Report on ARABIAN NIGHT- Presented by Zuleikha Chaudhari and Performers at Work

By Roland Schimmelpfennig
Presented by Zuleikha Chaudhari and Performers at Work

Direction and Design: Zuleikha Chaudhari : Translation: Rajesh Tailang physical preparation and Instruction - Rashid Ansari Cast: Manish Choudhari, Mandakini Goswami, Jitender Kumar, Supriya Shukla, Sujith Shankar.

Venue KHOJ Studios

Funders: KHOJ International artists Association, Max Muller/ Bhavan

One of the most significant questions that come up when open tries to develop a critique for Zuleikha’s rendition of Arabian Nights by Roland Schimmelpfennig is to be able to locate the play in the programming structure of KHOJ. The last one-year has seen KHOJ concentrating and giving a lot of attention to Performance Art. KHOJ being an organization, which has its roots in experimental practices within fine Arts, one can contextulize its engagements with Performance art, as the discourse around performance has always claimed its origins from practices emerging from the avant-garde within visual arts. However, over the years KHOJ has very carefully chosen not to program around a generalized notion of Art, consciously choosing to program around practices in visual arts, considering it to be a much needed focus in its quest to challenge boundaries. Institutions and individuals, positioning themselves on the margins, often realize that ‘the edge’ often is an un-definable space and margins, and working with inter-cross disciplinary practices often lead the individual/institutions to cross disciplines in their own practices too.

When one sees a staging of an experimentavite play at the premises of KHOJ, one begins to question whether the agenda to explore boundaries from within the confines of visual arts has been expanded to include and support various ‘cutting edge practices’ across boundaries within the larger realm of artistic practice. However, Zuleikha Chaudhari renders the play more in the manner of an installation using the cast and set to transcend the descriptive category of theater. Therefore at the end of it one sees a theater artist, working in (essentially a ) visual arts space and both complimenting each other...helping each to transcend disciplinary frontiers.

The play as such (Performed on the 21 – 23 April, 2006) was an adaptation of Roland Schimmelpfennig’s Arabian Nights, a heavily loaded text greatly influensed by European readings of the oriental heat and sensuality, though Zuleikha’s rendition of the play subtantially subverts the Orientalist bias. The format of the script is centered on constructs of ‘laid down and available oriental woman’ who is there to be obtained by the ‘active mail’, provided the ‘HE’ goes through his assigned journeys, and encounters with ‘fantasy fate’.

The narrative revolves around five characters (two women, three men), a high-rise apartment building and the male gaze. Heat, water and brandy are the recurring motifs in this play about mystery, lust, love, agony, ecstasy and hallucinatory visions. However what really arrested me throughout my many viewings of Arabian Nights, is how the core narrative centers around an ancient story telling tradition about harems, jealousy, revenge, curse and redemption; yet attempts to contextualize it in a contemporary urban setting...not letting go of the ‘oriental fantasy’ that informs and inspires its root narrative.

What also intruged me is when the essentially ‘male’ script is used and appropriated by a ‘female’ director how she handles the   male gaze and sexualization of the female body.  Zuleikha does a brilliant job in subverting the male gaze without changing the script...but by using entirely formal devices. The gaze is still a motif of sexual desire but is stripped off its sensuality. However, am still not able to pinpoint at what point does the subversion of the gaze happen...does Zuleikha ride on the element of ‘torture’ that the script in-builds and formally exaggerates it in a manner that disallows it to settle in, and combines other formal devices? or is it through a different take all-together? The voyeurism is subverted within the narrative by the manner in which adultery is punished...without any empathy to whether it is intentional or not...perceived or real...in this play breaking sexual barriers lead to death.

Certain uses of formal devices stand out in the play.... first thing that struck me that there was very little acting in the traditional sense of it. The play is more choreographed than directed (in the manner theater defines direction). The play begins with a sanitized all white setting.... and gradually unfolds into the white being disturbed by the grime and sand, which the actors pick up in the course of the performance. This parallels the loss of sanity and the increase in the ‘muck’ that unfolds in the lives of the characters.   

Like all Zuleikha’s plays... this work is hyper pitched and seeks to maintain a (nearly) one and a half hour crescendo. The result is there is very little room for modulations, resulting in the ‘high’ tending to ‘plateau’ and become an extended flat. This necessarily put a lot of onus of modulation on the acting...requiring them to be high energy throughout...but still be very careful about how they pitch. As it is as an actor it must have been very difficult to employ the traditional modes of maintaining cues as Zuleikha consciously broke the ‘traditional’ links between actions and words...having the audience sitting so close to them. One must admit they did a brilliant job.