Project Darling, an experimental play on the lives of women company theatre actors from the 1960s-80s, produced by Prakash Raj’s theatre incubation centre Nirdinganta and supported by India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), will be performed at the Shoonya, Centre for Art and Somatic Practices, Lalbagh Road, on November 18.
The Kannada play traces the journey of a group of performers who set out on a search for their ancestry - women performers on whose shoulders their work stands. In their search, they stumble upon an iconic character called Khanavali Chenni who ruled the stage with her hilarious double-meaning dialogues and sexual innuendo. While trying to find the actress who played Chenni, they meet several other actresses who have their own stories to share. Will this group of performers eventually meet Chenni? How will their search end? What will they discover? Project Darling is a meditation on female sexuality at the crossroads of censorship and culture.
The play is based on a two-year research project where the director, Sharanya Ramprakash, interviewed several female performers, vamps, comedians, and heroines of the Kannada company theatre. It freely mixes research with fiction to fill in the inconsistencies of history. Project Darling juxtaposes video testimonials, photo essays and soundscapes from this research with song, dance, puppetry and clowning as it seeks to rewrite Kannada rangabhoomi’s women performers back into the cultural history.
