AKASHKUSHUM ROCHONA KORA
Ankur Kala, 72B Park Street, Calcutta
22nd, 25th, 28th, 29th November 2008, at 16:30 and 18:00
free entrance with previous invitation letter
informations phone number: 22 87 84 76
During four months, the French and Mexican theatre director Dr. Jean-Frédéric Chevallier worked with seven women from Ankur Kala. What they have produced all together, it's a kind of walking performing act. The audience, in very reduce number, is invited to cross different spaces of the training centre and to contemplate, in a very simple way, the presence of the women who are there. In this sense, it's a complete no dramatic proposition. There is no character, no story, no conflict, only a sweet invitation to go on in our life journey. If there is any meaning, it is build by each one in the audience, personally, differently, and from his own feeling. Something a little different from what Calcutta public is used to see.
With Fatma Begum, Shibani Bagh, Renu Begum, Anna Dcruze, Parboti K, Sajda Khatoon, Zubaida Nizam
Artistic collaboration: Madhuri Chaudhuri, Annie Joseph
Lighting: Mamata Roy
Photos: Marco de Swarte
Conception and direction: Jean-Frédéric Chevallier
JEAN-FRÉDÉRIC CHEVALLIER is trained in philosophy, sociology and theatrical studies. In 2002, he completed with honours a Doctorate (Ph D) from the Sorbonne University. For two years, he taught at the Institute of Theatre Studies of this university. Writer, director of the Feu Faux Lait troupe, founder of the Proyecto 3 company, and researcher, Jean-Frédéric Chevallier has been lecturer at the Autonomous University of Mexico City and the Institute of Arts at the Autonomous University of the State of Hildago where he coordinated the Research Centre for Contemporary Theatrical Gesture (CIGITECO). He currently teaches theatre directing at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He is member of the National Research System (SNI). His research deals with the dissociation between the dramatic and the theatrical, the relation stage/audience, and the tragic tendencies inhabiting contemporary theatre texts. He has published on these issues in specialised revues in France, Canada, Belgium, Colombia, Italia, Peru and Mexico. He organises theatre research workshops in Salvador, Uruguay, France and Mexico. In Mexico, where he has resided since 2002, he has directed Los tres sueños de Rosaura (based on Calderón by Pasolini) at the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros / National Fine Arts Institute, Callejón de Lys by Joseph Danan at the Forum La Capilla / National Fund for Culture and Arts, Hamlet-Machine by Heiner Müller at the National Culture Museum / National Institute of Anthropology and History, Gaudeamus desde México at the Forum Sor Juana / UNAM Theatre, Sin título at the Casa Refugio Citlaltépetl, Discurso Capital in the Ex-Convento Community Centre of Culhuacan and Bombays Railways at the Carlos Lazo Theatre / UNAM. He organises cycles of conferences on the contemporary theatre and, in November 2004, Novembre 2006 and November 2007, the first, second and third international colloquium on the contemporary theatrical gesture. His first movie, made with Maïa Nicolas in a South Tribal Village in Mexico, received a special mention from the Ensenada Film Festival. He is also preparing the publication in France of of two novels: Babylone Ghetto Babylone and Le bel aujourd’hui and one essay: Deleuze et le théâtre.
ANKUR KALA is a voluntary organisation working in Calcutta, West Bengal, India. Most of the women who come there are victims of oppression and exploitation, forced to shoulder a harsh burden of both domestic and economic needs of their families. They usually have no assets and live in small rented houses in appalling, unhygienic conditions. They come seeking the centres support to break free of the chains of poverty and oppression and to lead lives of dignity and hope. Ankur Kala provides training - and economic and social empowerment - through teaching various vocational skills, functional literacy, small business management and alternative marketing of various handicraft products and food items produced by the centre.
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