Reflections....

Menta Journal
An informal, unedited, and personal diary of Kahani in India
Typed Up on 7/27/12

Tuesday July 10, 2012 Rehearsal at Gyan Pravah
Have been in Varanasi less than 24 hours, but already cognizant of an entire different world than the one I live in – the heat, the crowded streets, piles of trash, bicycles, motorcycles everywhere, constant honking.

Nice and cool on the 3rd floor of Gyan Pravah, a museum complex – green, marble floors – several large ceiling fans, which is great! Many of us are still waiting for lost luggage, am wearing a sweat-stained shirt that I put on 72 hours ago, pants already mud-stained from removing my sneakers at Nirman.

I observe the student cast warming up with Irfana – in my view, this has been such a tightly knit group, as they have spent countless hours together in Spring term, more than the usual theatre production, because of the thrice-weekly class and intensity of rehearsal. I am jealous of this experience they are having together! – Sharing what they’ve worked on for weeks creating, and now sharing it with another culture, one they’ve been learning about. So we are about to find out how the experience of performing the play in India differs from the USA!

Am watching Irfana talk the ensemble thru the same Anne Bogart Viewpoints exercises that I watched (some of) them do in January at her first workshop in Week 4 of Winter term in the Rehearsal Room – so that’s kind of neat. Has an actual physical vocabulary been formed? Perhaps only a very general one of leaps, and basic stretches, but I definitely do see a nuanced sensitivity they have with one another that was not there in January. Also, this is really a “re-orientation” session for the ensemble, since they haven’t worked together in five weeks.

Just in the time I took for a five-minute break to wash my face and hands with a handiwipe, the ensemble moved from group exercises to individual character movements and verbal phrases. Irfana occasionally gives them a direction such as “Use the courtyard (the environment in the play) here” or “You can’t go beyond this space.”

Every so often the lights dim and the fans slow down (a planned brown out?)

Will the ensemble recognize that the real models of the servants they portray in the play made them breakfast today at Nirman?

I sense in the ensemble an uncertainty, even an uneasiness about performing here in India. Will the audience get it? Know what’s going on? Feel patronized? As we prepare for the first run-thru since early June, I sense much excitement (even though it’s getting hard for me to stay awake)! After a snack, the run-thru starts, missing many props and costumes (in the lost luggage). Hard to hear above the fans. Still, it’s clear the ensemble remembers what to do, how the show goes.

WEDNESDAY JULY 11, 2012 – 9:35AM AFTER BREAKFAST AT NIRMAN
 Last night, a very serious and detailed discussion amongst the ensemble of their fears and anxieties of performing this play in India. Some examples:

• “I am worried that we will offend people” 
• We have to own this piece” 
• In CLOUD NINE (Festival Playhouse Winter production in which some Kahani ensemble members also performed) we knew people would be offended – here, we don't why/how they will be offended.” 
• We’re representing Americans, like it or not. We don't want to contribute to that ignorant stereotype.” 
• “I feel doubly invested since we created the piece, every choices is ours (unlike CLOUD NINE).” 

The biggest point of contention seems to be whether to include the hitting of the gong –or pot lid – during the funeral scenes. Irfana advises the ensemble to think of themselves as performers, not as just Americans, and try to eliminate the categories of “Us/Them” in thinking about “Indian reaction” to the piece.

I wanted to say something about much of the major impetus behind this project when we conceived it two years ago was to test/explore how theatre can be created in an international context, at least as much as can be done in six months in undergraduate liberal arts program. How does theatre communicate? And why? This is why we are here.

1pm

Back in our cool room at Gyan Pravah, after sitting in the rear of a bus stuck in traffic (may have been the hottest I’ve been in my life, sweat just pouring off my arms and soaking thru my same shirt – still no luggage)! Ensemble is now “walking thru” the placement of props, new costumes (many of those are still in luggage)! I sense, as always, a purposefulness in the company, - they know what they need to do to get ready, and they do it without being told. Lunch ahs eggs in it so we will have to eat it outside this magnificent facility (the owner is a “strict” vegetarian).

 We’re back – we sat in the bus and ate lunch; hot, but very much appreciated food!

POST SHOW REACTIONS – 4pm

The show was performed for staff and friends at Nirman. Some comments from the audience talkback:

• “I could relate to this very much – I had a mai” 
• “I didn’t understand the umbrella scene” 
• “I kept seeing my own family, my own grandmother” 
• “It was interesting and new to us but we saw some feminism and place of women’s roles in the piece (from American students at Nirman). 
• “How do you know so much about us?” (this last from Jay-sir) 

I think it’s safe to say the performance was a huge success with this small and loyal audience (despite my attempts to mess it up when I was called up before the performance along with Nita to make an offering and receive a lovely gift of a hand carved bronze plate. I was caught off-guard by being treated so respectfully as an elder!) After, mingling on the beautiful green grounds overlooking the river, sharing tea with audience and ensemble, met a young entrepreneur type who offers his luxury hotel for another possible performance (we’ll see)!

THURSDAY JULY 12 5pm – DISCUSSION AT NIRMAN
I sense a tremendous relief amongst the ensemble – it worked- they liked us! Very touching to observe. My own view, in talking LP (designer Lanny Potts) is that the same things that worked in the show in the USA worked in India: some of the beautiful imagery, the family dynamic, the sense of “liberation from within” of Mai’s oppression; what did not: scenes where the actors “switched characters” or “modern scenes.

A great question from ACSJL Director Jaime Grant: “What specifically in this social justice project made it successful?” Her own answer is:

1. You had an informed leader from within the culture (Irfana) 
2. You started with yourselves. 

I would add a third: the devised nature of the work made for a very different hierarchy than most of use are used to in theatre. This also made the ownership so complete and special.

EARLIER THAT DAY – REHEARSAL AT RAJA GHAT
After carrying the cubes and props down some winding, twisting alleys, we arrive at this beautiful place that looks like a temple, actually, a private museum. We go up on the roof for a half hour, staring at the peaceful, yet busy activities on the Ganges Rover – boats put-putting by, women and men washing their clothes by beating them on a flat rock, then leaving them to dry on the steps in the sun. Incredible (we’re not in Kansas anymore). Talk about doing the performance on the roof, or in the open courtyard with many columns inside below.

NOTE: After all of these months of rehearsal, and four sweat-filled days in Varanasi, the ensemble still takes the time to warm up with energy and concentration games, all ten students plus Irfana (and they still seem to have fun).

Now they go through the play slowly, talking thru where each scene should be. We don’t need ropes or cubes to designate a courtyard because we’re in real courtyard! Fans being placed around the space but it is hot, as always!

Break time: teatime, really. The ensemble gathers in a circle animatedly discussing Pokémon nostalgic memories, eventually switches to discussion of tobacco chewing, a special Varanasi habit.

Sitting against a stone pillar on a hard stone floor. There are chairs on the second floor but no fans so I had to come back down here. Now running the show in this new space. I’ve temporarily been designated company photographer as LP has embarked to a nearby lighting shop (from whom we will rent some lighting instruments). I manage to actually take a few passable photos (later LP tells us he instantly knew he was “home” when visiting the lighting/electrical shop)!

PERSONAL NOTE: For me, this is so much like being at the Directors Institute at La MaMa Umbria (Italy), one of my Faculty Leave activities in 2002 – the heat, the alternative theatre feel, the sense of being an American in another country. In fact, it was La MaMa Umbria that led me to Suman Mukherjee, which resulted in our first “Indian play – Naga Mandala – back in 2005).

SATURDAY JULY 14 10am – The Back Room of an Internet Café
Sitting with LP in a converted private home to an internet café. Yesterday was, in some respects, a lost day for the production. A few of the ensemble members were pretty ill so Irfana wisely canceled all rehearsal activities. On the other hand, a very fruitful day for many of us as Dr. Naval Krishna, Professor of Art History at Nirman, - and a tremendous friend who helped us finally get our luggage with a couple of strategic phone calls! – in his unending generosity arranged a visit to one of Varanasi’s oldest and finest silk shops (including the owner sending us a private car to pick us up and stopping off at an ATM)! Everyone bought many fine stunning scarves and other goods. And the entire experience of the hospitality – the call, the ride, the private showing of the silks, the tea served, etc. was just overwhelming and led us to thinking about hospitality in our own American culture. Naval said to me that he had to do this: “since Indians believe in many lives, I must have done it for him in a previous life.” Later in the day, Irfana’s friend, actor and teacher Gaurev led some of the students through a very intensive Indian martial arts and rasa workshop (he has some very interesting ideas about connecting the different rasas to breathing, e.g., the anger rasa is a short, snorting breath, concentrated at the back of the neck).

The day ended with an absolutely stunning combined music and dance concert, consisting of:

1. Two American students studying tabla (an Indian drum) 
2. A trio of tabla and sarangi players (a sort of Indian cello/guitar played with a bow) with the lead artist Kanhaiya lal Mishra. 
3. Vishal Krishna, a Kathak dancer, who just blew us away with her grace and beauty (I learned the next day Vishal is actually a male)! Kathak is apparently a Northern Indian form, and a very percussive type of dance, much feet stomping, but also precise hand mudras and eye movements (and lots of spins)! 

I commented afterward that Indian performance differs from most Western performances in its sense of time. Kanhaiya took at least 10-15 minutes to tune the sarangi, and the first 1/3 of the actual piece was mostly slow, long note draws on the bow. But then, Antony, one of Indian friends at Nirman interrupted with “Are you kidding? Tonight was quick! They usually take much longer!”

SIDE NOTE: As usual, I made a fool of myself when I was called up at the beginning of the concert to place a garland around Kanhaiya. I thought I was going to get it and knelt down expectantly! (Luckily, Irfana came to my rescue, as usual).

SO WHERE ARE WE?

I think this has been a fantastic educational and life experience for all of us and I hate to “cop out” assessment-wise, but I am not sure I can quantify it or even put it in words, but I’ll try:

1. It always starts with the realization that the world is so much bigger a place than little one I live in. 
2. Seeing how others live is greatest eye opener one can have in one’s own life, and teach us how to live better. 
3. I see how the sweat and hard of others benefits the spoiled, comfortable life that I live in the States (the “made in India” fabric or the electronic parts in China made at what we consider to be substandard wages so we can maintain such a high standard of living). 
4. How theatre can be an artistic and educational and intellectual experience on so many levels: a) entertainment b) provoking thought about social justice c) reaching out to our Indian friends. 

MONDAY JULY 16 4pm From Room at Hotel Haifa
So much has happened since I last wrote. We did the performance on Saturday night minus one of our actors due to illness. I had suggested to Irfana that the stage manager step into the role, but the ensemble decided instead to divide up some of the scenes, with Alden Phillips taking on most of the role of Subodh (the son). This was a much better solution and, in fact, the performance went very well, as Alden did an amazing job, as did the entire ensemble in adapting to the situation.

But it was so hot at Raja Ghat (I immediately positioned myself near a fan and rarely got up)! Still some unique elements about this performance:

1. An absolutely stunning setting of columns in the courtyard made it the best performance of the play visually – including our run in Kalamazoo. Something about seeing it in a real Indian courtyard made it really exquisite visually. 
2. Going with that, LP managed some very pleasing (and incredibly resourceful) lighting, Using only three lighting instruments, he focused all of them upwards on a pink canopy he’d purchased which then bathed the courtyard and performers in a very warm, amber light. 
3. The ensemble absolutely heroically rose to the occasion! 

SIDE NOTE: One of the few times I’ve ever addressed the ensemble directly and formally to give instructions was when they were trying to decide that to do before the performance:

a. If this is the first time this has happened to you as a performer – someone else has to fill in at the last second – I guarantee it won’t be the last.

b. The audience will always help you in these situations as they realize they are attending a unique and one-time only event, i.e., such as an actor carrying the script and reading the role (in fact, Alden only carried the script for one scene, incredible).

c. The play is not about where the cubes would be placed or what level to stand on! That’s not why you’ve rehearsed all these weeks!

After the performance, the ensemble spoke individually to audience members (including press folk), which I thought was a great way to do a post-show discussion. I was awestruck by seeing Irfana’s 81-year-old grandmother , who sat uncomplainingly in that hot environment for almost three hours (I find out later that the heat contributed to our small audience that night). After the show, Irfana treated us all to a boat ride down the Ganges at night – a very beautiful and peaceful ending to such a hectic day!

Yesterday (Sunday), we went to Sarnath and visited several Buddhist monuments as well as a national museum there (the location is where Buddha first taught after receiving Enlightenment). Naval, who is also a museum curator, made a special point of taking us around to many exhibits, explaining their significance, a real treat.

In the evening, we took the Nirman staff (as well as the entire company) out to dinner at a sort-of self serve restaurant in a mall (they actually did serve us there were over 30 of us and it would have been too confusing to keep track of each of us going thru the cashier line). The folks at Nirman have treated us so well I was happy to have them as our guests, even if for one night (and even though it actually created more work for Nita, who tirelessly took everyone’s order)!

I’m not sure why but I am really noting social class differences in my short and limited experience in India (it may be that in the States, I simply do not interact very often or deeply with those who have so much less than I). There is also a racial element to it, being a white person in India (that privilege should actually feel quite familiar, no?). The poorer folks seem be more darker-skinned (again, that same distinction applies to the States).

Which brings me to today – suffering from mild diarrhea, just enough to keep me holed up in my hotel room, avoiding an embarrassing call to nature at the Betawar site of our third and final performance (I find out later it was a large and lively audience of schoolchildren who very vocal and laughed a lot during the show). I feel very badly about missing it but I just didn’t want to take the chance. I guess I was ready to leave India a day earlier than the rest of us!

IN PLACE OF A FINAL REFLECTION:
I’ve decided NOT to edit this personal journal, nor to offer any final nuggets of wisdom other than to express my undying gratitude to the following people at Kalamazoo College and at Nirman, who, with their dedication and generosity, made a two-year dream a reality:

Dr. Jaime Grant, Executive Director of Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership
Dr. Margaret Wiedenoeft and Dr. Joe Brockington, Center for International Programs
Dr. Mickey McDonald, Provost
Dr. Paul Sotherland and Ms. Anne Dueweke, for The Teagle Foundation
Dr. Peter Erdi, Faculty Development Committee
Ms. Irfana Majumdar
Ms. Nita Majumdar
Dr. Naval Krishna
The Entire Staff of Nirman
Professor Lanny Potts for making it all work on so many levels.

And ten fearless students:
Kat Barrett
Sam Bertken
Fiona Carey
Jane Huffman
Samantha Jolly
McKenna Kring
Anya Opshinsky
Alden Phillips
Cameron Schneberger
Joseph Westerfeld

Ed Menta

In a New Light

There was a new level of attention the first time we performed. We were overloaded with trying to take in everything thing we could about our new environment, while keeping ourselves in the moments of each scene. Our play seemed almost like it made more sense now. No longer was the audience hung up on what the different family names meant or how this family’s life was interrupted by seemingly unrelated scenes. There was, for some performances, a language barrier. Yet, after talking to some audience members and hearing comments second hand, it seemed that the language barrier may have stripped the play down to its simplicity. The words, of course, were important, but the visuals stepped in to help make sense of the message. The family relationships seemed to resonate with the audience because everyone had some understanding of family. Sure there were certain intricacies and specifications that attempted to give context for this specific family, but if anything these made more sense when finally performing in India. Performing in a different place with a different climate and changing venues helped show us how versatile our show really was. It was at times challenging to adjust to new spaces, unfamiliar climate and, new audiences, but it helped us exercise a muscle that is particularly important in theatre, “Just going with it”. With each performance I understood the play in a new way than I had in Kalamazoo. Sometimes things must be given new context to attract the attention they deserve, and going to India provided the cast of Kahani with this very opportunity.
Sammy Jolly

A Comfortable Vulnerability

At Kalamazoo College, Kahani had transformed into a buzzword that I had to constantly explain and justify. When people asked, "What is Kahani?" the real meaning of the question was "What is this weird hyped theater thing and why should I care?" I don't want to say there was any bitterness towards the project, but after a couple of disjointed newspaper articles, rumors and daily sighting of the ensemble members rolling around on the grass in front of the fine arts building, Kahani didn't reach the campus's conscious as an understandable thing until it was performed. However; due to the unfortunate timing of DOGL, for many students the existence of Kahani never stretched beyond the cryptic poster and the knowledge that 10 lucky students get to go to India like some liberal arts version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I remember by finals week there were still some students asking, "Aren’t you in some India play thing this quarter?"

Even with a low student interest, Kahani was the first piece I'd participated in at Kalamazoo College that had received mixed reviews from my peers. I think it's safe to say that even by liberal arts standards Kahani is not a normal play. In fact sometimes I don't even think of it as a play and instead think of it as an experimental performance. I could easily see Kahani being an modern art exhibit, performed in a dimly lit room with silky blue cloth crawling down from the ceiling and every time the play ends, the actors would repeat while the viewers come and go. A lot of our ensemble conversations after our first set of performances dealt with the idea that people didn't "get" Kahani or maybe the piece we created just wasn't understandable. With all this in mind, I was extremely nervous to take a piece I was so unsure about to the other side of the world.

Audience members in India responded to Kahani in a couple of surprising ways. First off, there was almost a bewilderment of the audience as to why some students from the US wanted to tell an Indian story and how we did it so well. I never liked looking at Kahani as an Indian story (even though it clearly was) but I was flattered that apparently we were believable as an Indian family. Also, audiences in Varanasi, at least to my knowledge, were never frustrated without understanding what was going on. The biggest critique of Kahani at K was "I didn't understand it when..." Even the school children seemed to understand the performance and weren't entirely bewildered when characters started dancing to represent the passing of time.

My biggest regret is that I became too sick to act in the second performance, which I understand had to be rewritten to accommodate my absence. Other than that, the experience of performing in another country filled me with a sense of vulnerability that I'd never felt before. The last thing I felt different upon our varied stages in Varanasi was comfortable. At K I'd become accustomed to our Balch Theater and performing the play there became almost a chore. In Varanasi, the play was filled with a new nervous energy that made every step I take a careful choice. 

Cameron G. Schneberger

The Blink of an Eye

I have been reflecting with a lot of care on Kahani's trip to Benares. Jaime says that we're the stories we tell ourselves. My mom told me, “You think you will remember, but you won't. So you have to write it down.” And I know that with dreams, but even waking, the thing that sticks beyond the drying of the dew is whatever we tell other people. So I've been writing and thinking and telling with a lot of care.

I will never forget that first ride in the sumo from the airport to Nirman. An airport doesn't count, so really it was our first breath of India. I had expected my stomach to be all wrought and wrung with excitement and happiness, but I felt neither pleasant nor unpleasant — just wide-eyed. For once — though if I had thought about it then, I probably would have lost my balance — I was in that state they talk about which is beyond thought or judgment. I didn't register what I saw as good or bad, only “wow.” I thought, okay, here we are. We went past buildings and people and cows, trees with stripes painted on them and folks on motorcycles and little kids and someone hefting a bundle on their shoulder and old men and schoolgirls in their matching salwar kameezes. There was Hindi everywhere, written and spoken. Chip vendors, garbage, autos. Everyone was just doing their thing, and there we were, doing our thing, which was to get to Nirman. When it started raining, I wasn't at all surprised, though Anthony said they had been needing a good rain. That's what it felt like to me — inward and outward monsoons.

Now, a few people have alluded to culture shock, and I have got to say, I think that's pretty impossible. I think you need to be immersed in a place for months in order to experience culture shock, or culture. When folks start in with a kind of 'you must know so much about Indian culture' thing, there are a hundred separate responses which go off in my head like popcorn in many directions. But I will tell you this. As student-performers and guests in that city, we learned a lot. It was the blink of an eye, but what a sweet blink it was! I told someone about that thing in ecology whereby dry ground, desert ground, cannot take in rains all at once, as you would think it could. Flooding happens. If the soil is moist, though, it soaks up the downpour like a sponge. I felt a lot in Benares, and wonder how it can have been so intense — and conclude it's because of a lifetime of reading, hearing, thinking, and dreaming about India which all became most recently wrapped up in this great and juicy theatre project.

Ed asks us what was different doing the show in the States and in India. You know, I think people had different ways in to the work, different barriers to and different ease with all their different ways of resonating with the story. At K, people may have known more about the project because they saw it take shape, whether up close or peripherally in the community. They also may have had a more fixed idea of the show as “Indian.” For some people, the questions in the show provoked an itch to pursue definite answers and concretely situated feminist morals of the story, goals which have their time and place but which we found ourselves smoothing out, redirecting and opening up during the talkbacks. Or at least, that was what I found myself doing. A subjective show about subjectivity is an invitation into the postmodern opalescence of questions turned back upon themselves, that's what I found; that dynamic was more apparent when we performed Kahani at Kalamazoo College than when we took it to Benares.

But when we took it to Benares, we were thinking about other things. The concern the ensemble had had at K with making the show technically snappy — with 'having our shit together' for each other, for our techie collaborators, and for the audience — was replaced with a desire to work with it in its fullest flexibility, the trait we had been working on, the one which allowed us to take the work to different venues with little rehearsal time and our hearts in our hands. We might have listened more in India because our ears were already pricked to new sounds. And I think in India people's first response to the work was often of relating the family onstage to their own — 'You walk just like my dada!' or 'I was so sad when dadi died,' or 'My own mai jokes just like that.' There may have been an artificial wall of national and cultural identity that folks erected in the States which was less a barrier in India.

We did, however, deal with a language barrier in Benares, and I have got to say, that made it so interesting. I won't say I love language barriers, but I pretty much love language barriers. It's not that they're good or easy; but I think it's so interesting what gets through them. What is it about the work that transcends words? That was something we were always wondering. Mai is a novel in Hindi was then translated into English and adapted by us in a crazy spiraling process for the stage. When Nita Kumar, who had translated it, saw the show, she told us that there were things she was unable to translate which worked their way back into the story gesturally, physically. To all of us that was highest praise. I am always looking for where and why that happens. What about art transcends its medium? What about speech is more than words? What is it in a glance that can bridge the gap? So with all of this in mind, our bodies became very important. (And oh by the way we were SWEATY. Let me tell you, it's a whole different show when you're as soaked as we were in Benares.)

In Benares, there was a certain aesthetic thing that took place that was even bigger than our bodies, maybe, or smaller. All of a sudden, the fabric and the bricks and the props made sense. It was like they had come home. All the colors and textures fit a little better than they had fit on the stage of Balch. And the props that we replaced — I keep telling about how I saw at least five people sweeping with grass brooms just like mine. The Raja Ghat performance was so effulgent, so sweet and apt and luminous in that 200-year old building, in that courtyard, that it would have been worth taking us there just for that, in my opinion.

It's really important the way you fold the past into the present. It's of utter urgency that you not tear its delicate paper or its insect wings, that you catch the tune and hum it to yourself a few times, so as not to forget. You have to do two things at once, not kill it with stifling nor let it change unrecognizably, so that you can access it one day and know that around the corner from that memory is the thing that made the memory, the instant when the you of the past could have turned to the you of now and said, with glinting eye, “This is what it feels like.” This is the way the chai tastes. This is the way the air feels. This is what is going on in my heart, while I behold all of these things as stunned as if I just woke up.
Fiona Carey

Falling in....

When I came to India to perform Kahani, I did not expect to fall for it. I did not fall in love persay, but through time I began to find myself drinking in India's dust like leaves photosynthisize the sun. I feel the same thing happened to my attitudes towards performing Kahani. State-side, performances helpfully forced me to rexamine myself and my personal parallels to my character Sunaina, and pushed me outside of my comfort zone. Here, it was a more outward exploration. Here, I was confronted with the question of "how do you know?" Whether it was Indian culture, the family, its workings and oppression and trust and bonds and relationships, or other themes, there was an outsider's question of that connection, which I was able to share my personal findings and bounce them off of others. The secret? Therein lies the same between the culture I know and the culture I explored, albeit different constructs. Performing Kahani in the location it was set made the international similarities all the more clear for me, and possibly more clear for the audience as well through our talkbalks. Here, our story (no pun intended) has come to fruition and clarity at a level that can break even language barriers and personal biases and stigmas, my own included.

McKenna Kring

What I Saw When I Looked Up

Above all things, ten days in India was exercise in deconstructing the dichtomy between mind and matter. For much of the trip, I relied on my old habit of intellectualizing. In order to deal with new surroundings and challenges, I depended on my intellectual capacity to keep me secured to the ground. I could decide when to engage, and with what, and with whom. I could douse my mosquito net with Deet 100. I could keep my eyes fastideously fixed on the ground in front of my muddied tevas.

But India soon rejected my tendency to neatly place mind over matter. Cars carrying dozens of faces, cows carrying hundreds of fleas, and people carrying thousands of years of history came at me from every angle. My precisely planned and packed suitcase spent four days flying over Europe. One of our actors was too ill to perform at our largest and most grandoise venue. I was unable to compartmentalize all of the things I was seeing and feeling and smelling and tasting. There was no time to think. No time to reorganize. No time to fill my stream of consciousness with the familiar rains of brainstorming. The monsoon had washed away my careful plans into polluted sewers of Varanasi.

And so, I started looking up.

As soon as my gaze extended beyond my comfort zone, I saw a city full of vibrancy and a group of my peers with a brilliant knack for improvisation. Together we navigated the spidery streets of an ancient city. We made up for eachother's faults. We shared Rupees and Pepto-Bismol and unconditional support. We were often unrehearsed and unshowered, but each of us, in our quiet ways, rose to the occasion.

In the sweltering heat, in the ghostly shadows of crumbling brick buildings, in the presence of peacocks and camels and domesticated cows, in the company of incredible writers, actors, and artists, I finally began to understand what it meant to "trust the work." My rambling brain shut its rambling trap and I was able stand in the twinkling tea lights of Raja Ghat with the utmost confidance that we would succeed. And in my opinion, we did.

In this country you cannot look down. It is too alive. It is always changing. Today, I reflect on this as I pack my souviners and smelly clothes into my carry-on. Our stay at Nirman has made an intregal impression on my development as an actor, as a student, and as a world citizen. I have learned stories and rules and rituals. I have looked into peoples' eyes. I have peeked into a facet of the human experience that is so radically different from my own that it has forced my eyelids open and jerked my chin straight ahead.

"Own the world," said Nita, our host and teacher, "not just your own country but the whole world." Although this advice is simple, it summoned from within me a previously untapped passion; I want to do things that are universally meaningful; I want to find the fine, transparent, but unfathomably strong threads that connect all of us; I want to continue to look up, up, and out.

To my friends and supporters, thank you for your boundless trust. I will carry the echos of this ensemble, this production, and this experience with me as I move forward.

"We left the house peacefully. Together we left the house."

Namaste.
Jane Huffman

Race, Class, and Gender in Varanasi

Such a cornucopia of race, class and gender moments in this beautiful city. My African-American, genderqueer partner, M’Bwende’s race is at times a connector to folks here – ‘Ah, you are African?’ Or – ‘You look Indian!’ And, ‘Indian, Indian?’ And my whiteness is a magnet around being obviously Western, and accordingly, possessed of out-of-scale resources in the midst of poverty.

On my end, around negotiating for motorized or occasionally bicycle rickshaw, I pay the Western fare without negotiation. I understand that the rate I am quoted is two or three times the local rate and my take is: of course it is. My salary is perhaps fifty to a hundred times higher than anyone’s annual income that I come across here daily, so what is my complaint? How dare I negotiate with someone who is on the disastrous end of surviving the monumental inequities of North/South global economics every day? I’m not going to do it. M’B has a harder time getting her head around this, as someone who has survived a lifetime of US cabbies refusing to pick her up, overcharging her, or discharging her abruptly based on race and gender. At one point a tuk-tuk driver dumps us summarily halfway to our destination after overcharging us. I just get out of the cab and start looking for another. She is outraged. She engages the driver. As we move on, I say, you know, you can get angry at him, but I just can’t. I have no ground to stand on whatsoever.

And in many ways, the engagement around cabs is eerily similar to our US situation. When I leave the hotel every morning, a group of rickshaw drivers instantly recognizes me and engages. When she leaves the hotel without me, no one notices her or offers. Whiteness, as always, is the magnet for help, service, and consideration.

In terms of gender, M’B has been almost universally ‘Sir’d since our arrival. I’ve had a couple of different sets of anxieties and places of relief around that. First, it’s taken me a minute to shift from the gender place I operate from on-campus and in the Kalamazoo community, which is to make her gender visible as a way of placing queerness into very anti-queer/non-queer community/spaces. So, if I say ‘she’ while our daughter Ella calls her Daddy at the coffee shop/lecture/local event, I am doing it in a context where I’ve assessed the relative physical threat to her and to all of us as minimal and opted for authenticity in the moment. She is Ella’s Daddy, and everyone around us can just have whatever moment they need to have about how that gendered reality sits with them.

Here, we were in a boat going up the Ganges our first evening, having a lively discussion with our guide, who has been calling her ‘sir’ the entire time we negotiated the boat arrangement and at some point I just say ‘she’ in the middle of all that and I can see her swing her attention toward me, like, are you really here? Get here. And I did, but this is a moment I have been having more and more lately -- gender slip: Get here. What context are we in? How are you sitting in your gender conforming space of privilege and not seeing the difficulty/danger you are placing me in? I have always drawn on the ah-ha moment I had reading Leslie Feinberg back in the early 90s, when s/he wrote that his/her gender is contextual – this is exactly how I’ve experienced M’Bs gender in our life together: she here, he there. And now that we are in this new context, I’m slow on the uptake, perhaps dangerously slow.

The place of relief I’ve felt has been around walking in the street late at night with him. During my visit last year, I was here with the wonderful Margaret Weidenhoft of K’s Center for International Programs, and we are both very light skinned redheads, which is a ridiculous rarity in Varanasi. Walking around the packed lanes late at night, we were a magnet for curiosity and merchants of every stripe – two white Western women unaccompanied by men. I felt daunted by how often we were approached for cabs or other kinds of sales; it was hard to have a conversation, and to be consistently polite and firm about our disinterest in buying anything. By contrast, one night, M’B and I walked about 3 kilometers back to Assi from the North Chaulk merchant district and I felt such relief to be walking with a brown man by my side. People still clocked me, but didn’t approach. We enjoyed taking in all the incredible sights and smells and movements together. We took our time in the lessening heat of the day; it was one of the pure pleasures of our trip. In the US, I have on occasion felt this kind of increased mobility with him in DC and Philly’s Black neighborhoods, but only by day. At night, I am worried about the police threatening/intervening in his movements, about how any passing person on the street is perceiving her gender, and how these interactions might evolve in an instant into threats or violence. I think the sense of space and relief -- as a couple -- that I had on the streets of Chaulk and Assi may have been a first in our 7+ years together.

All of this, of course, is taking place as we mount Kahani – the play devised by light-skinned, Western, (largely) gender-conforming students at Kalamazoo College on the tensions of gender and class in India! My head is spinning. I know it will take me many months to sift through all of the layers of race, gender, class and culture that I’ve been coursing through in my time here; I’m truly grateful for it.
Jaime Grant