Panel Discussion
Kai Tuchmann and Anuja Ghosalkar are currently creating the scaffolding of their newest book on histories and practices of documentary theatre in India. They understand this publication as an expansion of their own curatorial work into the field of writing. Therefore, the foundation of this publication is rooted in the act of curation. Curating a book—as opposed to Anthologizing—is open and shapeshifting without water tight dictums. In their volume multi-authored erotica performance texts sit just as comfortably next to academic essays. Similarly, a work-in-progress script and course curriculum occupy a harmonious space rather than a disparate one. For them curating is that delicate process of synchronous interrelation of thought, action, time, politics, and history.
While classical performance writing stays within the world of a single play, a curatorial approach is concerned with the orbit that lies outside the particular theatrical production. Together with an esteemed panel of theatremakers and editors, they want to discuss the question—What strategies and approaches might allow one to extend such a curatorial gesture into a book?
Panelists:
Kai Tuchmann, Dramaturge, Director and Academic
Anuja Ghosalkar, Writer and Director, Founder of Drama Queen
Amitesh Grover, Associate Professor, National School of Drama (India)
Nishant Shah, Professor of Global Media and Director of the Digital Narratives Studio, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Arushi Vats, Writer
Zhao Chuan, Theatremaker, Writer and Founding Member of the Shanghai-based Theatre Collective Grass Stage
Moderator:
Daniel Elam, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, School of Humanities, HKU
Date: Tuesday, June 20, 2023
Time: 5:00-6:30 pm (Hong Kong Time)
Venue: On Zoom
Kai Tuchmann and Anuja Ghosalkar are the co-curators of the first international workshop series on Documentary Theatre in India called Starting Realities that programmed artists like Gobsquad Collective, Boris Nikitin, Rimini Protokoll, Zhao Chuan through 2018-19. Collaboratively they curated a symposium on Documentary Theatre practices in India and Asia for the Serendipity Arts Festival in 2019 titled, Connecting Realities. They are co-curators of a VR based performance called, Look, Here is Your Machine, Get In! for the Serendipity Arts Virtual 2020. For the Brecht Festival, Augsburg 2022, they curated an experimental video work. In 2022 they designed and facilitated an online course curriculum on Digital Documentary Theatre for the Serendipity Arts Foundation. The duo has facilitated workshops and lectures at It’s the Real Thing, Basel, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, National School of Drama, New Delhi, Harkat Studio, Mumbai, Goethe-Institute Bangalore and Mumbai, Under The Mango Tree, Berlin, University of Music and Performing Arts, Frankfurt. Currently they are editing a book on the history of Documentary Theatre in India, that will be published in 2024 by Hong Kong University Press.
Kai Tuchmann
Kai Tuchmann graduated in directing from Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch in Berlin. He works as a dramaturge, director and academic. As a visiting professor at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, he helped develop the curriculum for the BA Dramaturgy program there. Kai has also researched the history of dramaturgy as a Fulbright Scholar at the Graduate Center of the City University New York, and he is a Fellow of the Mellon School of Theatre at Harvard University. In his internationally shown documentary theatre works, Kai has explored the afterlife of the Cultural Revolution in contemporary China, the impact of urbanization on migrant workers in Europe and Asia, and the role of the body in the face of digital technologies. His stagings and dramaturgies were invited, among others, to I Dance Hong Kong, Zürcher Theatrespektakel, Festival d’Automne à Paris, and documenta-institute. His recent publication is the edited volume Postdramatic Dramaturgies-Resonances between Asia and Europe (transcript, 2022).
Anuja Ghosalkar
Anuja Ghosalkar is the founder of Drama Queen—a Documentary theatre company, evolving a unique form of theatre in India since 2015. Her practice focuses on personal histories, archival absences and blurring the hierarchies between audience and performer—to extend the idea of theatre to create audacious work. Iterations around form and process, modes of (social) media, sites, technologies, reclaiming narratives on gender and intimacy are critical to her performance making and pedagogy. Her performances and workshops have been programmed by University of Oxford, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Sophiensale, Serendipity Arts Festival, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Forum Transregionale –ZMO, among others. As guest faculty at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, she leads practice based pedagogy. She has written on film and performance for Nang Magazine, Art India, Bioscope, Hakara, Outlook, and for an edited volume on Performance Making and the Archive for Routledge. She is the 2022 research fellow at the archives of the National Centre for Biological Studies.
Amitesh Grover
Amitesh Grover (b.1980) is an award-winning director and artist. He is the recipient of the MASH FICA Award, Swiss Art Residency Award, Bismillah Khan National Award, Charles Wallace Award (U.K.), and was nominated for the Arte Laguna Prize (Italy), Prix Ars Electronica (Austria) and Forecast Award (HKW, Germany). With a background as a theatre director, he works undisciplined, with and across a diverse range of mediums, practices, approaches and concepts: an embodied practice that he calls performance in the expanded field. His work has been shown globally at venues like the Southbank Centre (London), Arts Centre (Melbourne), MT Space (Canada), HKW Berlin (Germany), Belluard Bollwerk International (Switzerland), The Hartell Gallery (U.S.), and in India at the Foundation of Indian Contemporary Art, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Chennai Photo Biennale, VAICA Video Art Festival, among several others. He has been curator for the International Theatre Festival of Kerala, Ranga Shankara (Bangalore), and Nove Writers’ Festival (Prague). He studied at the University of Arts London, and is a published author in several performance journals. Currently, he is Associate Professor at the National School of Drama (India). He is based in New Delhi, India, and his work and reviews are available online <www.amiteshgrover.com>
Nishant Shah
Nishant Shah is a Professor of Global Media and the Director of the Digital Narratives Studio at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. After co-founding the Centre for Internet & Society (India) in 2008, he has since then, worked in various academic roles as the Director of Digital School at Leuphana University in Germany, and the Vice-President of Research at ArtEZ University of the Arts in The Netherlands. He is a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and a knowledge partner with Point of View (Mumbai), Digital Asia Hub (Singapore/Hong Kong), and Radboud Institute of Culture and History (Nijmegen). Nishant actively positions his work at the intersections of academic research, humanist traditions of story-telling and meaning making, and capacity development for hopeful change practice. His last two books Really Fake (University of Minnesota Press) and Overload, Excess, Creep: An Internet From India (Institute of Network Cultures / Leftword Books), are available for open digital access. His current preoccupations are about expanding and exploring the affordances of digital authorship, authenticity, and authority towards collective action.
Arushi Vats
Arushi Vats is a writer based in New Delhi, India. She is the associate editor for Fiction at Alternative South Asia Photography, and the recipient of the Momus – Eyebeam Critical Writing Fellowship 2021, and the Art Scribes Award 2021. She has conducted workshops on writing for Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, Khoj International Artists Association, and Art Chain India. Her curatorial projects have focused on conceptions of image and power, and histories of resistance in South Asia.
Zhao Chuan
Zhao Chuan, born in 1967, works across theatre, literature, film and contemporary art. He creates alternative and socially engaged theatre and is the founding member and mastermind of the Shanghai-based theatre collective Grass Stage (since 2005). For over a decade, as a theatremaker and writer, he has created a number of theatre works across China together with his collective Grass Stage. However, they are often unable to present these works in conventional theatres because of the issues they addressed and their non-professional set-up. The group encourages people from different backgrounds to consider human living conditions and historical issues and stimulates participators and audiences to respond to those issues through the creative process, rehearsals, performances and post-talks. Given its strong interest in social practice, the group’s theatre activities have often been considered too ideological, marginal and uncertain by the mainstream. From 2015 to 2019, Grass Stage supported industry workers to make their theatre pieces; From 2017 to 2019, in dialogue with young people from diverse backgrounds, the group developed stage plays on youth issues in today’s China. His theatre works include Geli Isle (2021), Wild Seeds (2018) and Social Theater Trilogy (2006–2017), comprising World Factory, The Little Society, Madmen’s Stories, Unsettling Stones (2012) etc. “Theatre of Contagion” is the new start of a series of works since the pandemic era in early 2020.
He has been awarded several international literary awards, including the Unita Prize for New Novelists (Taiwan 2001). His publications include fiction, essays and art criticism: On Radical Art: the 80s Scene in Shanghai (author, 2014), The Body at Stake: Experiments in Chinese Contemporary Art and Theatre (co-editor, author, 2013), Beyond the Stage: Zurich Sketches (author, 2021) and AnOther Gathering: Performance in Multiple Realities (co-editor, author, 2021). He is also the producer of an independent documentary titled Shanghai Youth (2015). He has been involved in many international art residencies, collaboration projects and teaching.
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