I am very happy to announce the official slaying of a monster play. After battling for... (hold your breath) ... six years, I've finished my play. It's called "Ultimate Kurukshetra" and at one point went by the names of "Warsong" and "Forgotten Song..."
I started this play in mid 2003 right after graduating and after much staggering around, much confusion, much fatigue and much suffering... It's done!
I must have thrown the play into the dustbin at least ten times and fished it out the same number of times to restart work on it. (This is of course excluding the times I merely fished it out of the dustbin and put it right back in again.)
It's been a hell of a journey and I've written a pile of plays in the interim. In fact chronologically, it's right back there with Square root of Minus One.
The final strike happened at Adishakti in Pondycherry, where I parked arse at the Sangam house residency for 2 weeks and pinned the play down on paper once and for all! I also did an informal reading with the extremely sporting actors there and was happy to hear the results... which mostly consisted of laughter in the right places. A huge thanks to all of them.
Right... I'm so glad this is off my back. I'm letting it lie for a while, doing a light polish in a few months and then throwing it out of the house to fend for itself. Yipee! I'm off to celebrate for a day before I run back into rehearsal for a Dancing on Glass show on the 18th.
No rest for the wicked I tell you!
Gautam, since you're probably the only dude reading this, I'm happy to tell you that diving into the Mahabharata and coming out alive is possible.
And Arghya, who will probably never read this, keep at it. You're real close.
And to all the sleepless writers out there... Forge on, my friends forge on!
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Drifting again
Drifted about again.
Made my annual piligrammage to the Himalayas.
Went to McLeodGanj. Did a 10 day Vipassana course.
Pretty intense.
Bumped into the Rage gang completely by chance.
They were trekking up to Triund. I was too fried after the meditation to do anything.
Floated back to B'lore.
I think I'm in love with my life.
Or I think I'm in love with life.
Or I think I'm in love.
Or I'm so alive.
Or I think.
Or I.
Am.
Made my annual piligrammage to the Himalayas.
Went to McLeodGanj. Did a 10 day Vipassana course.
Pretty intense.
Bumped into the Rage gang completely by chance.
They were trekking up to Triund. I was too fried after the meditation to do anything.
Floated back to B'lore.
I think I'm in love with my life.
Or I think I'm in love with life.
Or I think I'm in love.
Or I'm so alive.
Or I think.
Or I.
Am.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Going for Bust - (RBEI 1)
My blog has once again, gone official! I will now be reporting monthly progress on a new project of mine, working title - Bust. The project has been enabled by an art grant from Robert Bosch India. (RBEI)
The idea for the play hit me quite by accident. As good ideas often tend to. I was doing a duck-walk-frog-jump-run-till-you-drop Sunday workout in Cubbon Park with my crazy climbing friends at Mars Adventures. While I was wondering whether my hamstrings would explode, I happened to chance upon a statue that was set amidst a bunch of colourful flowers. I was amazed at the beautiful sight. Endorphins tend to make everything really wonderful… I also realised that I had no clue whose statue it was. Which set me thinking - Who's statue is that? This line of thinking led me to the next observation - I think my hamstrings just exploded...
Later in the day... one thing connected to another and an idea took shape.
Bust takes the audience on a journey into the city of Bangalore through the eyes of eminent historical persons who were a major influence on the city. The sutradhars of the play are actually characters drawn from the city's history. This enables a polyvocal clash of cultures, timelines and narratives, conflating past and the present against a contemporary urban backdrop.
Which seems to be a pet theme, come to think of it. I suppose this is a continuation of the tricks I was turning in Creeper. I think that the polyvocal approach facilitates risk taking. It also liberates you from dull things like consistency of voice and sanctity of authorial meaning, instead, throwing you into the exciting terrain of shifting language. It might be exciting to create a text - as Barthes puts it - that is "a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture." So while Barthes announced the death of the author in 1968, we can get on with the business of playmaking in the year 2009 minus many burdens, posthumously or otherwise.
The fun thing about a lot of my projects, is that they tend to be inherently polyvocal. The text serves as the springboard for writer-director-actor dynamics. Meaning is created through this negotiation and eventually, it also the audience that supplies a live meaning in performance. This is what makes the theatrical experience so live, so immediate.
At the moment however, it's time to put on my research hat, saturate myself in all the available material and then sniff out the way forward. I've got a few leads already, so I'm off to do a pile of interviews and start snooping around… Here we go! Damn excited!
The idea for the play hit me quite by accident. As good ideas often tend to. I was doing a duck-walk-frog-jump-run-till-you-drop Sunday workout in Cubbon Park with my crazy climbing friends at Mars Adventures. While I was wondering whether my hamstrings would explode, I happened to chance upon a statue that was set amidst a bunch of colourful flowers. I was amazed at the beautiful sight. Endorphins tend to make everything really wonderful… I also realised that I had no clue whose statue it was. Which set me thinking - Who's statue is that? This line of thinking led me to the next observation - I think my hamstrings just exploded...
Later in the day... one thing connected to another and an idea took shape.
Bust takes the audience on a journey into the city of Bangalore through the eyes of eminent historical persons who were a major influence on the city. The sutradhars of the play are actually characters drawn from the city's history. This enables a polyvocal clash of cultures, timelines and narratives, conflating past and the present against a contemporary urban backdrop.
Which seems to be a pet theme, come to think of it. I suppose this is a continuation of the tricks I was turning in Creeper. I think that the polyvocal approach facilitates risk taking. It also liberates you from dull things like consistency of voice and sanctity of authorial meaning, instead, throwing you into the exciting terrain of shifting language. It might be exciting to create a text - as Barthes puts it - that is "a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture." So while Barthes announced the death of the author in 1968, we can get on with the business of playmaking in the year 2009 minus many burdens, posthumously or otherwise.
The fun thing about a lot of my projects, is that they tend to be inherently polyvocal. The text serves as the springboard for writer-director-actor dynamics. Meaning is created through this negotiation and eventually, it also the audience that supplies a live meaning in performance. This is what makes the theatrical experience so live, so immediate.
At the moment however, it's time to put on my research hat, saturate myself in all the available material and then sniff out the way forward. I've got a few leads already, so I'm off to do a pile of interviews and start snooping around… Here we go! Damn excited!
Saturday, August 08, 2009
a couple of poems
so apparently, i kinda-sorta-maybe remember how to write poetry
so here goes...
Cold
She watches me
Eyebrow raised
Eyes and hands clutch
Warm sheets against us
Between us
Cold rain
Lashes the beach outside
I walked with you
Retraced the steps, his betrayal
In the cold rain
With you
Caught and killed your ghost
For you
But her eyebrow stays raised
Her warm flesh
Won't bend to mine
She doesn't like the cold
Of my ten thousand ghosts
___________________________
Kitchen
I would have loved you in the kitchen
Would have snuck-up behind you
To place an electric kiss
On the back of your neck
As you chopped tomatoes
(That was our first kiss.)
I would have loved you in the kitchen
On the counter maybe
Breakfast in bed
Pleasantly interrupted
With sparks of an impromptu tangle
Cornflakes forgotten
I would have loved you in the kitchen
While you were making a health shake
Complaining about your diet
The state of your eyebrows
And why I was not going to stay for lunch
Somewhere in the snowy mountains
A butterfly flapped its wings
And the momos I remember you for
Unwrapped themselves into
Hungry corpses
And settled down for dinner with us
I know I could love you
But I'm so far away now
And can't seem to catch your eye
Across the crowd in the kitchen
so here goes...
Cold
She watches me
Eyebrow raised
Eyes and hands clutch
Warm sheets against us
Between us
Cold rain
Lashes the beach outside
I walked with you
Retraced the steps, his betrayal
In the cold rain
With you
Caught and killed your ghost
For you
But her eyebrow stays raised
Her warm flesh
Won't bend to mine
She doesn't like the cold
Of my ten thousand ghosts
___________________________
Kitchen
I would have loved you in the kitchen
Would have snuck-up behind you
To place an electric kiss
On the back of your neck
As you chopped tomatoes
(That was our first kiss.)
I would have loved you in the kitchen
On the counter maybe
Breakfast in bed
Pleasantly interrupted
With sparks of an impromptu tangle
Cornflakes forgotten
I would have loved you in the kitchen
While you were making a health shake
Complaining about your diet
The state of your eyebrows
And why I was not going to stay for lunch
Somewhere in the snowy mountains
A butterfly flapped its wings
And the momos I remember you for
Unwrapped themselves into
Hungry corpses
And settled down for dinner with us
I know I could love you
But I'm so far away now
And can't seem to catch your eye
Across the crowd in the kitchen
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Monster plays and other things
so... i'm in b'bay and it's raining endlessly...
i dreamed of an ex-girlfriend, can't remember which... i have a stomach upset...
i've got travel itch... and i've got a pile of deadlines coming up.
and with that relevant preamble i want to talk about "monster plays"
i have two of them on hand at the moment - Ultimate Kurukshetra and Into Stone
what is a monster play?
a monster play is like an unhealthy relationship.
you pour your heart, blood, guts, brain, sweat, self and soul into the play for years and years and years. and years. - and all you have to show for it is fatigue...
i just did a reading of Ultimate Kurukshetra and for the first time i have hope for these two plays. i started writing Ultimate... in 2003 and the reading was early this month. i can't even begin to imagine how much time i've spent on it.
hearing it read out loud produced a huge sense of relief! and trawling through past entries on my blog, where i've cheerfully announced completion of draft after draft of Into Stone, all i can feel is sinking despair.
a monster play refuses to be complete. just when u think u've pinned it, it either expands or contracts and then u're back to the start - with too much material, or too little. with a fat draft, or too lean a draft. a real mess.
at one point last year i was going so crazy that i was writing both plays simultaneously. and as anyone who has written a play knows, that's asking for trouble. anyway, the point of this diatribe is to reassure myself that - monsters can be slain!
and ultimate... is in my sights. for the first time. in six years.
what's a bit funny about ultimate... is that i can feel myself in it in a rather odd way. i can hear my voice as it was six years ago. it's like hearing myself when i was right out of college and saying - fuck this, let's do something really ground breaking! - which is always the kind of statement that lands you in trouble!
and there's trace elements of other plays in it. stuff that i was thinking about, things i was going through. many elements of crab that i had idiotically tried to write onto it. hearing the reading was like hearing an echo from the past. and strangely enough those echoes are exactly what are screwing me senseless on into stone. 'other selves' that creep up on you now and then.
sometimes i wonder how i mange to connect everything to everything else. and how that same instinct has given me splitting headaches and the highest buzzes while writing. that amazing sense of interconnectedness. that sound you hear when all sound stops. that soul freezing hum that is the machinery of the universe, chugging along.
anyway, its' nose to the wheel for me. and it's back to the most basic test for a playwright. you may have the skill, but do you have the stamina? if ghosts can be slain, so can monsters.
i dreamed of an ex-girlfriend, can't remember which... i have a stomach upset...
i've got travel itch... and i've got a pile of deadlines coming up.
and with that relevant preamble i want to talk about "monster plays"
i have two of them on hand at the moment - Ultimate Kurukshetra and Into Stone
what is a monster play?
a monster play is like an unhealthy relationship.
you pour your heart, blood, guts, brain, sweat, self and soul into the play for years and years and years. and years. - and all you have to show for it is fatigue...
i just did a reading of Ultimate Kurukshetra and for the first time i have hope for these two plays. i started writing Ultimate... in 2003 and the reading was early this month. i can't even begin to imagine how much time i've spent on it.
hearing it read out loud produced a huge sense of relief! and trawling through past entries on my blog, where i've cheerfully announced completion of draft after draft of Into Stone, all i can feel is sinking despair.
a monster play refuses to be complete. just when u think u've pinned it, it either expands or contracts and then u're back to the start - with too much material, or too little. with a fat draft, or too lean a draft. a real mess.
at one point last year i was going so crazy that i was writing both plays simultaneously. and as anyone who has written a play knows, that's asking for trouble. anyway, the point of this diatribe is to reassure myself that - monsters can be slain!
and ultimate... is in my sights. for the first time. in six years.
what's a bit funny about ultimate... is that i can feel myself in it in a rather odd way. i can hear my voice as it was six years ago. it's like hearing myself when i was right out of college and saying - fuck this, let's do something really ground breaking! - which is always the kind of statement that lands you in trouble!
and there's trace elements of other plays in it. stuff that i was thinking about, things i was going through. many elements of crab that i had idiotically tried to write onto it. hearing the reading was like hearing an echo from the past. and strangely enough those echoes are exactly what are screwing me senseless on into stone. 'other selves' that creep up on you now and then.
sometimes i wonder how i mange to connect everything to everything else. and how that same instinct has given me splitting headaches and the highest buzzes while writing. that amazing sense of interconnectedness. that sound you hear when all sound stops. that soul freezing hum that is the machinery of the universe, chugging along.
anyway, its' nose to the wheel for me. and it's back to the most basic test for a playwright. you may have the skill, but do you have the stamina? if ghosts can be slain, so can monsters.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Project S.T.R.I.P.
Limited run:
@ Prithvi Theatre: 16th - 21st June 2009
@ Sathaye College : 27 - 28 June 2009
@ NCPA Experimental : 1 - 5 July 2009
Tickets: 26149546/39895050/www.bookmyshow.com
Monday, May 04, 2009
3 months went missing
Umm... Where did Feb, March and April go?
I guess it disappeared somewhere in between my shuttling between B'lore and B'bay.
What's new... Well let's see...
I've been writing furiously. And when that happens, stuff happens.
It's been pretty uphill, as always.
I think this is that strange consolidation phase, you go through before stuff happens. Because right now, nothing is happening!
So when does stuff actually happen then?
In other news, I've written two plays. One of which will be staged in Mumbai mid June. The other will have a rehearsed reading in Bangalore early July.
I guess it disappeared somewhere in between my shuttling between B'lore and B'bay.
What's new... Well let's see...
I've been writing furiously. And when that happens, stuff happens.
It's been pretty uphill, as always.
I think this is that strange consolidation phase, you go through before stuff happens. Because right now, nothing is happening!
So when does stuff actually happen then?
In other news, I've written two plays. One of which will be staged in Mumbai mid June. The other will have a rehearsed reading in Bangalore early July.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Draft Five - Into Stone
As the dramaturgical cliche goes - less is more.
I'm done. I quit. Now to stage this darn thing...
I'm done. I quit. Now to stage this darn thing...
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