Projects > PYAARE 2020-JI

PYAARE 2020-JI

about

Theatre is quick, when you are inside a shared space, a witness to its liveness. But theatre takes time to make. Theatre, in that sense, is slow.

Besides, making theatre in the pandemic felt like an impossibility: logistically and in spirit. So as a response to the very strange experiences of the year — lockdown isolation, spending inordinate amounts of time with oneself and one’s family — I started to write love poems, or what seemed like love poems anyway. Part-dialogic, part-performative, sometimes bi-lingual and categorically unliterary, The Pyaare Poems evolved.

Based on these poems, Pyaare 2020-ji is a performance hoping to simulate the liveness of theatre, but quite certainly failing. It is an attempt to share in our collective experience of this year together the tiny boxes of our computer screens. Pyaare Audience-ji, come. Let’s be with each other for a little while

Pyaare 2020 – Ji is a part of My story | Your story | Our story curated by Anmol Vellani.

Artists

Deepika Arwind is a playwright, director and performer, who has worked in the theatre for the last 14 years. She runs The Lost Post Initiative, theatre and performing arts collective that works collaboratively with diverse artists, largely around gender and women on stage. Her work has been presented in many parts of the world including Germany, Austria, USA, France, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Singapore and all over India. She has been nominated for — and won — several awards, and fellowships, for her work. Her current touring productions nationally,  internationally (and now digitally) are No Rest in the Kingdom (produced by Sandbox Collective) and i am not here (supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore). She is the author of Sarayu, published by Le Cosmographe Éditions, France, in 2018.

Upcoming: i am not here at the Singapore Fringe January 2021, artist-in residence at PACT Zollverein in 2021, Phantasmagoria (translated into German) for Teamtheater’s GLOBAL Festival, Munich, 2021.

CREDITS

Written and performed by Deepika Arwind 
Produced by Medha Agrawal and Debosmita Dam 
Sound design by Nikhil Nagaraj 
Lighting design by Niranjan Gokhale
Special Appearance by Noah Voelker
Voice Overs by Vivek Madan & Medha Agrawal
Photography by Aparna Nori