What does it take to romance a Hollywood star? Scissors and lots of paper according to award-winning play,Paper Cut A lonely secretary stays back in the office after all others have gone home. In her little corner,using photos from old film magazines,she escapes into a world of daydreams,where she is a glamorous movie star loved by many,especially the One. But what happens when imagination and reality collide? Israeli puppeteer Yael Rasooly will take the audiences through this topsy-turvy journey through a one-woman show titled Paper Cut that will be staged as part of the ongoing Ishara International Puppet Festival in Delhi. The New York Times has called Paper Cut artfully quirky,and the performance,which premiered in 2009,has won several international awards apart from highlighting festivals such as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Now Rasooly is looking forward to seeing how the Indian audience reacts to her world of old Hollywood films. Its my first visit to India, she says over e-mail. An added attraction,she says,is that the Indian version of Paper Cut will incorporate quotes and songs from old Bollywood films. In the play,Rasooly talks to paper dolls and,as the audience watches,creates a complete world from black-and-white paper around herself on stage. Cut-outs of Hollywood heroes and heroines of the 1940s are her friends,and the villains are borrowed from Alfred Hitchcocks films. Through the secretarys story of joy and anguish,love and pain,the hit scores from dozens of Hollywood films play in the background. Rasooly has teamed up with Lior Lerman,a multi-media artist,to perfect her act. We tried every manipulation we could think of to create these black-and-white characters cutting paper,gluing,folding,burning,ripping,shredding,blowing them up and even eating them, she jokes. She says that the genesis of the play was a gift a portrait book of Marlene Dietrich,with black-and-white photos of her glamour years during the 30s and 40s. I became fascinated with this era,with its music,romance,suspense,heartbreak and suspicion. I was intrigued by the force of these films to lure the audience into their drama and intense characters, she explains. All medium manipulations and tricks aside,the play,says Rasooly,is the story of a woman in love with someone she cannot have. Many women are in love with the fantasy of that ideal romantic relationship,carefully packaged and sold to us again and again. How far does one go to construct such an illusion? The overpowering desire to maintain it is the thought I have tried to answer through my performance, she sums up. As far as she is concerned,puppetry is for adults too. There is a certain force of magic in being able to sit in the darkness of a theatre for an hour,and enter a world of imagination that most of us have left far behind in childhood. Thats why I think puppetry is a medium for adults as well, she concludes. Paper Cut will be staged at India Habitat Centre on February 8,and at Epicentre,Gurgaon,on February 13. Contact: 43663090/80
