In January to May of this year, I traveled from Australia to Germany overland, making performances and residencies in some places (theatre4every1.blogspot.com). I was looking for inspired theatre. This is a very hard to find when you're traveling. Maybe it's because when you are in a country and you don't know the language, everything is theatre. You are constantly mesmerised and confounded by new thoughts and sounds. Small stages pop up everywhere (but many of them, I claim, false).
One of my techniques was to trawl through Couchsurfing for people who had listed 'theatre' in their profiles. This is how I found Arka Mukhopadhyay. Arka wasn't available to host me or my performances in the time I was in Kolkata, but he put me onto some other theatre-makers, the League of Shadows, of Kolkata, who I was subsequently able to collaborate with.
Arka is currently making a project below and would like support. I made the suggestion to share this on my blog, and he agreed. South Asia and South-East Asia is a region that does not often share theatre through festivals or other events. Unlike Europe, where there seems to be an International Theatre Festival every second week, this region has sometimes minimal cultural integration. Independent theatre can fulfill a unique role here. Something like the festival Arka is proposing has the potential to bind people together in a way that trade relationships and official handshakes simply can't.
Arka's text about the 'Border Songs Festival' after the jump:
One of my techniques was to trawl through Couchsurfing for people who had listed 'theatre' in their profiles. This is how I found Arka Mukhopadhyay. Arka wasn't available to host me or my performances in the time I was in Kolkata, but he put me onto some other theatre-makers, the League of Shadows, of Kolkata, who I was subsequently able to collaborate with.
Arka is currently making a project below and would like support. I made the suggestion to share this on my blog, and he agreed. South Asia and South-East Asia is a region that does not often share theatre through festivals or other events. Unlike Europe, where there seems to be an International Theatre Festival every second week, this region has sometimes minimal cultural integration. Independent theatre can fulfill a unique role here. Something like the festival Arka is proposing has the potential to bind people together in a way that trade relationships and official handshakes simply can't.
Arka's text about the 'Border Songs Festival' after the jump:
