Opening at The Blue Room this week is new production Raagas, Shakespeare and Everything in Between, a show that proposes a coming together of the classical Indian tradition of melodic musical structures and “Medieval Western Theatre”.
Prior to entering the theatre we’ve given a hand out with questions about Shakespeare and Raagas, and a pencil. We’re welcomed to our class.
We enter the auditorium and several performers, all sari clad women, are already in the space. One is signing a tune that rises and falls casting a hypnotic spell, two of the women shout lines from Shakespearian works.
“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” one shouts a line from Measure to Measure.
The walls have been adorned with blackboard paint and chalked up quotes from the Bard of Avon are written everywhere. Placed around the room are various books, some about Indian music, others about Shakespeare and theatre.
Once the audience has filled the room and the doors are closed we join a singing lesson with a teacher scolding some of the students over their lack of practice. She leads them through a complex list of notes that make up the tune they are singing. As it gets more complex some of them drop out.
We move through several phases of the performance, there are moments of dance, a portion where personal stories are repeated on loop; the performer’s voices creating rounds of harmonic resonance, before finally a short lecture on what a ragga is, and how it is used.
Throughout the show we get snippets of Shakespeare’s most famous lines, a little bit of Romeo and Juliet and smattering of Hamlet.
The experience is meditative. The repetitive sounds are pleasant and entrancing. But as for a deeper meaning, I’m at a loss.
A friend suggested that one thing we might take away from the show is that the creative work of Eastern cultures is equal to arguably the most esteemed output of Western culture. That could be a takeaway from the performance, but only if I thought that way in the first place.
The inclusion of multiple lines of Shakespearean work, removed from the context of their stories, presented as random quotes, often repetitively delivered with angst and in distraught tones didn’t create a comparable experience between the two aspects. Shakespearean quotes presented in a similar meditative tone would have been intriguing.
The show is staged by ChitAmbara, who describe themselves as an incubator and accelerator for the arts who provide a space for co-design concepts to completion.
Raagas, Shakespeare and Everything in Between is playing until 20th July at The Blue Room.
