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Journalism of Courage
When Anand Gandhi was 19,he joined Alok Ulfats theatre group. The team would travel to several remote areas for plays. They would stitch their own clothes and also build the sets themselves. One performance,in particular,is etched in his memory. They were performing a play,titled Prithvi. It was in the middle of Rajaji National Park in Uttarakhand,and our audience was the nomadic tribe of the Gujjars, recalls Gandhi. Since there was no fixed format to the play,the actors merged with the audience,breaking the divide. Gandhi calls it one of the most profound experiences of his life. Its been 13 years since,but he is yet to see a piece of theatre to match that performance.
Ever since,Gandhi has wished to create a space for similar cultural experiments. With the success and acclaim of Ship of Theseus (SoT) behind him,the filmmaker is ready to fuel that dream through Recyclewala Labs. An offshoot of Recyclewala Films,his film production house that made SoT,the new project is dedicated to the performing arts.
Gandhi says he has always wanted to create a space to engage young minds and start a conversation with them. With Recyclewala Labs,we want to arrive at a place where we can invite artists,architects,designers and thinkers to come together and exchange ideas, says the 33-year-old filmmaker.
Although the workshops are Recyclewala Labs first interaction with its audience,it has hosted several in-house talks by professionals such as Lakshmi Pratury,the co-host of
TEDIndia 2009 and host and curator of INK conferences,as well as mathematicians and scientists. The first thing I did was have Alok join us,to get the process started, he says. The team is a mix of writers,architects,graffiti artists,programmers and scientists.
Gandhi says this is a start to what he hopes will be a long journey. To bring people together requires infrastructure and resources. But engaging the collective conscience of the society and getting them together,needs to be done right now, he says. Admitting that they are still at a nascent stage,Gandhi says they have a long way to go. Apart from theatre and films,Recyclewala Labs has plans of foraying into other mediums as well. After this workshop,we will look at large-scale puppetry with automata,which employs machines and mechanisms as an unconventional medium of the performing arts. We also want to look at publishing, says Gandhi.
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