The Thorn, the Leaf, and the Butterfly (Bootleg)

Footage from The Thorn, the Leaf, and the Butterfly as performed at Bootleg Dance Festival on Mar 5, 2011.

password "Uma"

brainstorm: some imagined courtesan scenes

While in Delhi together to perform for the IGNITE festival, Sandra and I had some late night addas where we brainstormed ideas for some scenes to add to our show. Here are some of them:  

BEHIND THE SCENES (a women only space): What happens when the courtesans aren't performing? Stage a behind-the-scenes conversation between the courtesans with some fun characters - a courtesan who actually doesn’t like sex, a nymphomaniac, a lesbian couple. Textually, this scene could incorporate women’s songs (there may be material in The Prostitute in 19th Cent. Bengal or the Oldenberg article). The graphic padam with the "aunt" who turns out to be Muvva Gopala from When God is a Customer might work too (see below). As for staging ideas: are we all offstage and you just hear us? Is it on video because we need 4 characters, but not all of us will be able to perform together live? Do we do another iteration of the SKYPE call but dressed up and in character (the lesbian couple could be in the same frame...)?  

LEARNING THE TRADE: What if we have a scene with a senior courtesan teaching a greenhorn (who’s really a lesbian)? The greenhorn can’t do it initially; the senior courtesan gives up; the lesbian courtesan volunteers to try to teach her, and suddenly it becomes very viscerally erotic.  

CYBER COURTESAN PHONE CENTER: One of us would sit at a desk at the computer, doing abhinaya into the webcam. The character would be very made up from torso up (perhaps it appears as if you’re naked?), but from the waist down, very frumpy in sweatpants. We see a live feed of the courtesan’s face doing abhinaya on the back wall. At the same time we see the real live body, and the lower body is doing something very mundane and non-sexual, like turning the pages of a newspaper with one's toes. We could have a series where the rest of us are doing chores, phone calls come in (we ask, "Hey, who’s made up?"), and then each goes to a different computer and our image pops up on the back wall. See Kate Rigg’s “Phone Sex” music as reference.

A Young Woman to a Friend (Ksetrayya)

Those women, they deceived me.

They told me he was a woman,

and now my heart is troubled

by what he did.

First I thought

she was my aunt and uncle's daughter,

so I bow to her, and she blesses me:

"You'll get married soon,

don't be bashful.  I will bring you

the man of your heart."

"Those firm little breasts of yours

will soon

grow round and full," she says.

And she fondles them

and scratches them

with the edge of her nail.

"Come eat with me," she says,

as she holds me close

and feeds me as at a wedding.

Those women, they told me he was a woman!

Then she announces:

"My husband is not in town.

Come home with me."

So I go and sleep in her bed.

After a while she says,

"I'm bored.  Let's play

a kissing game, shall we?

Too bad we're both women."

Then, as she sees me falling asleep,

off my guard,

she tries some

strange things on me.

Those women, they told me he was a woman!

She says, "I can't sleep.

Let's do what men do."

Thinking 'she' was a woman,

I get on top of him.

Then he doesn't let go:

he holds me so tight

he loses himself in me.

Wicked as ever, he declares:

"I am your Muvva Gopala!"

And he touches me expertly

and makes love to me.

Those women, they told me he was a woman!

-Ksettraya (Telugu), from When God is a Customer

Uma's padam, or Rewriting Ksettraya

In August 2010, Shyamala first posted her research with AWAZ, the South Asian Network's support group for survivors of domestic violence.  In her blog posting she detailed her interview with Uma who had spent over 30 years in an abusive marriage.  One poignant episode describes Uma's refusal to tell her husband that she loves him when he comes home, drunk, and demands that she profess her love.  This episode sparked the idea of rewriting a Ksettraya padam whose pallavi (refrain) is "I didn't say a word," capitalizing on the ambiguity of a woman's silence, which can be both passivity and resistance.  Here is a raw first attempt at the rewrite:

A Woman to Her Friend

Friend, I didn’t say a word.

It would be a shame

if others were to hear.

He came with a glisten of mascara

still on his lips.

When I said it hurt me,

he made a scene.

When my friends asked me

what had happened,

I laughed it off,

covered it up.

I didn’t say a word

He wasn’t afraid to come home

with the red lac from her feet

on his forehead.

Still, he had the nerve

to ask for a hug.

I was furious

but, hiding it,

I protested gently.

I said it wasn’t right.

He raised his voice and,

fearing where it might lead,

I gave in.

As in the saying

about the thorn and the banana leaf,

it’s always the leaf that gets torn.

I didn’t say a word

Friend, he came here

with her betel juice

staining his neck

breath sweet with whiskey heaviness

and asked me for a kiss.

Tell me how much you love me,

he said, smiling uncontrollably,

tell me how much.

I didn’t say a word.

Friend, he made love to me

the same as ever,

the thorn carelessly shredding the leaf,

the monsoon rain battering the earth.

And as I lay there unmoving,

the peacocks shrieking wildly

I didn’t say a word

-Ksetrayya, rewritten by Cynthia Ling Lee

Here is the original padam as reference:

A Woman to Her Friend

Friend, I didn’t say a word.
It would be a shame
if others were to hear.

He came with a glisten of mascara
still on his lips.
When I said it hurt me,
he made a scene.

When my friends asked me
what had happened,
I laughed it off,
covered it up.


I didn’t say a word


He wasn’t afraid to come home
with the red lac from her feet
on his forehead.
Still, he had the nerve
to ask for a hug.

I was furious
but, hiding it,
I protested gently.
I said it wasn’t right.
He raised his voice and,
fearing where it might lead,
I gave in.

As in the saying
about the thorn and the banana leaf,
it’s always the leaf that gets torn. 


I didn’t say a word

Friend, he came here
with her betel juice
staining his neck
yet asked me for a kiss.
It seemed improper
to hurt a man
who had come to me.

But when he made love to me
as well as ever,
I felt obliged, and 


I didn’t say a word


-Ksetrayya, from When God is a Customer, eds. and trans. A.K. Ramanujan, Velcheru Narayana Rao, and David Schulman.

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS:

(1) How might you imagine performing or otherwise staging this poem?

(2) How do you see this poem in relation to My Silent Cry, the choreography Shyamala created based on Uma's story?  Would it layer on top?  Immediately precede or follow the dance?  Go somewhere else altogether in the show, yet link to the story?

(3) Any feedback on the writing?

(4) Mythili Prakash once performed Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman" in classical Bharatanatyam abhinaya, with the American poem translated into a South Indian language and sung Carnatic style.  I am  curious whether a similar strategy of "reverse" or "hidden" translation might be interesting here.  Thoughts? 

Sandra's Response to August 2009 Assignment

The study focused on the following parts of two different stanzas of the poem: A Woman to Her Lover : Annamaya: maruninagari danda:

"Don’t you know the house?
The love gods marketplace of passions,...
Its gates are signed by the love god ..."

The main image I created the movement on was an abstract description of the gates- tracing the details, feeling its texture, following the height and width, etc. It was overlaid with the emotional content of a woman reflecting the "marketplace of passions" from the threshold of the gate.

Cynthia's Response to August Assignment: hidden tamarind

I created a sitting abhinaya piece, called "hidden tamarind," in response to the first two stanzas of the Annamaya padam.

password "cynthiabai"

Here are notes on my internal dialogue while performing the study: