Wednesday 26 December 2012

Sangam Poetry

I had no idea this kind of poetry existed. I am so glad I am living far away from familiar! I just saw a Bharatnatyam performance which was performed on a Sangam poem. The performance was not spectacular, there was some discord between the performer and the mridanga player, but the poem was nice. The performer compared it to Haiku, but I find it too literal to be compared to Haiku. Nevertheless it was very beautiful. And I found the poem! Or so I think:

My father gave me fatty fish to dry,
and I spread it on the wide seashore,
rested in the sweet shade of the punnai tree
and chased the birds that tried to steal it.
My friends and I hung a thāzhai fiber rope swing
from the tall gnāzhal tree and played
on the salty shores where the red crabs dig deep holes
and the eastern winds create sand dunes.
We did kuravai dances together,
played on the white waves,
and wore beautiful skirts
made from many flowers and fresh leaves.
We were slandered by the terrible
gossip-monger ladies in this town
because we played often on these shores.
Mother heard their harsh words
and has imposed restrictions on me,
afraid that my lover
will ride in his chariot with beautiful horses
on the moon like white beach sand to see me
at any time of the day or night.
What can I do now?    

Translated by Vaidehi




Please visit the sources:
http://sangampoemsfordances.wordpress.com/
http://sangampoemsinenglish.wordpress.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangam_literature
http://artsinsangamtamil.wordpress.com/

Sunday 2 December 2012

Second-Firstrush

The two day of workshops were splendid. They trained us with viewpoints exercises without telling us that we are doing so. They was a lot of working with lots of people, something I had not done in quite a while. I am so rusted. I have forgotten how to move or speak. But reaction! I like reacting.

All my years of training has curled up into a ball that now lives in my spine and leaks out in reactions.

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The scripts we read for cold reads were all small sketches. I did not know we were going to do a collection of sketches then.

Reading from a script with another person is a performance! I wish Aneliya and I had finally done that reading of Sure Thing in NUS.

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So I am in two sketches, one is an over the top Silly Job Interview. It is a "Monty Python." By an interesting coincidence, of the 10 or so unseen movie DVDs I have in my room (gifts), 2 are Monty Pythons! They are not unseen DVDs anymore. Monty Python is amazing. I can do that!

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Chocolate is an interesting sketch. I think Mrs.Colby is supposed to be fat. There are many hints for that in the script. There is another monologue sketch, My Dear Diet Diary, which is about a really fat woman, but again, we've no real fat actresses in the first rush team. No broad boned or slightly well covered ones either.

Using American scripts are interesting this way. Perhaps India cannot match America in supply of fat women. But neither can we in supplying enough fat actresses. When I think of it, the only big women who are seen in Indian movies, Hindi movies more precisely, are in small comic roles. Wake-Up Sid was interesting that way, there was a friend of Sid's who was big and that was just another detail of her character, not her definition.

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I am up again. I couldn't sleep till 12:30 am. I woke up at 2:30 for a while. And now I am finally up at 5:30. But it is different this time. I have stayed up late after every performance in my life. The rush of some hormone, enzyme, chemical, makes it all a big illusion. And keeps me awake wondering if it really happened.

But I feel great! This is why I do it. This is why it is worth all the hours of training, missing dinners, coming home late and short supply of sleep.

People liked it. And that is the least of it. I was myself again. Someone with more than one characters: comfortably stepping in and out of identities in front of a live audience! Structured and institutionalized lying and deceiving! (Don't I love lying and deceiving!) Living many lives. That is the fun and power of performance. All humans are many people at once, but no one does it better than actors. Ok, maybe politicians.