Queering Abhinaya - Assignment #3

This assignment is inspired and informed by a talk I went to given by Professor Gayatri Gopinath at UCLA on April 17th, 2014 as part of Professor Anurima Banerji and Sue-Ellen Case's course "Queer Performance and Politics." Gopinath used queer theory as a tool of analysis (not as a term of identity) to connect diasporic communities and indigenous peoples as part of the same colonial expansionist project that among other things, attempts to contain and police racialized bodies (often literally i.e. low income housing projects and residential schools were mentioned). Gopinath analyzed the work of visual artists Tracey Moffatt (Australian Aboriginal) and Sehar Shah (Pakistani US) to develop a strategy that was termed as a "queer pairing" in order to talk about braided histories and non-normative bodies. For this assignment: 1) Choose an indigenous artist (the artist identifies as indigenous) that works with any medium - photography, sculpture, movement, performance, film, sound, poetry etc. I am most familiar with indigenous communities in North America so First Nations, Native, Aboriginal. However, please invite into this assignment what indigenous might mean in relation to places you have lived - Germany, India, Taiwan, Hawaii or other places. I am interested in this idea of home - who used to call the places we now call home, home? 2) Including abhinaya, however you might define it for this assignment, create an artistic conversation with your chosen artist/one of their works. 3) Similar to the last assignment, work in pairs. Cynthia and Babli Shyamala and Meena Due May 30th. Feedback June 2.

Queering Abhinaya: Assignment 2.2

This is the updated version of my assignment 2.
The original was here: http://postnatyam.blogspot.com/2014/04/shyamalas-creative-response-2-queering.html

It has become a group project now with Cynthia and Meena working on the filming, Alison De La Cruz directing and Cynthia editing. Right now it is in front of a green screen background so that Adnan Hussain can add animation. 

This scene of Super Ruwaxi: Origins
is called "the Fed gets a new identity"
it takes place after Fedora boy gets turned into Fedora Girl as Super Ruwaxi discovers her gender bending power.

https://vimeo.com/99398161, password: lexie
 
Questions: 
 1. What interests you emotionally and/or physically?

2.  How would you as an audience member feel about this character (like, dislike, empathize with, scared of, be amused by etc...)?

3.  Anything else?

Nightmare -- queering abhinaya assignment 2.3

This is a mock-up of a scene from Super Ruwaxi: Origins where Ruwaxi's parents have a nightmare about Ruwaxi after seeing a "Most Wanted" TV alert about Super Ruwaxi.  In my head, this video would be playing while Ruwaxi would watch from the side, dimly lit as if in their bedroom doorway, seeing her sleeping parents have a bad dream about her.

password: yellow fever
This video is a mock-up, and I ideally would re-record the voices so that one (the father) is a male voice.  I also would have to find images that are in the public domain or that I otherwise have rights too.

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS
1. How does the video make you feel?
2. How is the music working for you?  Any particular feedback that I should give my composer?  Here is a link to the music without the voices: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qhibcyxqksvjbl4/The%20Nightmare%20v1-2%20%28Jagged%20Pulse%29.mp3
3. What parts of the visuals are working and not working for you?  Are the still images effective or would you rather they be video?
4. Is this worth pursuing further or should I trash the idea?
5. Other thoughts?

Cynthia - Queering Abhinaya Take 2.2

Shy, Alison and I are deep in Super Ruwaxi land, and we are in the middle of trying to figure out the different visual looks for the different worlds in the work.  These worlds include Ruwaxi's home, her school, the club, the world of her arch nemesis (Fedora Boy/Lexie Luthora), and Urvashi's mythological world.  In addition to the live feed projection and audience interaction that we already set up in the initial version of the work, we are also planning to collaborate with Adnan as an animator.  In addition to identifying different looks for the different worlds, one of our biggest challenges is that certain scenes have many more characters than we have performers for.  This is one such scene.

The following scene is set at Ruwaxi's school.  It takes place after an initial exposition on the Middle Kingdom (Ruwaxi's home), where we find out about her close friend, Nana.  It also takes place after Ruwaxi has accidentally transformed the sleazy Fedora Boy into a female-bodied person at the club.  Fedora Boy has transformed himself into Lexie Luthora and now works at the Gender Police.  Lexie has been assigned to go undercover at Ruwaxi's school to start a female-only program of internalized self-hatred, but she does not know that Ruwaxi is the person who transformed her into a woman.  This video uses mudras as hand puppets to embody multiple characters, which I (as Ruwaxi) would respond to as a live body.  For the moment, you hear Ruwaxi's lines included in the voice-over, but not my body responding to the hand puppets.  The narrator is also not embodied in this video.

password "pepper"
Feedback Questions:
(1)  Do you find that the hand puppets offer enough scope for a rich acting performance, particularly for the character Nana -- or does their mediatized and pre-recorded nature take away from the liveness of the acting and complexity of the relationships?
(2) Can you follow the scene, or do you get confused about who the characters are?  Do you need different voices and different people's hands to play the different characters?  Shall I give the different hands different outfits (nail polish, rings, etc.) or faces?  Initially I was going to concentrate more on the different characters' aharya abhinaya; I was also considering having individual fingers or pairs of fingers play a single character -- but these foci seemed to limit movement possibilities, so I focused on expression through movement for this study.
(3) Would you prefer that Shyamala play Lexie (as she will in other parts of the play), or do you prefer Lexie as a hand puppet?
(4) Do you like the visuals as they are (knowing that I would have to fix the second half so the hands do not overlap with each other), or would you prefer them to be mixed with animation?
(5) Other thoughts?

Meena - Queering Abhinaya - Assignment #2

Feedback Questions: 1. What do you get from this video? 2. There is a very slight attempt at a more classical abhinaya facial expression at 0:40. What do you think? Does it stand out from the rest? Should I exclude or include this style into the video? 3. Is there too much text? Do you need more breaks, pauses, spaces, less text, differently placed, music? 4. Anything else?

Cyn's Creative Response #2: Lexie Strikes in the Locker Room

I’ve been having some challenges doing this assignment, partially because our script for “Super Ruwaxi: Origins” is still shifting around quite a lot, and so I haven’t been sure whether it made sense to stage a scene that might get cut.  Thus I’ve decided to use the feedback process to help brainstorm visual looks or staging approaches for one of the scenes in the script, which takes place at school.  As you read, keep in mind that there are only two performers – Shy and myself – though there are multiple characters.

To give some context for this scene, it takes place at Ruwaxi’s elite prep school.  The group of popular girls at the school is called the Lipstick Brigade, headed by Lexie Luthora, with her hangers-on, Vanna Valley White (an air-headed blonde), and Minx (a cunning and jealous brunette).  Lexie is the trans-female version of Fedora Boy.  Lexie now works at the Gender Police (where Fedora Boy also worked) and has gone under cover as a high school student to try to find and destroy her nemesis, Ruwaxi.  Lexie’s name is a reference to Lex Luthor, Superman’s nemesis.  Lexie also parallels Brihannala, the female (or hijra, depending on the story) version of Arjuna when he is in hiding in the Mahabharata.  ‘Nana (short for Banana) was Ruwaxi’s childhood best friend (and first female lover, though this back-story will probably not be included in the script), but their paths have diverged since Nana opted for the assimilated, materialistic route while Ruwaxi took the nerdy, model minority route.

Also, at the moment we are imagining that Shy will play Lexie and I will play Arjuna throughout the piece, so that we play each other’s nemesis.  We are also interested in creating a distinct visual look for each world: school, home, club, Urvashi’s world.  Some preliminary visual thoughts are indicated in red. 

Lexie Strikes in the Locker Room

Lights up on the girls' locker room at Middle Kingdom High with sounds of showers and chattering girls.  Ruwaxi is deep in thought, distracted by new ideas for a paper.

RUWAXI

Ooh, I could write an extra credit paper on queer tropes in Hindu mythology through the lenses of feminist-of-color theory and Roland Barthes’ Mythologies.  

(Absent-mindedly, she slips out of her gym clothes, tucks her towel around her body, making her way towards the communal shower, soap and shampoo in hand.  Mentally thanking her mother for making her wear flip-flops, she lets her body relax into the hot stream of water, humming a seductive melody that she seemed to recall from a dream.)

(A bar of soap slides across the bathroom floor, hitting her flip flop. As RUWAXI kneels down to pick it up, LEXIE enters with the LIPSTICK BRIGADE just behind her.)

Lexie

Ahem.

(Ruwaxi looks up.)

Vanna

Ruwaxi, give her the soap already!

Ruwaxi

(visual thought bubble -- I'm thinking the following words would be expressed through imagery, not words) The suds cling to her pale pink areolas...her body so ripe yet perfectly toned...

Lexie

[in a dangerous whisper] What are you looking at?

Minx

[calculating] Yeah, Ruwaxi, do you like what you see or something?

(Lexie’s eyes widen at the sound of Ruwaxi’s name, then narrow with malice.)

Vanna

Oh my god, Ruwaxi, are you seriously a dyke?  I thought you were too busy studying to think about sex!

Lexie

So…you are Ruwaxi.  The little Oriental flower who turned out to be a hairy armpitted...

Ruwaxi

[fearful and embarrassed] I’m not looking at anything!  Sorry…

Lexie

(snaps her fingers) Shave her.

(Lexie pulls her diamond razor from her hair and grabs Ruwaxi by the wrist.  The rest of the Lipstick Brigade gathers, forcing Ruwaxi down to the slimy, tiled shower floor. Ruwaxi tries to stand up, to call forth her righteous anger, but she is gripped with fear, and as she lifts her arms, diamond flashes of razor sharpness slashed lightning-quick in a blur of hot steam, tig dha bony fingers holding Ruwaxi down bruisingly tight, dig…dig… slashing flesh and scraping away hair.  Ruwaxi is left in a heap on the shower floor, her curly armpit hair clogging the drain, blood mixing with water…)

(As a possible visual rendition of the above scene, I’m imagining my live body tangled in a typical cartoon fight sequence, perhaps a simple animation, complete with little curlicues, exclamation points, and sound effects (bam, pow, zap, etc.), mixed in with anti-lesbian epithets and bols.  For example: ouch!  I’LL &%*#*%^ TEACH YOU!  tig dha SLASH!  diga ZAP! $%^&! YOU WANT SOME OF THIS?  diga diga thai LESBIAN!  POW! diga thai BIFFF!  DYKE!  SLASH! tig dha CUNT-LOVER!) 

 (LEXIE exits with the LIPSTICK BRIGADE behind her. Nana enters after they’ve left.)

‘Nana

Are you okay, Ruwaxi?  [helps her get up and supports her] Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.

QUESTIONS:

(1) How might you imagine staging this visually given that there are only two performers?  (Options might include live feed, simple animation, pre-recorded video, audience interaction, etc.) 

(2) The blatant violence of this scene bothers me because it seems to be missing the cleverness and humorous political pointedness of the 15-minute version of the piece.  Do you have thoughts as to ways to make it both serious and light? 

(3) Thoughts about what kind of sound/music might support this scene?

(4) Any suggestions to tighten or strengthen the writing?   Other thoughts?

Queering Abhinaya assignment 2, babli

Password: mixed up
Queering Abhinaya 2, 2 from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

Feedback questions:

1) what do you take away from the video?
2) What do you take away from the song?
3) how does the video relate to the song?
4) Does the video stand alone?
5) I was thinking of starting with a live announcement (like the ones Janet critiques)- kind like this:

"The next item is a traditional love song. It says:

I have been in love with a girl for many years.

One day, the girl will have to find out one day! Whenever I see her red red lips, with her ever happy laugh, I want to do everything to have the chance to taste them one day.

Why does she keep me waiting, why does she only smile from afar.

Like a hidden flower I grow close to her.Whenever I see her I think- let me wait some more time.
But today I will tell her for certain
The reasons are enough!"

What do you think of that idea?

6) How does it relate to "queering abhinaya"
7)Any other thoughts?

Shyamala's Creative Response # 2: Queering Abhinaya Super Ruwaxi

For this assignment I chose to work on a character in "Super Ruwaxi: Origins" a piece that Cynthia and I are expanding into a full show. Here is a little about the piece: Super Ruwaxi: Origins tells the origin story of how Wu Ruwaxi, a nerdy Chinese-American teenager, becomes Super Ruwaxi, a feminist super-heroine with magical gender-bending body odor. Ruwaxi also discovers that she has her power because she is future incarnation of the Hindu apsara, Urvashi.

Up until now I have been playing the character of Urvashi. However this assignment allowed me to explore the physicality and expression of the Super Villain: Razor Girl.

What you need to know before watching this... Super Ruwaxi is approached by a slimy guy in a dance club named Fedora Boy/aka The Fed. He makes inappropriate advances on her.  She gets mad and discovers her magical gender-bending body odor, changing him into Fedora Girl. Fedora Girl is shocked and runs away. What follows is Fedora Girl's transformation into Razor Girl, aka Lexi Luthora.

 
Fedora girl to razor girl from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.
Password: Ruwaxi

Questions: 1. What interests you emotionally and/or physically? How would you as an audience member feel about this character (like, dislike, empathize with, scared of, be amused by etc...)? How else might I push this rendition of Razor Girl into a convincing and complex Super Villain who was accidentally created by Super Ruwaxi?

2. How does the song and spoken words inform you about what is going on for the character? (I got the idea from something Cynthia wrote that happens in the gender police headquarters where men are teaching their sons that "boys don't cry.")  Could you imagine other words, or no words support this transition?  If so, what could you imagine?

 3. Costuming: is it clear that the two costumes are the same person? Right now I interpreted Cynthia's description of Razor Girl as having the razor in a french twist as best as I could with short hair. However I realized, after I made the study, that keeping the hat might help us know that this is the same person as the audience members who were wearing it as Fedora Boy and Girl.

Here is a pic of a hat I have that actually has a little slot that a normal sized razor fits into perfectly (do we need to exaggerate the size of the razor?)

And here are two full body pics of Razor Girl, one with the razor in hair and one with the razor in hat. With the hat, I look more like a jazz/cabaret dancer to me.  This could be interesting...if we went in the hat direction I wonder how that might inform the way Razor Girl moves (do I need to go take some jazz classes?)



What are your thoughts about razor placement?Anything else about her costume that interests you, that you're not sure about, or that you have ideas about?

4. Costume transition: As the music ends in the video, I tried to recreate a sequence similar to Ruwaxi's transition into her club self...walking into the closet and being afraid of being caught. Is this confusing without hands and narrative? Could you imagine hands and narrative coming in here?  On a stage, I could do it in a different space than where Fedora girl just came from, but with a still camera it was easier to do it in place. Right now I relied on a video transition to create the clothing transition, but Razor Girl could, like Super Ruwaxi did earlier, change cloths live on stage if it is a simple enough transition (or in a video sequence). Any thoughts about this transition?

5.  Anything else?

Assignment 2: Abhinaya as a tool for queering

This assignment focuses on utilizing techniques and compositional strategies associated with abhinaya for queering beyond a Indian/South Asian context. Therefore, I would like you to focus on an aspect of your work, which explores a context/content/form that is not Indian/South Asian. This could, for example, be a study inspired by a specific cultural context (i.e. in my case the German context of the integration debate), by a narrative set in a specific cultural context, or a formal/aesthetic exploration/deconstruction (i.e. in the German context: a deconstruction of conceptual dance).

In your studies/creative responses, please explore abhinaya as a tool for queering while following this process in PAIRS.

1)
Choose one specific aspect of a previous study (or an idea that emerged from it), or an aspect/section of another project you are working on, which you would like to develop further by re-appropriating abhinaya for the purpose of queering (s.th. non-Indian).

2)
Pair up in the following pairs, and connect with your assignment partner:
Cynthia- Meena
Shyamala-Babli

If possible, try to work with your partner via distance, rather than in person.

3)
Have ONE exchange with your partner. Schedule one hour per partner. In this one hour, the person who's study is workshopped presents their idea/what they want to work on before you two brainstorm the study/creative response.

4)
Create your own rules as a pair for the collaboration leading up to completion and upload of the study, depending on your timelines and availabilities.


5)
HAVE FUN!!!

Collected feedback from Babli for assignment 1: Cultural Queering

Dear all, blogger did not let me comment- so here the feedback as a post- if any of you want to take the trouble to post as comments from PN account, please feel free- sorry about this!

Cynthia

 (1) What visuals or movement might you imagine to this piece?

For some reason I am drawn to the contrast between walking like Radha and Walking like a feminist- so possible variations of walking- just sets of feet filmed from above.

I know this is very sketchy, but my sense is for a continuous walking, covering space, which we don’t see, but get a sense of due to the progression and continuity of the walking.

Maybe changing footwear? But then its hard to get the continuity in walking…..

(2) What parts of the text are you drawn to and why?  Conversely, are there places where your attention falls away or that you would recommend cutting?

I find the mention of the nation state jarring- and parallel to it the imperialism- I think because they are loaded and the brief mentions end there…… It jars the otherwise poetic text- maybe that’s intended- but then I would maybe play with how they relate to each other. The terms as they are used now come across more black and white than they are, I think, esp when paired with an artistic practice.

Otherwise, I maybe get lost a little in the “love section” at the end-

(3) What emotions do you experience when listening to this soundtrack?  How would you describe the emotional arc of the work?

1: discomfort about physical Non-belonging

2. conflicting femininities: domesticated vs feminist

3: bridging cultural difference?

4. how do we love?

It moves to me from personal- to more personal/political to love as expansion (love as a possibility towards political change?)

(4) What light does this study shed on the theoretical concept of cultural queerness?

I actually perceive more tension than embrace of the obliqueness (which to me resonates with the queerness)

Except at the end where the interesting proposition of love as a mode of (political) expansion connects different layers of queerness (much like rapture/rupture)

(5) Other comments? 

In general, in terms of content, I feel that its clearer how the American feminist side confronts the “classical Indian” and its nationalist entanglement- but less how the classical Indian disrupts the American feminist- the puncturing goes in one direction- towards the classical, which comes across as more “passive” in this case. I am curious what the relationship looks like if the other direction is emphasized

Shyamala

1.     what is the tone of this piece for you? does it change over time?

The tone of the piece is a fascinating mixture of light/fun and serious. Overtime, I feel that  both qualities get enhanced- ending in a tongue- and-cheek way- I really like the ending of you laughing and taking off the hat!

2.     what do you experience watching it?
The

Oh I am totally drawn in from the beginning. I think the blank/serious expression on your face contrasting the more and more adventurous identity (stereotypes) provide a good contrast- I also like how interjections in the sound track (questioning) and in the facial expression mirror each other.

3.     would you like there to be more in the sound score?  if so, what?

I am torn about this one. I kind of like the sparseness of the soundscore. Anything more, might highlight one or the other mood too more and throw off the careful balance.

4.     how do you feel about the length and pacing?  Does it include everything you would like or do you feel it is too repetitive?

I like the length, and also the progression, in terms of pacing maybe there could be some playing with the editing- for some reason I can picture a fast forward or rewind kind of effect “summarizing” the stereotypes and also the mixed up ones.

5.     Any other feedback?

I really like how cultural/ethnic/religious and gender identity get addressed simultaneously- I think there could be some more thought/variety into what other variations might be possible---- I think there is more potential there

I also think it would be a fun model for all of us to follow and do a kind of video installation with…….

Meena

i) what stands out to you in terms of what this body doing? 

Posing, lounging, confronting (through looking)

Offers itself, owns itself

In control

Seducing and troubling by not-conforming

ii) how would you describe this body? 

Open yet confrontational, relaxed, comfortable in its non-conformity

Self-reflexive, in charge

iii) is this body doing anything subversive? 

Mostly I feel the contrast between seduction (inhabiting sexualized feminine poses) paired with a gender-non-conforming subjectivity

The looks into the camera- calm, stern

Less the body than the editing—the pulsing of the poses, the switch from flowing from pose to pose, to chopping them next to each other

 iv) how is this body constructing its own subjecthood (if this body is indeed constructing its own subjectivity)?

The careful choosing and deliberateness of the stances, poses, the juxtaposition of seduction and gender-noncoformity

The choice of telling a story away from the camera (that gets blurred) interjected with the stern gaze into the camera

v) how is the camera and/or the editing constructing (co-constructing?) this body's subjecthood?

I think I already addressed this above, regarding eth switch between flow from pose to pose as against chopped up stringing together, enhanced but the pulsating in a pose which is clearly edited,

The move from blurred to clear

The choice of camera angle (looking directly into the camera vs abhinaya into diagonal, away from camera)

The background sound during abhinaya vs the silence which staring

vi) anything else?

"how can we" - Cynthia's Response 1: Queering Cultural Memory

Here, at long last, is my queering cultural memory study.  I had a complicated vision for what visuals might go with it, but since it's a little challenging to implement given my current artistic skill-set, I thought it would be better to post something rather than nothing.

QUESTIONS:
(1) What visuals or movement might you imagine to this piece?
(2) What parts of the text are you drawn to and why?  Conversely, are there places where your attention falls away or that you would recommend cutting?
(3) What emotions do you experience when listening to this soundtrack?  How would you describe the emotional arc of the work?
(4) What light does this study shed on the theoretical concept of cultural queerness?
(5) Other comments?

Babli's Assignment 1: Queering Cultural Memory

After doing the freewrite, I got completely stuck- BECAUSE the concept that emerged for the assignment was one that I could not technically execute as a study.

So here I wrote out the scenario I start from. This round, I guess is more a request for brainstorming than feedback :)

Scenario 1

Background: Sruti box

After some time:

voice over: English translation of a PADAM- it should be obvious from the narration that it is a translation (i.e. searching for words)- I am still looking for one. Have been playing with “Don’t you know my house” for now. But its not ideal.

In the middle of the stage there is a wall of bricks (loosely) stacked on top of each other – about 4 feet wide and 5 feet tall

As the voice over can be heard, a hand, from behind the “wall” is carefully pushing at one of the bricks, until it falls down to the front, leaving a whole in the wall.

The whole thing happens very gradually.

A second brick is gently gradually pushed out in a similar way.

It falls, leaving a gap.

The hands reach through, bending up, exploring the wall where a face would be.

They gradually start including hastas in their exploration of the wall, which start coinciding with the recited Padam.

As the hands keep exploring the wall, interjected with hastas they start manipulating the bricks, until one can be lifted off the top of the wall.

The focus of the hands shifts away from exploring the wall, now trying to dismantle it. This has to be done with great care. The difficulty should be visible.

For now I see the end of this during the dismantling.

THIS IS JUST AN IMAGE that came to me.

Feedback questions:

11)   What does this image suggest to you? What are your associations?

22)  Do you have suggestions on how to transform this idea into a video/performance score that actually “doable” at this experimental stage?

a.     If this were a video, do you have suggestions on approaches to shoot it/angles to pursue it?

b.     If this were live, playing with props, do you have suggestions on approaches to pursue it?

33) Any other thoughts?