In Spring 2017, Richa Nagar was joined by Tarun Kumar in the facilitation of ‘Stories, Bodies, Movement,’ a course that conceptualized storytelling as an intense and ongoing conversation with the histories and geographies that each of us have inherited. The course explored the ways in which ethical listening and retelling of stories must approach stories as simultaneously global and intimate and as marked by both love and violence. Such retelling pays attention to the ways that the protagonists may also be antagonists, and the victims may also be victimizers. The course culminated in the staging of a play entitled, ‘Retelling Dis/appearing Tales,’ directed by Tarun Kumar and staged on 8 May 2017.
The objective was to turn the classroom into a non-hierarchical space and to guide the group’s co-learning in ways that can (a) grapple with the challenges of building collectivity and solidarity and (b) learn from the ways of knowing and living embraced by those who are systematically excluded from academia.
Tarun Kumar provided artistic direction to this play co-created with Richa Nagar and members of Global Studies 3900/5993 class at the University of Minnesota: Jada Brown, Devleena Chatterji, Siddharth Iyengar, Tarun Kumar, Rebecca Lieser, Naimah Petigny, Nithya Rajan, Lisa Santosa, Maria Schwedhelm, Sara Musaifer, Alaina Szostkowski.
- First staging on 8th May 2017 at the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis, USA.
- Second Staging on 13th October 2017 at the CLA Arts Quarter Festival in Minneapolis.
PARAKH THEATRE GROUP 