Though Michael Kiwanuka was chosen as the BBC Sound of 2012, it’s a bit more than apparent that this 25 year old’s first 10 track musical endeavor is a straight ricochet of 70’s jazz and all things retro.
The album opens with the jazz soaked atmospheric ‘Tell Me A Tale’, replete with subtle saxophone cadences and shades and tinges of easy listening lounge. ‘I’m Getting Ready’ is a cry to the Lord, furnished with gentle brushed drums while ‘Rest’ operates on a lilting guitar riff quite reminiscent of Ray LaMontagne’s ‘Let It Be Me’. ‘I’ll Get Along’ is hopeful and trippy with a catchy flute riff.
‘Home Again’, a soothing acoustic take with soft hand claps in the background is accompanied by Kiwanuka’s tone that’s filled with the sort of pessimism that’s on the brink of optimism. Doo-wops weave in and out on ‘Bones’, a feet tapping ditty.
The album’s coda surfaces with the onset of ‘Worry Walks Beside Me’. Orchestral ornamentations are featured heavily on each track.
Essentially, Home Again is a sort of thesaurus of 70’s folk and soul, a ‘Otis-Redding-meets-Amy Winehouse –with Bill Wither-ish- nuances’ Kiwanuka’s voice has a certain aged and weighty quality that works well as he sings about pain, loss and so on. You can say that each song is a variation of the previous yet there’s nothing particularly wrong about that. If anything, the album contains genuinely good music, the kind that creates a warm hearted, cozy ambience at a small get together or that can be played in the car during a long drive.
There’s nothing spectacularly life changing about the songs yet they’re a breath of fresh air as compared to the overproduced, meticulously packaged stuff that’s been circulating the airwaves lately.
Friday, June 22, 2012
An Interview with Alaknanda Samarth
AN INTERVIEW WITH ALAKNANDA SAMARTH
Appeared in the March 2012 issue of PT Notes.
All my life, I’d heard of Alaknanda Samarth’s work and worth, yet I never managed to see her performances or talk to her about her experiences on stage. When I first met her, I was very young, at an age where I couldn’t fully comprehend what her work was about. Yet, I always felt a sense of pride because she happened to be my aunt. So I decided to interview her for PT Notes.
Her powerful words and the richness of her theatre experiences educated me on what theatre has been like in the West and here in India, through so many decades.
Aadya : Satyadev Dubey has passed away. You acted in his first and biggest hit, 'Band Darwaze'. How did working with him contribute to your growth?
Alaknanda Samarth : Dubey in 1964-'65 had a corrosive laugh, a savage impatience with existing systems and with himself. He commanded a chaste, muscular Hindi. He offered me a role in Sartre's French play 'No Exit'(1944) - in Urdu.
I’d just returned from spending 5 years in the West and I'd never acted in Urdu. First, he cast me as the lesbian Post Office clerk and then changed it to the socialite murderess. So Sulabha Deshpande and I switched roles. He played the army deserter. All three are dead. In Hell. Amrish Puri played the Valet/Death.
Every language is a map with bleeding, porous borders. It's not bandaged. 'Band Darwaze' helped my growth at the deepest level of language as consciousness. He paid meticulous attention to syntax and the substrata of text analysis.
'She's India's only properly trained actress,' he always said of me to my embarrassment! We didn't take ourselves seriously. To this day people who've NEVER SEEN THE PRODUCTION DESCRIBE IT TO ME IN DETAIL. Why did it sweep everyone off their feet?
Because it was the moment that language shifted palpably and visibly on the Bombay stage and so gave rise to a new, inclusive audience.
THE AUDIENCE CHANGED. That's a revolutionary act in theatre. It doesn't happen twice. It happened in 'BAND DARWAZE'.
Aadya: Why did you go to train in the West? Were there Indian influences at RADA? Can you compare the Indian and British
theatre scenes in the '60's?
AS : In 1959, I played Strindberg's 'Miss Julie' opposite Mr Alkazi in English. I didn't know that there was a professor, from an American university, in the audience.
They offered me a round airtrip and the Wien International Scholarship in Theatre Arts to Brandeis University in the U.S. I hadn't even heard of Brandeis!
It was random, quite by chance! On the way back with my airticket I stopped in London, auditioned for RADA and got a scholarship.
At RADA, India was not in the consciousness. I was one of the very first few Indians there. No one mentioned India. I was given leading roles in European classics. The peer group was wildly talented and generous with me. They are lifelong friends. I went with the flow.
Voice training was the big discovery. That led me to study Indian vachika traditions. Neela Bhagwat worked on pre-expressive sound systems with me.
Comparisons are corrosive. Contexts are specific. In the '60's, Indian theatre had to reclaim its narrative and reconfigure. The FTII and NSD began to evolve training programmes for the modern Indian actor. Hugely painful, ongoing tasks. You know that struggle and history.
Since 1993, I've known the great Voice Teacher Patsy Rodenburg. Her work on the actor's Circles of Energy and Presence is profound. Her lived understanding of Shakespeare is a revelation
Britain saw an explosion of popular culture and a sexual revolution. Censorship was abolished in 1968. Nudity, sex and drugs shockingly appeared on stage in the musical 'Hair'. In Osborne's 'Look Back in Anger'(1956) an upper class protagonist was seen ironing for the first time! In Wesker's play 'The Kitchen'(1953), cooks, cleaners, waitresses and immigrants sweated it out over the kitchen sink.
On TV, Asians and Blacks became visible. The British Film Institute (BFI) did a book, 'Black and White in Colour’ (ed. Jim Pines, 1992), on 45 years of Black and Asian representation. One of my portrayals was chosen as the three most radical. In 'Z Cars' a hit police series I play an Indian woman with 2 kids married to a Black man who murders a white policeman with an axe. ‘A Place of Safety' deals with Institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police. Even today, that would be explosive.
In 1975, I was the 1st Indian actress in a classical lead at the National Theatre at the Old Vic - the shrine where Olivier, Gielgud, Richard Burton had acted. There was no political correctness, no emerging Indian market, no flavour of the month Bollywood. One had to be on the ball on stage in a star studded cast of superb verse speakers.
Today's 2nd generation British Asian actors speak English as their mother tongue. In the last decade, there are many more roles for them. British Asian dance has an international superstar in Akram Khan. But the theatre movement has been absorbed. The Bollywood imaginary has taken over.
I've never been part of the Asian scene. There has been some interaction with Black Theatre and Film collectives. Played famous Arab texts like Tewfik Al-Hakim.
Worked over the years with little known avant-garde groups like The Address, Puzzle Club, Muzikansky, Hawsksmoor Music Project. Maverick radicals, in studio theatres, no publicity or funds but freedom to culturally catalyse great texts in my own voice and defy categorisation.
Aadya: You taught acting at the NSD. Could you speak about that?
AS: BV Karanth invited me. I lived in India (1979-82). Acting classes were in Hindi. Some students didn’t speak it fluently. I changed it so they did exercises in their mothertongues to unleash internal rhythms. Teaching has led me to a methodology but I'm not an academic or systematic, rarely write things down. It’s in the moment for the actor in front of me, their fears,
time, place, reality. Every actor gets to the role in his own way. Later I worked in Trichur, directed 2 open air productions of Shakespeare and Edward Bond in Malayalam, learnt the texts by heart! Working with Tomba, I found Manipur's electrifying vachika rituals. In London, actors are from everywhere. Many cadences, histories of Civil War, Communism, the Holocaust, Palestine. We've been exploring Cultural Memory, Sound Memory
Aadya: You've done landmark solo shows. Tell us about 'KUNTI AND THE HUMAN VOICE' and "MEDEAMATERIAL' both in Bombay.
What are the modes of rehearsal in collaborations since you live far from India?
AS: I don’t think in terms of 'far and near'. There are 'Other Indias', diasporic energies, wheels within cultural wheels. It’s a question of unravelling them.
'KUNTI AND THE HUMAN VOICE' in Hindi and English, directed by Kumar Shahani was the first solo in 1987. It examined the female impulse in two distinct contexts. Kumar's sensibility and unique vision of cinema actually transformed my acting. Gave it transparency. We went on to do 5 major pieces of work together, including 2 feature films, one unfinished feature and 2 short films in London.
Solos have been a constant, in music theatre, texts by Pakistani, Arab, European writers in London. In 1992, I began an ongoing collaboration with visual artist Nalini Malani. We did Heiner Muller's Medea Trilogy. Nalini's work is so layered. The body becomes a magical image. It's glamorous. The ground rules are not those of theatre. It’s freeing.
Our latest in Switzerland in 2010 was 'Medea Revisited'.
'Texts' of this complexity are 2-3 years in the making. With shifting modes of exchange but always with constant trust. On the phone, interactive, in person and in the last lap 4-6 weeks in situ. That’s the mode of rehearsal.
Aadya : Have you got any future projects?
AS : A couple of ideas, one in India. What they have in common is to test the limits of performance, acting itself and thus question the role of the audience/spectator/listener. Such work has no cultural marketability. It’s working on and in process and as such on the cutting edge of vulnerability and even failure. That gives it energy.
Appeared in the March 2012 issue of PT Notes.
All my life, I’d heard of Alaknanda Samarth’s work and worth, yet I never managed to see her performances or talk to her about her experiences on stage. When I first met her, I was very young, at an age where I couldn’t fully comprehend what her work was about. Yet, I always felt a sense of pride because she happened to be my aunt. So I decided to interview her for PT Notes.
Her powerful words and the richness of her theatre experiences educated me on what theatre has been like in the West and here in India, through so many decades.
Aadya : Satyadev Dubey has passed away. You acted in his first and biggest hit, 'Band Darwaze'. How did working with him contribute to your growth?
Alaknanda Samarth : Dubey in 1964-'65 had a corrosive laugh, a savage impatience with existing systems and with himself. He commanded a chaste, muscular Hindi. He offered me a role in Sartre's French play 'No Exit'(1944) - in Urdu.
I’d just returned from spending 5 years in the West and I'd never acted in Urdu. First, he cast me as the lesbian Post Office clerk and then changed it to the socialite murderess. So Sulabha Deshpande and I switched roles. He played the army deserter. All three are dead. In Hell. Amrish Puri played the Valet/Death.
Every language is a map with bleeding, porous borders. It's not bandaged. 'Band Darwaze' helped my growth at the deepest level of language as consciousness. He paid meticulous attention to syntax and the substrata of text analysis.
'She's India's only properly trained actress,' he always said of me to my embarrassment! We didn't take ourselves seriously. To this day people who've NEVER SEEN THE PRODUCTION DESCRIBE IT TO ME IN DETAIL. Why did it sweep everyone off their feet?
Because it was the moment that language shifted palpably and visibly on the Bombay stage and so gave rise to a new, inclusive audience.
THE AUDIENCE CHANGED. That's a revolutionary act in theatre. It doesn't happen twice. It happened in 'BAND DARWAZE'.
Aadya: Why did you go to train in the West? Were there Indian influences at RADA? Can you compare the Indian and British
theatre scenes in the '60's?
AS : In 1959, I played Strindberg's 'Miss Julie' opposite Mr Alkazi in English. I didn't know that there was a professor, from an American university, in the audience.
They offered me a round airtrip and the Wien International Scholarship in Theatre Arts to Brandeis University in the U.S. I hadn't even heard of Brandeis!
It was random, quite by chance! On the way back with my airticket I stopped in London, auditioned for RADA and got a scholarship.
At RADA, India was not in the consciousness. I was one of the very first few Indians there. No one mentioned India. I was given leading roles in European classics. The peer group was wildly talented and generous with me. They are lifelong friends. I went with the flow.
Voice training was the big discovery. That led me to study Indian vachika traditions. Neela Bhagwat worked on pre-expressive sound systems with me.
Comparisons are corrosive. Contexts are specific. In the '60's, Indian theatre had to reclaim its narrative and reconfigure. The FTII and NSD began to evolve training programmes for the modern Indian actor. Hugely painful, ongoing tasks. You know that struggle and history.
Since 1993, I've known the great Voice Teacher Patsy Rodenburg. Her work on the actor's Circles of Energy and Presence is profound. Her lived understanding of Shakespeare is a revelation
Britain saw an explosion of popular culture and a sexual revolution. Censorship was abolished in 1968. Nudity, sex and drugs shockingly appeared on stage in the musical 'Hair'. In Osborne's 'Look Back in Anger'(1956) an upper class protagonist was seen ironing for the first time! In Wesker's play 'The Kitchen'(1953), cooks, cleaners, waitresses and immigrants sweated it out over the kitchen sink.
On TV, Asians and Blacks became visible. The British Film Institute (BFI) did a book, 'Black and White in Colour’ (ed. Jim Pines, 1992), on 45 years of Black and Asian representation. One of my portrayals was chosen as the three most radical. In 'Z Cars' a hit police series I play an Indian woman with 2 kids married to a Black man who murders a white policeman with an axe. ‘A Place of Safety' deals with Institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police. Even today, that would be explosive.
In 1975, I was the 1st Indian actress in a classical lead at the National Theatre at the Old Vic - the shrine where Olivier, Gielgud, Richard Burton had acted. There was no political correctness, no emerging Indian market, no flavour of the month Bollywood. One had to be on the ball on stage in a star studded cast of superb verse speakers.
Today's 2nd generation British Asian actors speak English as their mother tongue. In the last decade, there are many more roles for them. British Asian dance has an international superstar in Akram Khan. But the theatre movement has been absorbed. The Bollywood imaginary has taken over.
I've never been part of the Asian scene. There has been some interaction with Black Theatre and Film collectives. Played famous Arab texts like Tewfik Al-Hakim.
Worked over the years with little known avant-garde groups like The Address, Puzzle Club, Muzikansky, Hawsksmoor Music Project. Maverick radicals, in studio theatres, no publicity or funds but freedom to culturally catalyse great texts in my own voice and defy categorisation.
Aadya: You taught acting at the NSD. Could you speak about that?
AS: BV Karanth invited me. I lived in India (1979-82). Acting classes were in Hindi. Some students didn’t speak it fluently. I changed it so they did exercises in their mothertongues to unleash internal rhythms. Teaching has led me to a methodology but I'm not an academic or systematic, rarely write things down. It’s in the moment for the actor in front of me, their fears,
time, place, reality. Every actor gets to the role in his own way. Later I worked in Trichur, directed 2 open air productions of Shakespeare and Edward Bond in Malayalam, learnt the texts by heart! Working with Tomba, I found Manipur's electrifying vachika rituals. In London, actors are from everywhere. Many cadences, histories of Civil War, Communism, the Holocaust, Palestine. We've been exploring Cultural Memory, Sound Memory
Aadya: You've done landmark solo shows. Tell us about 'KUNTI AND THE HUMAN VOICE' and "MEDEAMATERIAL' both in Bombay.
What are the modes of rehearsal in collaborations since you live far from India?
AS: I don’t think in terms of 'far and near'. There are 'Other Indias', diasporic energies, wheels within cultural wheels. It’s a question of unravelling them.
'KUNTI AND THE HUMAN VOICE' in Hindi and English, directed by Kumar Shahani was the first solo in 1987. It examined the female impulse in two distinct contexts. Kumar's sensibility and unique vision of cinema actually transformed my acting. Gave it transparency. We went on to do 5 major pieces of work together, including 2 feature films, one unfinished feature and 2 short films in London.
Solos have been a constant, in music theatre, texts by Pakistani, Arab, European writers in London. In 1992, I began an ongoing collaboration with visual artist Nalini Malani. We did Heiner Muller's Medea Trilogy. Nalini's work is so layered. The body becomes a magical image. It's glamorous. The ground rules are not those of theatre. It’s freeing.
Our latest in Switzerland in 2010 was 'Medea Revisited'.
'Texts' of this complexity are 2-3 years in the making. With shifting modes of exchange but always with constant trust. On the phone, interactive, in person and in the last lap 4-6 weeks in situ. That’s the mode of rehearsal.
Aadya : Have you got any future projects?
AS : A couple of ideas, one in India. What they have in common is to test the limits of performance, acting itself and thus question the role of the audience/spectator/listener. Such work has no cultural marketability. It’s working on and in process and as such on the cutting edge of vulnerability and even failure. That gives it energy.
Deepika Amin's Interview
Appeared in the February 2012 issue of PT Notes
Aadya Shah : How long have you been doing theatre?
Deepika Amin: I think I have always been doing theatre.
As a child, I was in Sushma Seth’s children’s theatre group in Delhi. Then, in college, I joined Barry John’s theatre group TAG in Delhi (this is before he moved to Mumbai) and we did many English and Hindi plays. After I came to Mumbai- TV took over my life and unfortunately theatre took a backseat.
Then I lived in Jakarta for 6 years where I was with the expat theatre group Jakarta Players where I acted in many plays and musicals. I also directed 1 Hindi and 2 English plays there.
Returning to Mumbai, I plunged back into theatre with 3 plays with Lillete Dubey, (Wedding Album, Sammy and Womanly Voices ) and another play with Mahesh Dattani.
AS: Have you done plays in other languages?
Primarily English and Hindi. Some years ago, I did a play in my mother tongue -Marathi - Ammaldar.
Any favourite playwrights?
DA: I have mostly acted in contemporary plays and I feel I have missed out in performing in the classics. Playwrights like Ibsen and Pinter have fascinated me. I would love to be in a classic like Ibsen’s "A Doll’s House" or "The House of Bernada Alba".
Doing more musicals is my longstanding desire (I previously was in musicals like “Annie Get Your Gun”, “South Pacific”, “Pizzazz” etc). I have been learning Hindustani music for many years and would love to be in a Hindi musical.
AS: Can you talk about your experience of performing in Pereira's Bakery?
DA:“Pereira’s Bakery at 76 Chapel Road” has been a very rewarding experience. I have known Zafar for many years as a co actor and he treats his actors with gentleness and sensitivity. With a cast of such wonderful actors, one has been able to learn a lot from everyone.
AS: Do talk about your character, Maria.
DA: Maria - is the earth mother. She is the binding force of her family and wants to do the best she can for them. Yet, she is traditional enough to believe that the final word of authority lies with her husband and will stand by him.
AS: What are your views about the bureaucracy in Mumbai faced by families like the Pereira's, who have lived in a community for a long time?
DA: As I drove to rehearsals in Bandra every evening...I could see the reality all around me. I'd see a quaint little bungalow and think, " Oh this will probably be the next one to go - how long will they hold out?" We must also understand the problems of those living in these bungalows. Maintenance is a nightmare and most cannot afford it. But replacing them with glass skyscrapers is not the solution. Old heritage must be preserved.
AS: Mention some of your other work
DA: I was recently in Shyam Benegal’s film "Well Done Abba". But people still remember me from the well known TV serial Farmaan directed by Lekh Tandon - (for which I got Best Actress) . That time I used my maiden name, Deepika Deshpande.
AS: What are your views on the theatre scene right now in Mumbai?
DA: It mainly lacks venues. There is a lot of enthusiasm for theatre but unfortunately there is no outlet, apart from NCPA and Prithvi Theatre. In terms of creativity and scripts it’s doing great. But theatre is not a revenue generating activity and so a patron is needed.
Aadya Shah : How long have you been doing theatre?
Deepika Amin: I think I have always been doing theatre.
As a child, I was in Sushma Seth’s children’s theatre group in Delhi. Then, in college, I joined Barry John’s theatre group TAG in Delhi (this is before he moved to Mumbai) and we did many English and Hindi plays. After I came to Mumbai- TV took over my life and unfortunately theatre took a backseat.
Then I lived in Jakarta for 6 years where I was with the expat theatre group Jakarta Players where I acted in many plays and musicals. I also directed 1 Hindi and 2 English plays there.
Returning to Mumbai, I plunged back into theatre with 3 plays with Lillete Dubey, (Wedding Album, Sammy and Womanly Voices ) and another play with Mahesh Dattani.
AS: Have you done plays in other languages?
Primarily English and Hindi. Some years ago, I did a play in my mother tongue -Marathi - Ammaldar.
Any favourite playwrights?
DA: I have mostly acted in contemporary plays and I feel I have missed out in performing in the classics. Playwrights like Ibsen and Pinter have fascinated me. I would love to be in a classic like Ibsen’s "A Doll’s House" or "The House of Bernada Alba".
Doing more musicals is my longstanding desire (I previously was in musicals like “Annie Get Your Gun”, “South Pacific”, “Pizzazz” etc). I have been learning Hindustani music for many years and would love to be in a Hindi musical.
AS: Can you talk about your experience of performing in Pereira's Bakery?
DA:“Pereira’s Bakery at 76 Chapel Road” has been a very rewarding experience. I have known Zafar for many years as a co actor and he treats his actors with gentleness and sensitivity. With a cast of such wonderful actors, one has been able to learn a lot from everyone.
AS: Do talk about your character, Maria.
DA: Maria - is the earth mother. She is the binding force of her family and wants to do the best she can for them. Yet, she is traditional enough to believe that the final word of authority lies with her husband and will stand by him.
AS: What are your views about the bureaucracy in Mumbai faced by families like the Pereira's, who have lived in a community for a long time?
DA: As I drove to rehearsals in Bandra every evening...I could see the reality all around me. I'd see a quaint little bungalow and think, " Oh this will probably be the next one to go - how long will they hold out?" We must also understand the problems of those living in these bungalows. Maintenance is a nightmare and most cannot afford it. But replacing them with glass skyscrapers is not the solution. Old heritage must be preserved.
AS: Mention some of your other work
DA: I was recently in Shyam Benegal’s film "Well Done Abba". But people still remember me from the well known TV serial Farmaan directed by Lekh Tandon - (for which I got Best Actress) . That time I used my maiden name, Deepika Deshpande.
AS: What are your views on the theatre scene right now in Mumbai?
DA: It mainly lacks venues. There is a lot of enthusiasm for theatre but unfortunately there is no outlet, apart from NCPA and Prithvi Theatre. In terms of creativity and scripts it’s doing great. But theatre is not a revenue generating activity and so a patron is needed.
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