Gandhinagar: Bringing together diverse performing artists and myriad forms of stage art expressions, the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) is organising ‘Theatre and Performing Arts Festival’ (TaPAF), a month-long multi-day event spread throughout February 2023 on its campus that aims to showcase the talents of both student and professional artists in the fields of theatre, dance, and music.
Organised by the Art@IITGN initiative of the Institute, the festival features a diverse range of performances, including plays, musicals, dance productions, and other forms of live entertainment. In addition to the performances, the festival also includes workshops, artist interactions, and other educational opportunities for aspiring performers and theatre enthusiasts. These activities are being conducted by professional artists and focus on a variety of topics, such as acting, singing, dance, and stagecraft.
More than 30 artists from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds from India and abroad are performing and conducting workshops/interactive dialogues during the festival at IITGN. These include artists from Amsterdam; USA; Hollywood; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); young women artists of the Kranti NGO, who are survivors of trafficking and daughters of sex workers from Mumbai’s red-light areas; Pune; Ahmedabad; Budhan Theatre, a community theatre group working for the constitutional rights of Nomadic and Denotified tribes of India; and IITGN.
The event is open to the general public and will serve as an opportunity for the community to engage with the artists. The festival schedule can be seen on the following web link: https://art.iitgn.ac.in/tpafestival.html
Sharing the idea behind the festival, Prof Jaison Manjaly, Head of the Humanities and Social Sciences discipline and the Art@IITGN initiative, who is also providing overall leadership for the festival, said, “The goal of the IIT Gandhinagar Theater and Performing Arts Festival is to provide a platform for artists to showcase their talents and to expose audiences to a diverse range of performances and styles. The festival also showcases cultural diversity from around the world. We want art to be intertwined in our social fabric.”
Sharing their thoughts, young women artists of the Kranti Theatre Group, Mumbai, who staged their flagship show ‘Lal Batti Express’ (Red-Light Express), at the IITGN TaPAF, said, “With this interactive theatrical show, we take audiences through the journey of our lives – growing up in Mumbai’s brothels; our battles against society’s violence, abuse, and discrimination; as well as our hopes and dreams for ourselves, our community, and the world. Like other young people, we also have big plans, crazy dreams, and a determination to change the world. Together, we are Kranti; and aim to become agents of social change and happiness! We are thankful to IIT Gandhinagar for inviting us to perform here.” Many of these young women are also pursuing their higher studies and careers in diverse disciplines within India as well as abroad, including social sciences, child rights, arts, Yoga training, Zumba training, dance/activity/art-based therapy, animal welfare, and so on.
Sharing her experience of performing and interacting at the IITGN TaPAF, Maria Magdalena Kozlowska, a Polish theatre maker and artist based in Amsterdam, said, “IIT Gandhinagar holds space for a unique encounter between art and science. It seems to be vibrating with a promise of new and unexpected perspectives. I can only hope that, in some way, we have contributed to this very special conversation.”
“This festival at IIT Gandhinagar served as a great place and time for me to be able to freely develop a performance work that has been in my mind for a long time. As my work is collaborative, I found it very rewarding to develop it in relation to and conversation with the students at the campus. Because the students come from diverse backgrounds, it was interesting to articulate the work in a way that they could understand. I discovered that being away from a purely artistic environment enabled me to make the work comprehensive for the broader public. It was a very new kind of residence experience for me that has been very fruitful.”, said Tom Oliver Jacobson, a Swedish performance artist based in Amsterdam.
The event also featured ‘Explore Kathak’ – a lecture and demonstration by Guru Shamatai Bhate and her troupe from Nadroop, Pune; ‘Andaaz – Evening of Ragas’, an Indian Classical Music Concert featuring classical Hindustani music performances by Smt Viraj Amar Bhatt (vocal) with Akash Joshi (harmonium) and Jajvalya Shukla (tabla), Shri Sohan Nilkanth (sarod) and Prof Srinivas Reddy (sitar) with Rajiv Bhatt (tabla); an interactive performance by artist Chetna Mehrotra; Artist Residency and Curator’s Meet by TENT: A Nomadic School of Performative Practices; a Workshop on Opera to the People, a practice of singing in public spaces, investigating acoustic, architecture and social structures; ‘Fabric of the Universe: Stories from young scientists in their passionate search for meaning’, a performance by IITGN students of the course ‘Storytelling for Scientists’ by Hollywood actor Brian Brophy; among others.
Upcoming highlights of the festival include Blithchron, a two-day student-led cultural festival of IITGN; a workshop on ‘The Art of Self-learning Musical Instruments – Keyboard and Guitar’ by Harvansh Dandelia; ‘Stroke of insight’, a performance by Jaya Iyer, a veteran dancer and martial artist; ‘Folk Dance Workshop’ by Chetan Jethwa; Street Play ‘Second Class Citizen?’ by Budhan Theater; ‘Every Brilliant Thing’, play by Rahul Bishnoy, an artist from IITGN; ‘Laal Pencil’ by artists of the Department of Drama, Gujarat Arts and Science College, Ahmedabad; and ‘AI and Future of Art’, a conversation with Prof Jaison Manjaly, IITGN.
