The silence of screams: Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry unfolds memory and contemporary with ‘Trunk Tales’

By Sukant Deepak

New March 24 (SocialNews.XYZ) The straight sharp lines of the set. Mirrors. Water. The actor gets set to dive into himself for a revelation. Not one grand tragedy, but a series of tiny explosions... here contemporary stories buried everyday are taken out from the trunk, only to be forgotten again. There is no respite, but then, the director never promised any.

Theatre director Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry's latest production 'Trunk Tales' takes on multiple themes head-on with a solo performance by actor Vansh Bhardwaj. Without the comfort of a bound script, the derived production lays bare the starkness of politics of water, food, body and gender. What happens in a peculiar anti-poetry mode on stage oscillate violently, almost seductively, but then, the play has been conceived in the time of war crudely painted in the landscape of normalcy.

Supported by the Goethe-Institut and Ranga Shankara, the one-hour production's reach never exceeds its grasp -- cutting edge, precise, delicate and heavy -- all at the same time.

Chowdhry is clear that it is tough to define how an idea gets lodged, and what she does to pull it out and stitch it on the stage.

"I think there was something about water and it started from that moment. I started collecting material. It was a very organic development. Some notes take the light while others stay quiet in the wings. I think it started off with a series of improvisations, but that is not a play, just a series of processes that define the creation of the performance language. It has a lot to do with aesthetics and storytelling and the actor's body. I work a lot with memory, and the politics of food that I had in my house came alive. Now the key is how do you make everything cohesive when diverse memories start dancing in front of you. You stitch it up and make it into something. It's part of the whole journey that you take to create a performance. There is constant chiselling," says Chowdhry, recipient of the Padma Shri and Sangeet Natak Akademi honours, whose latest play will soon travel to different parts in the country.

With the many tales in the play that inter-wine yet never overpower each other, the director feels that when one uses a word over and over again, it loses its meaning.

"Thus, I wanted to touch different ideas, let the audience 'see' them... it was important that everything was kept simple and nothing grand. That is the way my imagination takes me."

For those following the work of this director, the shift from grand productions --- 'Kitchen Katha', 'Yerma', 'Nagmandla', 'Naked Voices' to her last one 'Black Box' and now 'Trunk Tales' does not escape easily. She says it is combination of circumstances, funding, also one's own relationship with the times.

"'Ghum Hai' had an elaborate cast, musicians... and it is not that I do not want to do such plays. Funding has not been made available for many years and my group has survived on the grant given by the Ministry of Culture. I have been talking it for a long time. Now we get small grants from private institutions and are trying to stay afloat with them," says this Chandigarh-based director who has been running 'The Company' since 1983.

While certain theatre groups, especially in Mumbai enjoy patronage from major industrial houses, Chowdhry feels she is completely irrelevant in that space.

"What are you talking about? People say my work is very dark. Frankly, I do not know what they mean by comedy. I would rather work with the dimensions of life that actually concern me, which positions me in terms of the consciousness and the understanding of the world in which I live. I have done grand productions like 'Nagamandala' and 'Naked Voices' for institutions, after all only a major institution has the kind of money that allows it. But sadly, they are not interested anymore."

The director, whose productions have been invited to major theatre festivals across the world, including the UK, Japan and Germany is seldom invited to show her work in her hometown of Chandigarh, a place where many mediocre theatre directors tend to bring all the elements of street theatre to the stage ensuring a shouting match.

"Yes, I do not get any support from the city. You can get a Padma award, but still people here do not respond. There is this conspiracy of silence. Even artists do not come to attend my shows when they are held in my private auditorium. In fact, 'Trunk Tales' was to be performed in Chandigarh. It was so insulting that three days before the show, I was being told on a WhatsApp text that it is not happening. Do I say more?"

Source: IANS