Vishwamitri Villas Vadodara India, February 2024
In 2022 I made the film, Vishwamitri Villas, entirely on Zoom in collaboration with Page to Stage, 3 Peepul Productions and Akshar Trust in Vadodara India. 2024 saw me going to Vadodara with composer Felix Cross to make a stage version of Vishwamitri Villas, a story about a day in the life of young domestics.
Vishwamitri Villas took the audience through one day in the lives of young domestic help, who work in different apartments of an apartment block, Vishwamitri Villas in a city in India. The work explores the relationships amongst the domestics, their employers & their children. The story is gently nuanced to reveal the daily routine and differing circumstances of young domestics in India.
We arrived on 1st Jan and began work with five students from Akshar Trust, a school for hearing impaired young people and eight more young people from various schools in Vadodara who had auditioned for me on Zoom in November 2023. The company were talented, imaginative and looking for a new experience and as we began our work together, I felt this was going to be a very special experience.
We made the work afresh, entirely from improvisations from the young company – the actors improvised in Indian sign language and mostly Hindi. The improvisations were translated back to me through a number of interpreters and through a complex pathway of communication that we found together, we made a script and found a way to rehearse. It was a fascinating and exhilarating experience and through the process we were able to fully integrate a signing system for the actors who were voicing text and a voicing system for the actors who were signing text. We had one actor working with the company who performed from inside the scenes picking up characterisations from the actors using mainly Indian standard sign language and Hindi. We also had a second translator on the side of the stage signing the whole work in the sign system used by Akshar Trust called Total Communication.
We shaped the work and then rehearsed over a period of seven weeks and on the 9th, 10th, 11th February we presented six shows to a mix of school students and general public in the beautiful “Space” studio at Alembic Arts District renovated by local architect Ishan Grover.
The collaboration between myself and Felix and the many creatives from India who joined the team was an absolute joy and the work had an energy and spirit that was driven by the unique talents and personalities of the thirteen young performers.
CREDITS – VISHWAMITRI VILLAS
Cast
Aviva Shah, Devika Patanwadia, Dia Mehendiratta, Jash Shah Vasanwala, Kartavyasinh Chavada, Kushagrah Jhaver, Liza Rehan, Neil Patel, Nitya Mongia, Priya Mistry, Reshma Luhar, Rishabh Devre, Yashvi Trivedi
Interpretation in Indian Sign Language (ISL) & the Sign System used at Akshar:
Anika Rehan, Prachi Suthar & Support by Geeta Parmar
Creative Team:
Director: Kristine Landon-Smith
Music composer: Felix Cross
Music Producer: Akash Vyas
Musicians:
Ramsinghhasu bhai on Piho (flute) and Thaali, from Rathwa tribe of Chota Udepur, Gujarat
Dinesh bhai Solanki on Nagada and Niklesh bhai Bhinde on Maadar, from Rathwa tribe of Chandpur, Madhya Pradesh
A collaboration with tribal musicians of the Bhasha Trust Tribal Academy at Tejgadh with support from Dr Madan Meena, Director of the Tejgadh Academy
Set designer: Maninder Kaur
Lights: Shashank Murtiwala
Assistants for direction: Ranganath Gopalarathnam & Krutin Prajapati
Recording Studio: Pranav Mahant and A Wave Lab Digital Audio Recording Studio
Rishi Nair for assisting in the final mixing of sound
Stills & Video documentation: Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee
Camera Assistant: Mayank Gadhvi