Talks by Anuradha Kapur and Nilima Sheikh, moderated by Indira Chandrasekhar
19 November 2024, 5 pm
Arthshila Santiniketan
From 1981, the activities at the Kasauli Art Centre expanded from visual arts workshops to include interdisciplinary collaborations in theatre making and experiments in performance. The performances that were developed here delved into questions of form and materiality, with subjects that were drawn from classical texts such as Kalidas’ Shakuntalam, Rabindranath Tagore’s Ghare Baire and Premchand’s Aatma Ram that were reworked to address contemporary questions and concerns. A significant text Nayika Bhed, directed by Anuradha Kapur, was developed alongside a seminar ‘Representations of Women: Prescriptive and Fictional Texts’ curated by cultural theorist Kumkum Sangari and exemplified the interdisciplinary nature of the theatre making at Kasauli: Nilima Sheikh designed the sets, puppets were by Dadi Padumjee, Vidya Rao conceptualised the music and sang, and Geetanjali Shree wrote the the text. Anuradha Kapur and Nilima Sheikh will delve into questions of making, materiality and ‘atmosphere’ at the Kasauli Art Centre through their individual and collaborative praxis across several decades in a conversation with publisher and editor Indira Chandrasekhar.
Anuradha Kapur is a theatre-maker and teacher. Her theatre work has travelled nationally and internationally and she has taught in Universities in India and abroad. She is the founder member of Vivadi a cross-discipline working group of theatre-makers, visual artists, musicians, filmmakers and writers. Almost all her works have been cross-discipline collaborations. Her writings on performance have been widely anthologized and her book Actors Pilgrims Kings and Gods: The Ramlila at Ramnagar was published by Seagull Books, Calcutta (1993, 2004). Anuradha Kapur was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Direction in 2004. Anuradha Kapur completed her term as Director of the National School of Drama, New Delhi in 2013. Anuradha Kapur has held Visiting Professorships at Ambedkar University Delhi, Warwick University, and the University of Cape Town South Africa.
Nilima Sheikh was born to doctor parents in Delhi in 1945, studied art at Baroda between 1965 and 71, and has been exhibiting professionally since 1969. Besides painting she has published on art, illustrated books for children, and designed for theatre. In collaboration with other artists she has made a large mural for the airport terminal in Mumbai.
Indira (Indu) Chandrasekhar, Publisher and Managing Editor of Tulika Books, New Delhi, has been associated with Indian publishing since the early 1980s. She set up Tulika Books, a small and independent publisher of academic books in the social sciences and humanities, in 1995. The authors published by Tulika include some of India’s best known intellectuals, theorists and academics. Over the years, Tulika has developed a niche list of books in the arts and cultural studies – several of them published in association with arts institutions. Publications under a joint imprint with the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation (SSAF) are the latest of such collaborative ventures. Indira is a founding partner of the Independent Publishers’ Distribution Alternatives (IPDA), a distribution network to promote alternative/independent publishing in India, as well as a member of the Paris-based International Alliance of Independent Publishers.