performance.LAB
performance.LAB brings contemporary movement training alongside experimental performance devising, creation, working towards an improvised performance to the public at the end of the workshop. It brings together artists & performers from multiple arts disciplines to come together and has since had iterations in Bangalore & Kerala.
First initiated in Mumbai, India, by Prashant More, Sarah Elsworth and Somya Kautia. Together in collaboration with the participants we devised the roots of a new experimental performance work PITHU- A game, a performance, a dance.
Concept & Direction PITHU : Somya, Prashant, Sarah.
Performers: Ana, Melitta, Rohan, Tanaya, Suhas, Isha, Navin, Neeraj, Improper, Chandhana. Moodzi,Jignesh.
Photography: Saurav Khurana
WORKSHOPPING
Devising, playing, researching in studio during performance.LAB
CONCEPT NOTES
PITHU is a sociological inquiry into the functionality of ‘monuments’ and how they intersect & collide in contemporary Indian society. Monuments, referring to large, inanimate historical structures, capsulizing & memorializing historically relevant events or people. Monuments, on a more personal & philosophically embodied level, such as the micro monumental moments or rituals, that shape our life, anchoring our existence, weaving & connecting us into the fabric of our societal network.
The work seeks to question the notion of remembrance & memorialsim. It asks us to examine what are the features that constitute an event or person in order to become monumental? What power structures decide?
Employing the structure of common childhood game PITHU, the performance explores the improvisational element of ‘game’ as a clever linking conceptual metaphor. The stacking of the seven stones in PITHU, alluding as visual reference to the construction process of a large monumental structure.
Game, as common & nostalgic social encounters often played in childhood. Game, with immense power to connect, linking people with immediacy to creativity and presence. With transformative power to alleviate suffering if only for a moment. The idea of game, not only underpins the devising and creation strategy of the work, but is also examined more in depth as a psychological performative effect. We seek to devise ‘game strategies’ for inviting the audience into the world of the work. We are fascinated by the immediacy of game, as a construct to pull our audience closer in connection to the world of the performance.
QUESTIONS
What has been monumental in our life and in what form is it still alive? As a person, an object, a conversation, a film, an image or just a feeling?
How might ancient stone structural monuments be embodied to inform architecturally structured movement vocabularies.
How could the stories within these structures be enlivened? Unlocking their dormancy and rigidity?
What impact or relevance might these stories have in a modern day India?
Are they so removed and woven, faded into the fabric of a city landscape that they are easily overlooked?