Landscape as Performance

Image: Richard Long, A Line in Australia, created outside Broken Hill, 1977

This workshop focuses on landscape in and as performance. While the two terms — landscape and performance — may seem unconnected, it is useful to remember that Greek theatre did not have a built structure; it modified hillsides to create performance spaces. This workshop, then, reflects on the interplay between theatre/performance and the world outside.

We ask:

What is it that turns land into landscape? How do we create performance against, with or within a landscape? How do our actions affect or transform it? To put it the other way around, what does the landscape relay back to us?

Working with landscape is not the same as working with a specific site, where meaning depends on the site’s architecture and history. A landscape is neither merely natural nor merely historical. As a composition of sky, cloud, bird, river, rock, tree, plant, alongside built structures like path, wall or bridge, a landscape is constantly made and remade by environmental and human forces. These elements interact with and transform one another, and the landscape, over time.

We engage with landscape as an expanded field that ranges from a physical space to a metaphor, asking how it might reshape the processes of performance-making. Text, surface, matter and scale offer ways of tuning our awareness to how time, rhythm and atmosphere shift.

The SKAP Summer School and its location in Kasauli provide the context within which a set of activities drawn from performance and theatre practice will be attempted. The methodology of the workshop is a sequence of ‘scores, instructions, prompts and briefs’ (Wicked Arts Assignments, 2020) that takes the form of thinking-making exercises, alongside screenings, readings and discussions.

Facilitators

Anuradha Kapur is a theatre maker and teacher. She completed her term as Director National School of Drama, New Delhi in 2013. She has held Visiting Professorships at Ambedkar University, Delhi, the University of Warwick and at the University of Cape Town. For her work in the theatre, Anuradha Kapur was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi award for Direction in 2004.

Neelam Man Singh Chowdhry is a theatre maker. She is an alumni of National School of Drama and studied History of Arts for her master’s. She has been attached to The Rang Mandal, a theatre repertory in Bhopal, and later became a faculty member at The Department of Indian Theatre, Panjab University.  She is the recipient of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 2003, and the Padma Shri in 2011. She is presently Professor Emeritus at Panjab University.

Gargi Bharadwaj is a theatre and performance studies scholar. She is an alumni of National School of Drama with dual MA degrees from University of Amsterdam and University of Warwick and a PhD from the University of Hyderabad. She has published articles and essays on cultural policy and infrastructure, contemporary performance practice, gender and proto-feminist themes in cultural work and, dramaturgies of urban space among others. She is currently Associate Professor of Practice, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat.

Amrithasruthi Radhakrishnan is an Assistant Professor at Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, with a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is a trained dancer for over two decades with the Natya Vriksha Dance Collective. Her research attempts to bridge theory and practice in both academic and artistic domains. Her research focuses on performance, festival events, curatorial practice and cultural consumption, exploring alternate histories of performance reception.

Purav Goswami is a dramaturg and theatre maker and researcher from Assam, India. He is pursuing a PhD in Theatre from University of Cape Town, South Africa, as part of the Reimagining Tragedy from Africa and Global South project (ReTAGS) funded by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation (2019-2024). Currently, he resides and works from Delhi, India.

Participants

Aditi Gautam has a Masters in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (2016) and a PG Diploma in Theatre (Acting) from the National School of Drama (2023).

Dhwani Vij has an MA in Theatre (Physical Theatre and Performance) from Royal Holloway College, University of London (2012-13) and a BA in English from Kirori Mal College, Delhi University (2008-11). Currently, Dhwani works as a theatre-based facilitator in the Arts Department at Shiv Nadar School, Faridabad.

Kazi Sharowar Hussain completed an MA in Cultural Studies from Tezpur University (2018-21). He recently received an Arts Research Grant from the India Foundation for the Arts for visual ethnographic research on the boats and cultural life of Char-chapori region in Barpeta district, Assam.

Millo Ankha is an indigenous poet, artist and storyteller from Ziro, Arunachal Pradesh. In 2020, Ankha founded AAMA Collective – a collective of women visual artists to address the absence of women’s perspectives in North-East India.

Mridupankhi Rajkumari has a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (2024) and an MA in Performance Studies from Ambedkar University, Delhi (2015). Mridupankhi is a practitioner of Sattriya dance.

Murari Jha is a Delhi-based artist and educator. He completed his BFA from Patna University (2010) and MFA from Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University, Agra (2012).

Nikhita Singh studied Media and Cultural Studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (2016-18). Nikhita is the founder and director of Parwana Theatre.

Pallav Singh pursued an MFA in Acting from National School of Drama, New Delhi (2016-19). Pallav is an engineer-turned-theatre actor currently based in Mumbai.

Pranjal Vaid studied Acting and Theatre Making in Drama School Mumbai (2022-23). Currently, he is studying at the Riyaaz Academy for Children’s Literature run by the Ektara Trust.

Shubham Ahirwar completed his Bachelors (2022) and Masters degrees (2024) in Painting from the Government College of Fine Arts, Jabalpur.

Shubhra Dixit studied Media and Cultural Studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (2013-15). Her research-based documentary films have been shown in many film festivals in the country and abroad.

Yogendra Singh completed a 3-year Acting Diploma from the National School of Drama, New Delhi (2011-14) and an NSD Fellowship in Clowning with Abhilash Pillai in 2014-15.