Saturday 28 January 2012
Friday 27 January 2012
Film Screenings
The Japan Foundation is organizing regular film screenings from January to March 2012. Each month's films have a common theme connecting them. This is an attempt to introduce Indian audiences to the magic of Japanese cinema. The Venue for all these screenings shall be The Japan Foundation, (5A Ring Road, Lajpat Nagar-IV) and admission shall be free.
| Film | Director | Release | Screning Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| January Topic: Passion for Film | |||
| The Rainbow Seeker | Yoji Yamada | 1996 | January 24, 2012 |
| Fall Guy (KAMATA KOUSINKYOKU) | Kinji Fukasaku | 1982 | January 30, 2012 |
| February Topic: Special Feature on Hiroko Yakushimaru | |||
| TONDA KAPPURU | Shinji Somai | 1980 | February 18, 2012 |
| W's Tragedy | Shinichiro Sawai | 1984 | February 21, 2012 |
| March Topic: Dedicated Women | |||
| Appassionata | Sadao Nakajima | 1984 | March 5, 2012 |
| YUME-CHIYO NIKKI | Kiriro Urayama | 1985 | March 15, 2012 |
Theatre Workshop by Madoka Okada
By Manjari Kaul
On the 23rd of January, the Kaden Theatrical Art Company in association with Japan Foundation, New Delhi organized a workshop on Japanese theatrical techniques and stylistics. Madoka Okada, the co-director of the play 'Looking In & Out', staged at the 14th Bharat Rang Mahotsav conducted the workshop with two others from his theatre company.
The team displayed certain standard stances and movements of the classical Japanese dramas, Noh and Kabuki. The importance of channelizing the energy inside our bodies to observe those stances during performance was also discussed.
"It is important to make our bodies still. Stillness brings silence," said Okada.
The discussion on energy reminded me of a book by theatre researcher, Eugenio Barba, called A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer in which the writer points out that in Noh, the term energy can be translated as 'ki-hai' which means the profound agreement (hai) of the spirit (ki) with the body. Spirit here is used in the sense of spirit as 'pnema', breath. The Sanskrit word, 'prana', points out Barba, is equivalent to 'ki-hai'.
That movement as well as stillness can be a visible form of language, was discussed. A gesture can be way of communicating a feeling, a mood or words. The performers presented snippets from their play 'Looking In & Out' to illustrate the concept of movement as visible language.
Emphasis was laid on concentration during performance. The mind should be able to concentrate in such a way that it can look at the body from outside it. To achieve balance in one's posture during dance and performance it is important to concentrate on the body's centre.
The Japanese tradition of voice control in a modern day context was discussed. Okada also spoke about how he deploys light as an element in his production that not just sets the mood and alters the perception of the scene but acts as a co actor in the play.
The informative and educative workshop culminated in the participants learning a few basic stances and movements of Classical Japanese theatre. The participants shared performance space with the experts to learn how to establish a well balanced yet fluid body during performance.
On the 23rd of January, the Kaden Theatrical Art Company in association with Japan Foundation, New Delhi organized a workshop on Japanese theatrical techniques and stylistics. Madoka Okada, the co-director of the play 'Looking In & Out', staged at the 14th Bharat Rang Mahotsav conducted the workshop with two others from his theatre company.
The team displayed certain standard stances and movements of the classical Japanese dramas, Noh and Kabuki. The importance of channelizing the energy inside our bodies to observe those stances during performance was also discussed.
"It is important to make our bodies still. Stillness brings silence," said Okada.
The discussion on energy reminded me of a book by theatre researcher, Eugenio Barba, called A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer in which the writer points out that in Noh, the term energy can be translated as 'ki-hai' which means the profound agreement (hai) of the spirit (ki) with the body. Spirit here is used in the sense of spirit as 'pnema', breath. The Sanskrit word, 'prana', points out Barba, is equivalent to 'ki-hai'.
That movement as well as stillness can be a visible form of language, was discussed. A gesture can be way of communicating a feeling, a mood or words. The performers presented snippets from their play 'Looking In & Out' to illustrate the concept of movement as visible language.
Emphasis was laid on concentration during performance. The mind should be able to concentrate in such a way that it can look at the body from outside it. To achieve balance in one's posture during dance and performance it is important to concentrate on the body's centre.
The Japanese tradition of voice control in a modern day context was discussed. Okada also spoke about how he deploys light as an element in his production that not just sets the mood and alters the perception of the scene but acts as a co actor in the play.
The informative and educative workshop culminated in the participants learning a few basic stances and movements of Classical Japanese theatre. The participants shared performance space with the experts to learn how to establish a well balanced yet fluid body during performance.
Thursday 26 January 2012
Opening of the show 'Journey to the West'
The show Journey the West opened to loud applause and much enthusiasm. Among the artists presenting their work at the exhibition are: Aki Yahata, Hiroharu Mori, Satoshi Hashimoto, Meiro Koizumi, Yuken Teruya and Aki Sasamoto.
Aki Yahata's work expressed the power of human emotion and contact that transcends the mainstream idea of communication through the spoken or written word. The artist's video work was about a blind man and a hearing impaired one engaged in finding ways to communicate with each other.
People jostled to watch the performance art piece, Cetrifugal March realised by Aki Sasamoto. The performance was about death, its significance in different cultural context. The artist toyed with the ideam of objects and people and how the legacy of the dead is carried on with objects associated with them. The concept was both absurd and humorous.
Hiroharu Mori expressed his preoccupation with dead in Workshop of Death in which actors were asked to imagine their own deaths and were filmed while they "lived" their own death. The video work brings out the social causes and perceptions of death due to different causes.
The evening culminated in a meeting of Japanese and Indian cuisine with sushi, tandoori paneer and special Japanese tea served to all the art enthusiasts present at Lalit Kala Academy.
Aki Yahata's work expressed the power of human emotion and contact that transcends the mainstream idea of communication through the spoken or written word. The artist's video work was about a blind man and a hearing impaired one engaged in finding ways to communicate with each other.
People jostled to watch the performance art piece, Cetrifugal March realised by Aki Sasamoto. The performance was about death, its significance in different cultural context. The artist toyed with the ideam of objects and people and how the legacy of the dead is carried on with objects associated with them. The concept was both absurd and humorous.
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| Aki Sasamoto performing Centrifugal March |
Hiroharu Mori expressed his preoccupation with dead in Workshop of Death in which actors were asked to imagine their own deaths and were filmed while they "lived" their own death. The video work brings out the social causes and perceptions of death due to different causes.
The evening culminated in a meeting of Japanese and Indian cuisine with sushi, tandoori paneer and special Japanese tea served to all the art enthusiasts present at Lalit Kala Academy.
Folding is fun: Origami Workshops and Demostrations
Origami is the traditional Japanese art or technique of folding paper into forms of animals, plants, everyday items, and more. It is often done just for fun, but can also incorporate religious and ceremonial dimensions. In recent years, the artistic side of origami has been reassessed, giving rise to many exceptional works and new folding styles. Research is being done into the mathematics behind the geometric forms, as well.
In the coming days workshops will be conducted in different cities across India, in which three origami artists will teach the basics of folding to beginners and, at some venues, more advanced techniques to those at intermediate and advanced levels. Along with demonstrations, the artists will also introduce their own work and some relevant history.
Dates/Venues :
- January 21, 2012 (Oxford Bookstore, Kolkata) *Demonstration only
- January 25, 2012 (ABK-AOTS DOSOKAI,Tamilnadu Centre, Chennai)
- January 28, 2012 (Lotus Temple, New Delhi)*Registration is necessary to participate in the workshop
- Admission:
- Free
- Tel:
- 011-2644-2967 (The Japan Foundation, New Delhi)
Thursday 19 January 2012
Journey to the West: Under construction
By Manjari Kaul
As I entered the premises of the exhibition space of Lalit Kala Academy I could sense the air of a zen like concentration mishmashed with an heady zeal and contemplative action. The artists displaying their works as part of the exhibition, Journey to the West that opens on the 21st of January, 2012, were preparing to put up their work. They were sawing wood, etching text on the wall, in deep discussion with the curators and pontificating over the look of their work, looking at it from various angles. I was made acutely aware of the air I breathed- the refreshing air of a creative outflow.
My sense of enrapture and eagerness to see the final show is expressed though this photo essay:
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| Tangled wires dangle |
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| Looking for the perfect angle |
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| Tie your shoe-laces |
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| Engrossed in work...The forgotten flasks of coffee |
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| Tools and ladder |
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| If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail |
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| Waiting to be unrolled |
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| Paint splash |
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| Gateway to the "journey" |
Yoko Ono's Wish Tree
By Manjari KaulThe Wish Tree was inspired by Yoko Ono's childhood experience of visiting a temple in Japan where she would write a wish on a piece of paper and attach it to a tree branch. In this participatory art work she is inviting people to pen a wish and hang it from the tree. Yoko Ono has planted wish trees the world over. In Delhi, wish trees have been placed in various public places like schools, hospitals, art galleries and book stores. These wishes will be finally collected and sent to the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER in Iceland that hosts wishes of people around the world. The artist wishes a wish for peace and harmony through this simple and beautiful conceptual art work.
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| A wish for the earth |
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| Yoko Ono's wish for India |
Wednesday 18 January 2012
Omnilogue: Journey to the West
The Japan Foundation proudly presents Omnilogue, a series of three co-curated exhibitions of contemporary Japanese art that will take place in Perth, New Delhi and Singapore (under discussion)in 2011-2012. Each exhibition has a different curatorial theme and title, specific to its local, cultural contexts. The Omnilogue series, which aims to open up new possibilities of multi-directional discussions on cultural exchanges through contemporary art, will culminate in a publication featuring material on all theexhibitions.
The year 2012 also marks the 60th Anniversary of Japan-India Diplomatic relations. Following the historic signing of the Japan-India Peace Treaty in 1952, the two countries, celebrate 60 years of ever-strengthening bilateral relations with a view towards revitalising this friendship. In keeping with this spirit of nurturing empathetic cross-national ties, the Omnilogue exhibition, in New Delhi, titled, ‘Journey to the West’, explores the politics of culture, nationalism, friendship, otherness and the Asian imagination within the narratives of travel and dialogue occurring across different periods and locations.
As a curatorial exegesis, the show employs two historic trajectories to initiate a discursive practice surrounding contemporary Japanese art; one is an examination of the intellectual exchange that transpired between the Japanese curator, Tenshin Okakura, and the Bengali poet and thinker, Rabindranath Tagore, as a cultural-historical lens to examine the complexities of nationalism across Asia in the early twentieth century. On the second trajectory, the show revisits a well-known, sixteenth century Chinese classic, Journey to the West, which is based on a real account of a Buddhist monk Xuanzang’s pilgrimage to ‘Tenjiku’ (literally meaning ‘the center of heaven’) in India, in search for enlightenment.
Monday 16 January 2012
A Review of 'Looking In & Out'
By Manjari Kaul
The play, Looking In & Out is based on the story, In a Grove, by Japanese writer, Ryunosuke Akutagawa. This story is about a man and a woman who are attacked by bandits in a grove, and who eventually come to different conclusions about what happened, based on their perspectives. The play witnesses a merger of theatrical styles and media. Using minimum spoken text traditional and contemporary, Indian and Japanese styles, the play uses the actor's body as a sign to be interpreted. In this adaptation of In a Grove a detective sets off on a day when it is raining torrentially , to investigate the case of a murder and rape of a woman. Unfazed by the violence of the case, he orders a mutton seekh kabab at the crime site. He encounters different tellings of the same tale that reveal the workings of sexual jealousy and violence in gender relations. The play rejects the beaten path of linear narrative and a singular style of execution within one play. Juxtaposed with the ramblings of the detective are highly stylized movements performed by the other actors who depict the power dynamics of heterosexual man-woman relations. The actors are not assigned particular characters in the play, instead they carry fluid identities. The play explores, in this way, the feminine in men and the masculine within women.
In the end, the order of the seekh kabab stands cancelled as the delivery boy is unable to make it. With even slighter degree of disappointment as compared to the cancelled order, the detective shuts the case of the murdered lady. The case yet unsolved, screams of hundreds of neglected cases of violence against women. Looking In & Out brings to light brutality against women's bodies and psyches and a certain notion of beauty that they must fit into.-Manjari Kaul
The Cast and Crew of Looking In & Out
Directors: Madoka Okada, Savita Rani
Group: Kaden Theatre Art Company
Language: Japanese, English, Hindi
Cast: Madoka Okade, Kotoe Tomita, Takako Abe, Savita Rani, Sujith Shanker
Lighting: Sahoko Oshima
Music: Toshiyuki Ochiai
Sound Design: Vipin Bhardwaj
Media Artist: Amitesh Grover
Space Design: Firos Khan
Co-ordinator: Nihal Kardam
Images Courtesy Kaden Theatre Art Company
Silent Serenation: A Review of 'The Water Station'
By Manjari Kaul
The Water Station, a play performed by the group, Theatre Roots & Wings, Kerala is commissioned by The Japan Foundation, was performed on the 14th of January 2012 at Bharat Rang Mahotsav, organized by National School of Drama, New Delhi.
The play info brochure reads: 'The Water Station is a two-hour, wordless performance. Walking through a barren landscape, eighteen travellers stop by at a dripping water faucet. They drink, soak, meet, love, fight, weep, separate and in the end, leave, while a man living in junk pile observes their action from above. Abounding in images of fragmentation and decay, the play depicts the decline and fall of human civilization. The play is about loneliness, the need for sustenance and the fragility of love.'
The travellers etch out their “being” as they perform in slow motion, in silence (apart from the constant trickle of the tap and a few musical interjections). The absence of dialogue and slowness of the actors' movement triggers off the imagination of the audience. Every moment is stretched out to bring to the audience's notice, the weight of time that one often attempts to fill up with the illusion of love, happiness and significance. 
All the travellers who pass by try to create their own relationship with the water faucet in attempts to define or shrug off their identities. Each of them plays out as if a stage of human life. It opens with the girl in a frock carrying a satchel who drinks water and then watches the two middle aged men kiss as they fight for the water; followed by a woman with a parasol; then enters a couple carrying a pram filled with junk who's urgent lovemaking is interrupted by an old woman who dies after quenching her thirst; a family of travellers experience a deeply stirring moment in which makes them let out a silent scream; a man and woman who bathe at the tap and attempt to fill the void in their beings with an embrace, end up in the woman experiencing a violation which is stifled by the man; a man with a huge load brushes his teeth at the tap to the rhythm of arabesque music that stops abruptly. In a rare moment of brightness on a dimly lit stage, the actors are struck by shock and grief. Their agony is immense but they must keep walking on.The pile of rubbish on stage symbolizes the decay of life. The pile comprises a walker, suitcase, table fan, bicycle wheel – a heap of human discards. The actors work out a mechanics of symmetry and rhythm- a tight rope walk performed immaculately in their journey that seems like still music.
The play ends where it began- with the little girl wearing the satchel. This draws our attention to the cyclical nature of life. The Water Station is a metaphor for life that plays out in a loop of events to a melancholic tune and the monotonous dripping of a water tap. The play challenges our notions of theatre, its role and connect with basic human existence.-Manjari Kaul
Cast and Crew of The Water Station:
Playwright: Shogo Ohta
Director: Shankar Venkateswaran
Cast: Moon Moon Singh, Ravindra Vijay, Sunil Bannur, Asha Ponikiewska, Anirudh Nair, Kavita Srinivasan, Yeshwanth Kuchabal, Scherazade Kaikobad, Smitha P., Kavita Srinivasan, Ishwari Bose-Bhattacharya, Mandakini Goswami, Sunil Bannur, Vinu Joseph, Sunitha, Siddharth Mishra, Shankar Venkateswaran.
Scenography and photography: Delijo Thekkekkara
Set Advice: Sujathan
Lights: Jose Koshy
Sound: Shankar Venkateswaran
Technical Direction: Prabhath Bhaskaran
Production: Anil Ramachandra, Anish Victor, Satoko Tsurudome
Images courtesy Delijo Thekkekkara
Tête-à-tête with Shankar Venkateswaran, the director of 'The Water Station'
By Manjari Kaul
The Water Station is written by Japanese playwright Shogo Ohta (1939-1978). He revolutionized contemporary Japanese theatre in the 1060s by combining traditional Japanese art forms. In 1978 he received Japan's prestigious Kishida Kunio Drama Award.
Shankar Venkateswaran is a graduate of Calicut University School of of Drama & Fine Arts with a specialization in theatre direction. He completed actor training at the Theatre Training and Research Programme, Singapore. In 2007 he founded Theatre Roots & Wings. He subsequently produced the plays- Quick Death, Sahyande Makan – The Elephant Project. The Water Station, the group's latest production is being done in collaboration with The Japan Foundation.
Manjari: Why did you choose to work on a Japanese script? Did you feel there was some cultural similarities that lent themselves to the Indian context?
Shankar Venkateswaran: There is nothing singularly Japanese about this Japanese text. I saw a production of this play and was struck by how this would be an ideal text to work on in India where we have so many languages. To do theatre with a multi-regional cast would be very powerful. In my production a person from Assam has been able to work with a person from Tamil Nadu in a collaboration that is seamless. It is not so because we are excluding words. Words are spoken in the play but they are within, not uttered in the form of sound.
Saturday 14 January 2012
“Imagine Peace”, says Yoko Ono
By Manjari Kaul
About the artist:
The Japanese avant garde artist, Yoko Ono is known to be a symbol of peace activities. Through her prolific career she has explored the mediums of performance art, film, music and poetry. In 2009 she received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Biennale. In July 2011, she was honoured with the prestigious 8th Hiroshima Art Prize for her dedicated peace activism.
Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo in 1933 and moved to New York in 1953. By the late 50s she had become part of the city vibrant avant garde activities. Among her landmark works is Cut Piece, performed in Kyoto and Tokyo in 1964, in which she invited the audience to cut pieces of her clothing till it was reduced to shreds. In 1969, together with John Lennon she realized Bed-In and the worldwide War is Over (if you want it) campaign for peace.
The artist about her trip to India:
At a press conference in Delhi she said that she wishes to be inspired by “the great land” that India is. She sees art as a conveyor of the message of peace that she wants to give out to the world.
She believes that we're headed towards doomsday unless we harness the nurturing instinct of women. The regenerative quality of humans must be preserved if we wish to prevent our race from being wiped out. Yoko Ono lamented the fact that the art world continues to be male dominated in the West and was happy to meet several women from the Indian art world. She thinks that the peace project and movement to empower women go hand in hand.
About her performance art work titled To India With Love, slated to be performed on the 15th of January, she said that the audience will create the art work with her by their active participation or may be with mere silence. “That one hour of the performance will never happen again even if I perform the piece again for the very same audience again because the lives of the audience members would have changed. They wouldn't be the same people. That's how our lives are. Fleeting,” said the artist.
The Public Art Projects on Display in India:
Her first ever exhibition being held in India is titled Our Beautiful Daughters. The public art projects being co organized by Vadhera Art Gallery and The Japan Foundation are spread across schools, hospitals, museums and book stores. Her work titled Wish Tree was inspired by her childhood experience of visiting a temple in Japan where she would write a wish on a piece of paper and attach it to a tree branch. These wishes will be collected and finally sent to Iceland that hosts the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER.
Using advertising as a medium, on Vinyl banners John Lennon (who was married to Yoko Ono then) launched the iconic anti war campaign WAR IS OVER (if you want it) across the world. For India, Yoko Ono has chosen the messages SMILE, TOUCH, DREAM and OUR BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTERS to be placed in the public domain. Further, postcards containing poems from her book Grapefruit (1964) are placed in book stores and coffee shops to invite public participation in her work.
Yoko Ono's artwork can be viewed at the following venues:
Our Beautiful Daughters
@ D-178 Okhla Phase 1, New Delhi*
The Seeds
@ D-53 Defence Colony, New Delhi*
Performance: To India With Love
15th January, 2012 | 7.30
Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi
*13th January to 10th March, 2012
Thursday 12 January 2012
Introspecting the Interior and the Exterior of Performance
Manjari Kaul from Cine Darbaar, in conversation with the directors (Madoka Okada and Savita Rani) and the cast (Takako Abe and Sujith Shanker) of Looking In and Out.
The play, Looking In & Out is based on the story, In a Grove, by Japanese writer, Ryunosuke Akutagawa. This story is about a man and a woman who are attacked by bandits in a grove, and who eventually come to different conclusions about what happened, based on their perspectives. The complexities of the plot reflect the parallel complexities of different gender identities in today’s world.
This production, fuses contemporary with traditional styles, Indian cultures with Japanese. It is an improvisational performance and relies minimally on text.
Cine Darbaar: 60 years of India Japan Peace treaty. Do you see your selves as cultural ambassadors of your country?
Madoka Okada: For me it's not about 60 years of the two States coming together in an agreement. I am an artist form Japan and I am collaborating with an Indian (Savita Rani, the co director of the play) who is working in the field of contemporary performance. It's the amalgamation of two different stand points that matters.
Savita Rani: The celebration of the India-Japan ties is what has given us the opportunity for this cultural exchange. This chance to exchange ideas with Madoka Okada and his team has been enriching. These differences of culture when they interact with each result in a completely new product.
Sujith Shanker: This is not the first of India-Japan interactions. We have moved beyond looking at India and Japan as possessing a fixed identity. Specially in India there are so many different cultures. We cannot represent a singular identity that would apply to all of India. We are interacting and discussing each other's experiences as individuals.
Takako Abe: I see this as an individual journey. I am curious about what Savita, Madoka or Sujith think rather than think that a person thinks the way she does because she is Japanese. The fact we belong to different cultures are a part of the differences we embody as individuals, not the whole.
CD: Please tell me about Looking In & Out, its making and what it means to you as an individual.
SR: I have personally been very interested in the female body. Speech has its limits. Some things exceed the limits of speech and have a violent affect on my body and mind. When I started working on this project I wanted to explore the everyday violence on a woman's body. Thousands of years have passed but the way the female body is looked at remains the same. The well sculpted body of Mallika Sherawat is compared to the bottle of a cold drink. Where have we progressed in this globalized “developed” world? The check on the female body remains. If a woman protests with violently she's labelled “ feminist” as a term of abuse. For me this project is a looking into myself and out again in a process rather than a production.
MO: My approach to the subject is from what I am, a philosophical point of view. There is a woman in every person. It is that aspect that I am exploring.
SS: When Savita spoke to me about her idea about women and popular culture I thought I would approach it form the point of view of looking at hierarchies in masculinity. We are not just looking at act of physical violence but violence of the through cliché images and stereotypes that force us to act in a certain way to be accepted. We are trying to create a theatrical intervention to express this and not convey things through simple sloganeering.
TA: As compared to India the amount of stress on women's bodies are made invisible in Japan. This has been a process of self exploration for me.
CD: Does the language barrier cause an impediment or does it give other additional dimensions to your process of creating a collaborative production.
MO: Sometimes the language difference is a problem and at other times it helps in creating something good. As theatre people we have the ability to move and understand each other in ways other than language. Body language is not a universal code either. In some cultures nodding sideways is a way of showing acceptance. But there are ways in which a person mood, acceptance or denial can be made out. One of them is through the eyes.
SR: It is not so difficult to communicate in spite of the language difference. We are constantly trying to find new ways of communication. Even communication through words in a common language can be lost in translation. The words I speak may not have the same association and significance for you as hey do for me.
SS: There is no problem. Even in an audience there exists mutiliguality. The reality in India is that we speak one language at home, one in the autorickshaw and another at office or school. In theatre we engage with multilinguality even gibberish. We are like a harmony, each one plays their different notes but to the audience it seems like a melodious tune.
TA: We communicate face to face, body to body so language is no barrier. It creates an opportunity for creative improvisations as for me a word shouted out in Hindi is a sound and I react to it as that, lending it my own meaning through my performance.
CD: In conclusion, what do you wish to convey to your audience through this play?
MO: We wish to involve the audience in our discussion of the issue and say that what is your problem is my problem, is our problem.
-Manjari Kaul
The play, Looking In & Out will be performed at the National School of Drama, New Delhi on the 15th of January, 2012.
For the same interview published in The Hindu check out http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/article2818448.ece#.TxrzI0WpmEQ.gmail
For the same interview published in The Hindu check out http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/article2818448.ece#.TxrzI0WpmEQ.gmail
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