India’s Leading Political Theatre company in Haringey this Month

India’s leading political theatre company, Jana Natya Manch ( JANAM meaning 'birth'),  based in New Delhi is touring the UK.

The performances are being held in different venues across the UK including School of Oriental and African Studies, London and University of Bristol. Their final performance will be held in Haringey at the Asian Centre, 8 Caxton Road Wood Green on 7^th July 2013. The performance is hosted by Indian Worker’s Association as a part of Ghadar Party Centenary celebrations.

The performance will include:

A presentation on Ghadar Party (10min)

MACHINE (20 min)

Janam’s first street play, a classic of the movement, first performed in October 1978.

A stark riveting critique of capitalism with lyrical, stylized dialogues that depict the exploitation of industrial labour.

Machine was written by Safdar Hashmi and Rakesh Saksena, and was finalised on the floor, where everyone present contributed. The machine, created very simply by human figures, is the symbolic representation of capitalism. The worker, the capitalist and the security officer are all parts of the machine; they are complementary parts of a system founded upon the exploitation of one by the other; their co-existence, then, is unequal.

Safdar has explained the success of Machine: first, because of its not just interesting, but near-poetic prose; second, because it captures in its abstraction a very real, living truth and trusts its audiences to make the connection between the abstraction and the reality; third, because abstraction and brevity lend it a certain simplicity, without rendering it simplistic.

YE DIL MAANGE MOR GURUJI (This Heart Desires More, O Guru, 30 min)

This is one of Janam’s strongest political pieces, which is poetic, angry and humorous in equal parts. This play was originally created in response to the communal carnage in Gujarat about a decade ago. It takes off from the violence in Gujarat and moves beyond to critique the move to reconstitute the Indian state and society along fascistic lines.

YE HUM KYUN SAHEN (Enough is Enough, 30 min)

A play based on the personal narratives of industrial workers in and around Delhi, gathered by the actors.

The play is a juxtaposition of hilarious, over-the-top farce with deadly serious, quietly assertive docu-drama on the work conditions of workers. Through testimonies of real workers, we learn about issues that confront them, such as low wages, long hours of work, inadequate safety measures, the contract labour system, etc.

Poetry of Palestine ( A Visual Poetry Performance, 30 min)

Poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Safi Abdi, Mahmoud Darwish and Nizar Qabbani Translated by Brijesh. Visual essay by Sherna Dastur
Designed and directed by Sudhanva Deshpande

A highly-acclaimed poetry reading performance about Palestine, the land that has nurtured three great religions, a land ravaged by a brutal occupation and seemingly perpetual war, the land of a heroic people.

The reading starts with a song on Palestine by Faiz Ahmed Faiz and a poem by the Somalian poet Safi Abdi.

The centrepiece of the reading is the poem ‘Under Siege’ by Palestine’s best-known poet, Mahmoud Darwish, who died a few years ago. This is a deeply moving, sometimes philosophical, sometimes trenchant, poem that reasserts the basic human values of love, understanding, dignity and self-respect.