Dramaturgical connections: Final Round

So the final step for our journey so far…

In order to start writing the final round, I started by not only watching the assignment videos repeatedly, but also to read the blog and the dramaturgical connections that have developed thus far. From there I have picked up some themes which have served as keywords for me and based on them I have come up with this current idea.

The keywords that I have gathered are – Racial politics, Gender, Cross-dressing, Body, Commerce, Hindi Cinema (Bollywood), political cabaret (If I am missing any please do add). The concepts that we developed based on our research and the assignments created are – suspense and surprise, hiding and revealing, costume and makeup. So bringing together all these ideas and collating the images that we have generated, here is my final round of dramaturgical connections.

The opening I see as a collection of stills/photographs of objects that we have appeared in the assignment videos, like matchstick, cork, bar stool, coins, necklace, saree, hat, tie, shoes, and etc. (if there are other things we can think of to add to this list, please do). All these images, which seem to be mismatched, come one after the other like a flipbook and end on an image of a pair of eyes. From here we see a series of eyes appearing on the screen, morphing one into the other. These then finally end on Shyamala’s eye and we see khol appearing on it. Then another sequence begins, which is like a stop motion video of different body parts being dressed up. This leads to the make-up sequence that was proposed in the last dramaturgical connections.

Here we however do not see any masculine clothing appear on anyone’s body. When Cynthia works on her section of dressing up, she could focus on a more on wearing a courtesan/tawaf like costume and jewellery. Everyone else could work with props and costumes which reflect more of the costumes from cabaret artistique, its bollywood version and belly dancing like costumes and improvisations of it, which got included in cabaret performances. So ostrich feathers, naqabs, ornaments for the head and hair, gloves, fish net stockings etc. could be surely used. Here we could bring in the split screen ideas that we had from dramaturgical connections from round 1 and work with lights focused on different body parts and then the formation of a singular dancing body(s) and individual dance sections.

I feel the last performance in this section could be Sandra’s as her performance could lead to her saree getting stuck somewhere and be stretched out to form a screen. From behind the animal print screen, clothes could be thrown out to indicate the performance of a striptease. Only the shadow/silhouette of the performer should be visible from behind the sheerness of the saree. A pile of clothes could collect and the last one to come out could be the bra. This might lead to the camera being turned to the sari screen and the viewers expecting a naked female body to appear. But instead we see 3 maybe 4(depending on the number of participants) figures appearing from behind the screen wearing men’s clothes. Here we have a split screen again and we see all the performers wearing men’s suits and appear on screen. Each suit is different from the other, one is like what Cynthia was wearing, the second like the one Shyamala had – like Victor and Victoria and Sandra comes out wearing a third. Their faces however are all hidden. Either a hat or a scarf covers them. A common choreography could be worked out so that everyone can perform one movement phrase in unison and the real their faces. Here, each performer reveals something. Cynthia could reveal her have the half black face, Shyamala her moustaches and Sandra could unbutton her shirt and reveal a bra. But this has to lead somewhere, so Cythia’s section could lead into the choreography phrase she has already created, Shyamala’s could also lead to the phrase she has made in the last assignment and Sandra could create a new phrase.

I don’t have a concluding visual yet, buy like how Shyamala drops a coin at the end, so maybe each performer could drop an object that comments on the aspect of cabaret that they have dealt with.