From 1981, the activities at the Kasauli Art Centre expanded from the visual arts camps to include interdisciplinary collaborations in theatre making and experiments in performance. The sites for these were the outdoor ‘Pit’ and ‘Slab’; the former measuring about 20 x 10 feet with amphitheater like ledges cut into the hillside as seating. The Slab, a concrete platform was added in 1987 to replace the tin roof of the lower outhouse. Measuring 60 feet x 15 feet, this became a stage with the spectacular view of the valley and the open sky as a backdrop.
The performances that were developed here were intensely collaborative and 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 KAC: Nilima Sheikh designed and made the sets, puppets by Dadi Padumjee, music and singing by Vidya Rao and the script by Geetanjali Shree. ‘Behind Every Curtain’ a documentary film by Navina Sundaram follows both the seminar and the performance.
Productions were also invited to be performed at KAC: In 1988, Neelam Man Singh Chowdhry’s Raja Bhartrahari (in Punjabi) and in the same year the Naqqals performed Kima Malki.
KAC also hosted and later curated significant seminars such as ‘Marxism and Aesthetics’, convened by Rajen Prasad for the Social Scientist in 1979. The Journal of Arts & Ideas (launched in 1982) that focused on art and cultural practice emerged from these discussions and later issues of the journal included papers from KAC symposia: Cinema in 1983 convened by Kumar Shahani, Arun Khopkar and Ashish Rajadhyaksha and ‘Dialogues on Cultural Practice in India’ in 1988. In 1991 the last seminar at KAC focused on the theme of secularism.
Video interviews with artist-participants at Kasauli Art Centre
J. P. S. Uberoi, Presentation on Goethe’s Colour Theory, 1983.
Installation view of the exhibition.
The Journal of Arts and Ideas covers and contents, some proposals for launching the journal by Prasanna, 1981 and the Journal for Arts and Ideas, minutes of the meetings, 1981–82.
Photographs from the seminar on ‘Marxism and Aesthetics’, 1979 and posters of films screened at the Seminar on Cinema, 1983 at Ivy Lodge, Kasauli.
Reproductions of paintings by Nilima Sheikh, (from left) Performance at Kasauli, 1989 and Thumri, 1989.
Vivan watching Gora rehearsal at Ivy Lodge, 1991.
(From left) German artists painting backdrops for the Ramlila performance in Kasauli, 1983, and photographs of participants in the theatre workshop and productions of 1989.