Kali Theatre Announces INTERNATIONAL PLAYS By Deepika Arwind, Atiha Sen Gupta, Bettina Gracias, and More
Performances run from 28 March to 1 April 2023 at Tara Theatre.
By: Stephi Wild Mar. 08, 2023
Kali Theatre presents INTERNATIONAL PLAYS - a first look at five cutting-edge new plays with thought-provoking, global themes. During a week of staged script-in-hand performances, four UK playwrights and a writer from India explore what it means to be part of a wider landscape from the unique perspective of female and non-binary writers with a South Asian background. The writers explore urgent and contemporary stories and issues - from cancel culture, fake news, and imminent climate refugee crises, to queer identity explored through a teenage Tamil lens, and Sikh riots in the Punjab.
Identifying exciting writers and ideas, Kali teamed its playwrights up with established directors and dramaturgs to support the development of their plays over a nine-month period, which included research, drafting, and workshops leading to these performances.
International Plays introduces writers and their plays to audiences and industry following the success of War Plays and Home Plays, Kali's previous seasons of script-in-hand performances. These biennial seasons (launched in 2018) have already led to the production of two featured plays - Homing Birds by Rukhsana Ahmad and Noor by Azma Dar- with three further plays scheduled for production including Phantasmagoria from these International Plays (details to be announced).
Helena Bell, Artistic Director, Kali Theatre: 'We are thrilled to be back with our third season of script-in-hand performances of exciting new plays, showcasing outstanding work by some of our favourite writers alongside the new talent of Gayathiri Kamalakanthan, who has come through Kali's Discovery Programme. This week gives us a chance to celebrate excellent plays at a crucial stage in their development; sharing them with potential programmers, colleagues and audiences whilst learning from their responses. I am blown away by the breadth of themes and ambition that these plays represent and am looking forward to seeing their journeys during International Plays week and beyond.'
INTERNATIONAL PLAYS:
GOLDILOCKS by Atiha Sen Gupta, directed by Helena Bell
An anonymous female from far away is seeking asylum. As she is grilled by guards about her reasons for coming here, she recounts key moments in her life with her mother, her sister, and the environment in which she grew up. An environment that has literally melted from under her feet. Having reached terra ferma, this climate refugee must make her case to stay - one wrong word, mistake or slip up could see her shipped back to where she came from. But is she just trading in one hostile environment for another?
PERIOD PARRRTY by Gayathiri Kamalakanthan, directed by Gitika Buttoo
Traditional Tamil period parties are a puberty ceremony for people assigned female at birth. The event is a demonstration of love, survival and community (post-genocide). But it can also be rooted in colonial binaries and queerphobia. The play asks how do we love beyond language and redraw the map created by colonisation? Period Parrrty is 14-year-old Sai's disruption of such a gendered puberty ritual and a reclamation of bodily autonomy that invites audiences to join the real party on stage.
PHANTASMAGORIA by Deepika Arwind, directed by Jo Tyabji
In the hours before a live debate a young student activist and the spokesperson for a ruling party, meet in a farmhouse for the first time. Pitched as adversaries - political, ideological, religious - and brought together by a journalist mutual friend, they sit in an anteroom of sorts... waiting. How will they meet? What will they say to each other outside the parameters of objective debate? Meanwhile, eerie happenings - creatures and shadows in the dark - haunt this waiting time. As a theatre of horror unfolds, the play examines how fear moves us, how it can be manufactured and manipulated, and manifest itself in real and violent ways.
Friday 31 March, 7pm
THE HOUSE OF HARBINDER KAUR by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, directed by Poonam Brah
1984 Punjab. A hot, sweaty summer. Unrest and terror on the streets. The Golden Temple is occupied by so-called Sikh militants and the Indian state is preparing to respond. Female farmer Harbinder Kaur rules over her three unmarried daughters with a rod of iron. When their father dies, the girls hope their mother will finally let life in. As the political situation worsens, the outside world seeps into Harbinder's house and her daughters' desires for love and truth trigger a shocking trail of destruction that changes their lives forever. This radical and entertaining re-imagining of the Lorca classic examines the roots of the rural crisis in India today and asks how a nation can ever make sense of its identity.
Saturday 1 April, 4.30pm
THE COCONUT HOUSE by Bettina Gracias, directed by Natasha Kathi-Chandra
A dark comedy set in Goa about the secrets people and houses hold and what happens when they are released. The Portuguese Inquisition of the past, the rave culture of the present, and the hopes for the future are interwoven through the characters and the house itself as the land and its people reclaim themselves.
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