Kavan

This interesting production is the UAE premiere of a groundbreaking collaboration by the Mumbai-based music and street theatre group Yalgaar Sanskrutik Manch, whose work centres on caste, inequality and social justice; and the Nalanda Arts Studio from Bangalore, an organisation working on the research and practice of performing and fine arts with a focus on collaborations between Asian, African, and Middle Eastern artists and communities.

Nalanda’s Abhishek Majumdar directs this show, which is described as an ‘Ambedkarite Opera’ – Ambedkarism being the set of ideas associated with Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar (1891-1956); an Indian economist, barrister, social reformer, and political thinker and activist, he is particularly associated with criticism of the caste system and a passionate belief in individual freedom. Majumdar is keen to emphasise that it not simply an anti-caste show: “a satirical opera gives us a way to speak about deep-rooted inequalities in society – and every society has such inequalities” he told us.

The storyline, which is carried exclusively in poetry and song (hence the ‘opera’ tag), concerns a young man called Bejul whose father is a Lok Shahir, an Ambedkarite people’s poet. After Bejul’s father gets killed, his religious mother dissuades him from following in his father’s footsteps. The play is about Bejul becoming a Shahir, a politically-aware performance poet; it’s a journey from acceptance of the status quo, including compliance with the social norms like gender and caste, to a gradual realisation that many of the constraints in his life are actually man-made and not predetermined.

“Shahiri Jalsa provided our structure,” Majumdar said. “Jalsas are songs of the Dalits, Shahiri is the performance form, both are associated with Ambedkarites. Over time Jalsa has also borrowed from outside music. So we leaned into it, with all its contemporary and modern influences, and created the piece out of that.”

Read the rest of our backgrounder and interview with Abhishek Majumdar here. There are further performances of Kavan on Saturday 14 February at 7.30pm and Sunday 15 February at 2pm.