Playing on her memory
This is the second time Manjari Kaul will be reenacting Márquez’s Chronicles of a Death Foretold. But this time, she’s flying solo
Theatre practitioner Manjari Kaul has found herself working on a recurring theme – memory – in the last few years. Her first production Little Remains (2012), and second, Chronicles of a Death Foretold (2012), were both based on this theme. And now her third, a re-look at Chronicles is a solo production (done in association with Instituto Cervantes, New Delhi) that she has written, acted in and directed under the banner of her three-year-old production company, Improper Fractions.
Chronicles revolves around the murder of a man (who has been accused of ‘deflowering’ a girl outside of wedlock); her brothers announce their plans to kill the man to the entire village, but nobody stops them. Ultimately, an entire community is complicit in the murder that follows. “I was struck by the question of how to be true to (Gabriel García) Márquez as I try to retell his story through the performance. The chronicling of the truth lies not in the details of how the murder was committed but the constructs of honour and love,” she says. There are many narratives of the same incident and each is as true as the other. Kaul says, “It shifts, it changes forms and it has an interesting relationship with memory. So, I decided to look at the text from the lens of how to tell a story, what the role of the chronicler, etc is.”
Chronicles of a Death Foretold
Directed & performed by Manjari Kaul
Lights design: Bharavi
Sound: Lekha Naidu
When: June 7, 3:30 pm & 7:30 pm
Where: Ranga Shankara, JP Nagar
Tickets: bookmyshow.com
Theatre practitioner Manjari Kaul has found herself working on a recurring theme – memory – in the last few years. Her first production Little Remains (2012), and second, Chronicles of a Death Foretold (2012), were both based on this theme. And now her third, a re-look at Chronicles is a solo production (done in association with Instituto Cervantes, New Delhi) that she has written, acted in and directed under the banner of her three-year-old production company, Improper Fractions.
Chronicles revolves around the murder of a man (who has been accused of ‘deflowering’ a girl outside of wedlock); her brothers announce their plans to kill the man to the entire village, but nobody stops them. Ultimately, an entire community is complicit in the murder that follows. “I was struck by the question of how to be true to (Gabriel García) Márquez as I try to retell his story through the performance. The chronicling of the truth lies not in the details of how the murder was committed but the constructs of honour and love,” she says. There are many narratives of the same incident and each is as true as the other. Kaul says, “It shifts, it changes forms and it has an interesting relationship with memory. So, I decided to look at the text from the lens of how to tell a story, what the role of the chronicler, etc is.”
This solo production uses storytelling techniques and characters’ first person accounts that vary from shaky to minutely detailed to almost fading recollections of the honour killing. Playing the role of six different characters, Kaul has explored the idea of what binds the community in spite of their differing truths. “In this performance, I was looking at how this collective guilt could reside in the body of one performer, a woman performer,” she says. Kaul has stayed true to the text.
Chronicles of a Death Foretold
Directed & performed by Manjari Kaul
Lights design: Bharavi
Sound: Lekha Naidu
When: June 7, 3:30 pm & 7:30 pm
Where: Ranga Shankara, JP Nagar
Tickets: bookmyshow.com
