Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis
Jagriti Theatre presents Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis in association with Goethe-Institut Bangalore and Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts. The celebrated and macabre story of Gregor Samsa, who wakes up one morning as an insect, made an impression on director Rebecca Spurgeon. She says, “Anyone who has studied the text knows that the iconic first line of the story stays with you forever. I’ve always wanted to stage it and for the past one year, I’ve been working on it.” Rebecca has changed the sequence of events and has also borrowed from Kafka’s letters to his father as Metamorphosis is said to have autobiographical elements. She knew the adaptation would be a very physical one as it is not an easy story to bring to the stage due to the lack of dialogues. Hence, the performance is movement-oriented. The movements will be performed by dancers from the Attakkalari Centre. The set of the play has been designed by artist-in-residence at the Goethe Institut’s BangaloREsidency program, Eduardo da Conceição, a Berlin-based, Portuguese architect and is inspired by the segments of the body of an insect with straight lines and angles.
Rs. 400. Till January 21. At Jagriti Theatre, Whitefield
Lady Anandi
How much change could the arts bring in the mindset of people, particularly concerning women? Do the arts really liberate women? Questions such as these and other abstract ideas are what Lady Anandi is about. A solo performance by Anuja Ghosalkar, Lady Anandi is also an archival piece on one of India’s respected theatre artistes from the late 19th century, Madhavrao Tipnis. Anuja, who is the great-granddaughter of the late Tipnis, says this idea of questioning women’s status in theatre came about when she was working with a German dramaturge who was researching Virginia Wolf’s text, A Room of One’s Own. “Virginia asks, if Shakespeare had a sister would she be allowed to do theatre? Even today, very little has changed, in terms of what we do to women performers,” says Anuja. Interestingly, Tipnis was most well-known as a female impersonator in the late 19th century Marathi theatre. In Lady Anandi, a non-linear narrative, Anuja explores the idea of talking to the ghost of her great-grandfather. “I constructed the play, saying, here are two actors — one is my great grandfather and the other is me. These two actors are separated by a century. While he plays a convincing lady on stage, a 100 years later, I am struggling to be a woman on stage,” she offers.
Rs. 200. January 13, 7 pm. Max Mueller Bhavan