Mimesis

The launch of the second of the two parallel productions I am working on simultaneously, or alternately, or whatever – a production of Double Trouble, last seen in Ethiopia, but this time working with Mimesis, the drama club at Amity University. It was meant to start with three days of workshops; we need to catch up, for time is already slipping away. But the first of those was lost – a combination of my own lateness, having a long journey all the way across town from my CMS commitment, some necessary chatting with Dr Kum Kum, the person in overall charge, a small welcoming ceremony, and then a pair of performances by the Mimesis students. The first was a perfectly charming puppet show version of The Little Mermaid, created by some of the design team, presented in a small cardboard box puppet theatre, but which we could all see on the big screen in the auditorium. The second was a hugely impressive piece based on The Nose (Gogol?) which was hugely physical, and based on the ideas of Berkoff (deriving from my workshop here last year, it would seem. It was all very necessary, and actually a great way for me to see at least some of the people I would be working with on stage.

On Day 2, we were able to start some practical work. We looked at what I see as the opening, an improvised arrival, as though they were a travelling medieval theatre company arriving in a village. Or in our case, bursting into the auditorium and creating a set on an empty stage, noisily, theatrically, and interspersed with “acts” to entertain the village. Their energy was impressive, but it could only be suggested at through mime, as we had no actual set to work with. Slightly disappointingly, there are no musicians in the group, but I think that can be replaced with basic percussion, We spent some time working out various potential entertainments – clowning, singing, telling jokes. It made for an energetic start, but will have to be shelved for the time being until we have something of a set to construct. We do need to get on with the play itself, but it is a challenge, as I barely know them.

Day 3 started with something of a bombshell. I had been led to believe they liked the play we were working on, found it akin to Hindi comedies, but as I entered the hall, Rohit told me they found it somewhat misogynistic. Which in some senses is undeniably true, all the more so as we have female servants abused by their male masters, and there are various cliched representations of the relationship between men and women, with flirtatious female characters. It was put to me by them that we might consider switching the genders. But unless the whole thing were simply to be played in something like drag, I felt this meant re-writing the play to fit. The boys seemed to go along with this, and I was obliged to take the suggestion seriously. I had never encountered such a situation before, and actually found it refreshing, and maybe might make for a more interesting interpretation. There was an interesting debate, which I felt little prepared for, but in the end agreed to see what I could do with the script.

Since this would mean a rethink on the original, and extremely limited, casting that Rohit and I had considered, it made sense to shelve whatever script-based audition ideas I had in my head, we used the session to abandon Double Trouble for the time being, and do some spontaneous improvisation. I was relieved, in truth, not to start on the script yet, as I barely kn ow them, and this might be a way to know them better. As indeed it proved. It included Crossing thee Circle, of course, but also other exercises on a similar vein. There was a lot of laughter, and some parts of the session worked very well indeed, but I did not feel in entire control – understandable, I suppose, since I was making it up as I went along. Which is the spirit of spontaneous improvisation, I know, but necessarily from the teacher. I do get affected from time to time by imposter syndrome, the feeling that sooner or later I will be caught out.

I spent much of the evening re-writing the script; actually, more the mechanical process of re-writing names, made more difficult by the fact that Control F no longer seems to summon Find and Replace… so I changed each word one by one. But it meant I had to re-read the script, and the more I did so, the more I felt that the new version would be nothing like as good, or at least nothing like as funny. And I actually thought it wrong to describe the script as misogynistic. The Anthonys are pompous fools, who have their pomposity pricked. The female characters are the ones who come out on top. And in any case it can be seen now as a satire on a flawed society; and to change that society to something unrecognisable takes away the satire.

I wrote the group a long WhatsApp message, attaching the new version, but also saying why I preferred the original; the same reasons as given above. We shall see.