and really brings people together to create something larger than life. And to show people that, you know, we aren't going to just accept the status quo. We're not going to accep things as they are. We're going to challenge things. We're going to create something much bigger. And, you know, visible. Giant puppets can be seen from a long ways around — people kind of rally around them. In the same way, I think, theater is a way for us to demonstrate that we're gonna, we aren't just about entertaining people, we're about challenging. We're about bringing — I don't want to say something like a becon of light because that's a little too cliche, but something, you know, puppets, masks, these strong visual elements are places that people can come to and draw inspiration from.
And that's what I really hope we can do; is use this performance as a way for people to think in new ways. To challenge people's way of thinking. To get them thinking outside of what I can or can't do. Or what I think I can or can't do. But to say, no we together are acapble of so much more. We are capable of transformation. We are capable of tearing down the structures of society, or at least challenging the structures. So that's why I use puppetry, that's why I use these mediums to get people to think beyond what we are normally thinking of. Because I think we so often get constructed by rationalism, by realism, of like, if its not real, lets not represent it. And I'm like, no lets use our imaginations. Let's think beyond the way we're usually used to thinking.
Sudhu: Any early thoughts on this show?
Nathan: Well... Yeah, a couple of thoughts. I mean one— I mean there's several elements that I'd love to bring in. I think what i hope is going to be somewhat different about this show prior to other shows is that its going to have a stronger visual component than perhaps some of the other shows have. And you know the use of safar, the mobile theater and wonderful opportunities that affords, I think really... and our early discussions about use of music .... I think its just going to be a show that's much more fleshed out in terms of having a broader dimensions. Some ideas that i have. I mean we've been discussing circus. And the reason I am attracted to circus is that circus offers so many metaphors for life, and yet its also, on one level its extremely visual. On another level, it's humurous. It affords, it's room for a lot of humour.
And that's something else that i know Janam does a lot of work with, is just not being caught in the mundane realities of life, life is so serious. I mean, I think life is serious, but there is so much room for celebration. There's a lot of humour, a lot room for whimsy. And through humour and whimsy and these other kind of more light hearted forms, we able to take on much more serious, the kind of structures of society. So something that I'd like to explore — whether we use it or not, you know it does not really matter to me. But I like the circus because sircus is an element; I mean India has had circuses for a long time. And its an element that just affords room for metaphor. It affords a lot of room for lookin at the parallels between teh ring master and Indian politicians. Between the clowns and Indian peasantry. You know, whatever. There's a lot of room to look at allergory, at metaphor and I think that's really what I am after. Is looking for a context that has strong visual dimension and that also gives us that dramatic and thematic context to explore much more serious issues. I mean I would be very disspointed, if all we did was a circus. tht's not really what i want to do. I'm looking for a context, a means to really be addressing something, but addressing it dramatically, in a way that really ... gets people to think in new ways. And that's, I think, that's one of the things I've been wanting us to look at. Is how to take something that we're normally expecting — you know, we know the outcome, we know the result — and to transform that. To turn it on its head. And that's why i think circus is one means to explore that. Other means... um, I mean giant puppets really are effective. I mean i think myth is good, because I think has so many levels that it operates on. We haven't really talked about a lot of myths we could use but myths and stories. We've discussed also, you know, animal stories. We haven't really explored that yet, but that's something we could also do. But again, looking for metaphor, looking for allegory. Looking for something that has meanings on multiple levels. And I think that's, that's really what's going to make for the most effective show: it's the multiplicity of meaning. And that allows people to look like, oh, okay, we see what you're trying to say. Without hammering people over the head. And I think that's... so again, my thoughts are to look for those elements that allow for multiplicity of meaning. And allow — but also allow for a kind of a ... you know, on the surface what appears to be a light hearted context and has all these colourful displays. But then, on another level, is operating on a much more serious kind of insightful level.
Sudhu: Alright, thanks, a lot Nathan. We'll talk again.
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