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Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry
When will anyone want to be in a dark room full of strangers again, I ask myself over and over again. Theatres are shut, time seems frozen and tomorrow is a distant dream. I recall the story of Dalai Lama being asked if he would like to be born again despite the fact that the world will not get better. He answered: “If I could be useful, then I would like to be born again.”
Maya Krishna Rao’s ‘Paru’ is a ‘nonsensical take’ on the news around Covid
In violent times, the notion of usefulness is radical. Can art be useful? Art sometimes, I feel, is an extravagant and exquisite waste of time and a world complete by itself. Yet, the irony is that art is useful in a deep and enduring way. Poet Joseph Brondsky describes art as the oxygen that might arrive when the last breath has been expended.
2020, the year of resilience in theatre: Practitioners and institutions rose to the challenges of an unprecedented crisis The pandemic presented endless opportunities for theatrewallahs to rally together as a networked community beyond the usual barriers of geography or language. Vikram Phukan December 24, 2020 09:32:34 IST Representational image via Facebook/Drama School of Mumbai
For the theatre community, the last month of the year is usually a time for winding down, taking stock, balancing the books (sparse as they might be), and carefully putting away the implements of a year-long engagement with the practice. Then again, in this uncommon year, that was perhaps all one could do over months of uncertainties and speculation, spent milling in the uncanny limbo of an entire trade brought to a grinding halt by a super-spreading virus.
This week, experience culture with an edge at the Serendipity Arts Virtual festival
Away from Goa’s happening beaches, the fun for a few days in December takes place on a 1.8-km stretch along river Mandovi that erupts with paintings, music, theatre, graffiti, dance, cooking and aesthetic comments on social politics, among others. Updated: December 21, 2020 11:14:38 am
Sometimes, art rubs power the wrong way. Last year, four members of the music band, Dastaan Live, were arrested for allegedly “performing songs that insult the Hindu religion”. (Photo: Serendipity Arts Festival)
Started in 2016, the Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF) in Panaji, Goa, has grown into one of the largest multi-disciplinary arts initiatives in South Asia. Artists from across the world shed the pressures of political correctness or ticket sales to push the envelope as far as it can go.