‘Maati Katha’ (Earth Stories)
Performed by Choiti Ghosh, with Abhisar Bose, and Mohammad Shameem
Followed by a discussion with Choiti Ghosh, Shayoni Mitra (Barnard), and Sufia Uddin (Connecticut)
Time: Wednesday, February 5, 6:00pm - 8:00pm, followed by a reception
Location: Glicker Milstein Theatre, Diana Center, Barnard College
Sponsored by the South Asia Institute, the Glicker-Milstein Theatre, and the Dasha Epstein Visiting Scholars and Artists Fund, Department of Theatre, Barnard College
Registration required to attend - click here. Valid Barnard or Columbia ID, or for non-affiliates,Photo ID and QR code with registration confirmation must be presented to security guards for entrance.
SYNOPSIS
In the dangerous and magical land of Sunderbans – the vast forested delta area in West Bengal (eastern India) and Bangladesh where great rivers combine and split before merging into the Bay of Bengal, a region of extreme ecological and environmental vulnerability - living is about a fragile balance between land and water, forest and field, domestic and wild, human and human, human and non-human, calm and storm. As each stakes claim, as each encroaches upon the other’s space, how does life manage?
Stories and beliefs form essential anchors for the people of the Sunderban, with the ‘Bonbibi’ legend looming large in the popular imagination. Bonbibi is said to have come to the ‘Land of the 18 Tides’ to help the people, the tigers, the deer, the crabs, the trees… all beings that cohabit the land. But, only if we agree to her terms. And when she looks away, devastation follows! Episodes from this legend as well as everyday aspects of Sunderban life are depicted by the traditional and contemporary doll-makers of Sunderban. Maati Katha (Earth Stories) brings these dolls – originally used for worship, child’s play and display – into the theatre for the first time, combining these art and craft traditions with contemporary object and material theatre practices. The play brings alive the Sunderbans through these clay dolls and the shape-shifting ‘maati’ (clay, mud, soil, earth, land) that not only forms the dolls, but also defines the land and grounds the philosophy of the region. In doing so, Maati Katha invites us to celebrate human resilience in the midst of fragility – a resilience that enables diverse communities to hold together through repeated upheavals of natural calamity and human violence. Bonbibi’s philosophy reigns, ‘You are all connected: the crocodile, the tiger, water, forest, land, all human beings … All!’
CONTEXT
‘Maati Katha’ (Earth Stories) came to life as part of an ongoing ethnographic research project that documents and archives the myriad stories surrounding traditional & contemporary doll making practices of West Bengal (a state in eastern India) ~ exploring their histories, folklores, oral traditions, myths, communitarian stories, as well as stories that are contemporary, quotidian and personal ~ and linkages to tangible and intangible heritage conservation. ‘Maati Katha’ emerges from the soil. It draws inspiration from the arts, lifestyles and philosophies of one of Eastern India's most marginalized & at-risk people – the people of the unique deltaic mangrove region of Sunderbans. The performance evolves out of Sunderban’s doll arts, people’s lives, folk legends and stories, the rich folk-performance tradition of 'Bonbibi Jatrapala', and music traditions like Bhatiyali, Baul, Jhumur. It marries these arts traditions to contemporary object and material theatre practices, seeking to celebrate and foreground the powerful story-carrying nature of these dolls. ‘Maati Katha’ marks a preliminary experiment in expanding the impact of the doll arts into diverse contexts, through interactions with a multitude of art forms.
Choiti Ghosh is an Object Theatre practitioner, puppeteer, actor, singer, writer & director. Born into a family of 5 generations of theatre-makers, she was initiated early onto the stage. Her first performance was at the age of 3 years. In 1998, at the age of 18 years, she started her professional career in theatre with her home company ANANT which specialized in children’s theatre, as a performer, facilitator and manager. From 1999 – 2003, she worked simultaneously in the field of alternative education with the well-known educationist Prof. A.K. Jalaluddin. She gained her experience in different kinds of theatre in India by working as a freelance actor, singer, designer, writer with various theatre companies in India including Dr. Habib Tanvir’s Naya Theatre, Dr. Ashish Ghosh’s ANANT, Mr. Sunil Shanbag’s Arpana, Q Theatre Productions, Manav Kaul’s aRanya and various others. In 2004, Choiti was initiated into puppetry with Anurupa Roy’s Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust. She continues to be part of the group as a puppeteer, writer and singer. In 2010 she trained in Object Theatre under the well-known Belgian Object Theatre artiste Agnes Limbos at the Institut International de la Marionnette in Charleville Mezieres, France. In 2011 she started Tram Theatre with like-minded colleagues with the vision to specialise in Object Theatre in India. Choiti has been a researcher-in-residence at the Deutsches Forum fur Figurentheatre und Puppenspeilkunst (DFP) in Bochum, Germany in 2012 and at the Institut Internationale de la Marionnette, Charleville Mezieres, France (2015). She was part of the British Council India delegation to the Edinburgh Fringe Showcase, UK in 2012. She was a recipient of Sahitya Rangabhoomi Vinod Doshi Fellowship for Outstanding Young Artists for the year 2011. She is one of the founders of Tram Theatre, now known as Tram Arts Trust, of which she is the current Secretary.
Shayoni Mitra works at the intersection of performance and politics. Her interest in political theatre stems from her years as an actor with Delhi based street theatre group Jana Natya Manch. She is currently revising toward publication her manuscript, “Contesting Capital: A History of Political Theatre in Postcolonial Delhi,” which interrogates the ever shifting, adapting expressions of political theatre under different configurations of power. It is a historical look at both proscenium and street theatre from the decade of Independence in the 1940s to the twenty first century. The manuscript covers a range of styles including folk and revolutionary singing troupes, large open-air performances, topical agit-prop plays, intimate and improvized activist pieces and feminist performances. This understanding of what it means to be political in changing times, is linked fundamentally with the life and profile of a city. New Delhi, the new capital of postcolonial India offers a unique nexus of local, regional and national power from which to understand and interrogate the ways in which cultural policy functions in creating identity for a new nation and its multiple peoples. Read this way, the history of political theatre in Delhi becomes metonymic for the oppressed and marginalized populations of this ever expanding global city.
Prof. Mitra has taught courses on Indian, Asian and non-Western performances as well as modern Theatre History and Performance Studies. Her teaching bridges the gap between the global North and South, putting into dialogue the histories of Western Realism with classical, folk, stylized, avant garde and improvized forms from around the world. She actively embraces the scholar-practitioner-activist role encouraging the connections between pedagogy and praxis. Before coming to Barnard, she taught at Brown and New York University in the United States and conducted lectures and theatre workshops in Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jamia Milia University and Delhi University in India. Among her current projects is her collaboration with a group of sex workers in Sangli, Maharashtra, India examining the ways in which they use theatre for their political mobilization.
Sufia Uddin is Professor of Anthropology and Religion at Connecticut College. Prof. Uddin earned her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania and was formerly Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Vermont. Her research interest has focused on constructions of the Bengali-Muslim religious community from the colonial to the contemporary period and examines the many Bengali expressions of Islam. Her research covers shared sacred space and religious elements common to both Bengali Hindus and Muslims. Uddin's book, "Constructing Bangladesh: Religion, Ethnicity, and Language in an Islamic Nation," was published by UNC Press in 2006.
The topic of her latest work is marginalized communities of Muslims and Hindus who share recognition and veneration of Bonbibi (The Lady of the Forest) in the Sundarbans. Professor Uddin has translated the epic poem that conveys the story of how Bonbibi became a source of protection in this forest to honey collectors and fisherfolk. Through this research, Professor Uddin gained an appreciation for the labors of these people and their struggles to live sustainably in the mangrove forest which has led her to more serious investigation of the similarities between indigenous communities and these venerators. Her visits to the Sundarbans and study of religious life of Bonbibi venerators has become increasingly focused on the environment.
Uddin has been a recipient of teaching and research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, American Institute of Bangladesh Studies, American Institute of Indian Studies, and the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. In 2005-2006, Professor Uddin was a Fulbright Scholar conducting research in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. Her current research project takes her frequently to the remote mangrove forests of Bangladesh and West Bengal, India known as the Sundarbans, where she studies Muslim and Hindu veneration of Bonbibi.