Performative Reading of There Is No Fear
As the result of their visit in India, playwright Magda Fertacz and director Łukasz Chotkowski created a script of the play bringing up one of the most difficult problems of modern India: the social situation of widows.
The play, titled There Is No Fear, before hitting the boards in the form of a completed drama, was presented on 5th September 2015 at the 'Non Fiction' Documentary Theatre Festival in Sopot and on 16th September 2015 in Warsaw's Powszechny Theatre. Its Indian and Polish premiere is planned for 2016. Indian version of the performance was prepared in cooperation with the Theatre Group Kasba Arghya from Calcutta.
The city of Vrindavan is a place of worship, where – as it is said – Krishna spent his childhood years. Is also known as the 'city of widows', because it is home and a pilgrimage destination for women from all over India who lost their husbands and thus became destitute. Rejected by society and their families, they are not entitled for benefits except a small, short-term aid provided by the authorities. The performance There Is No Fear is a fusion of two sensibilities: Polish and Indian, and presents the situation of an Indian wife after her husband's death. Documentation for the project was made by Magda Fertacz and Łukasz Chotkowski during interviews and workshops with widows, carried out in the ashram of the non-governmental organization Maitri, who is a partner of the project. The materials were collected thanks to the support and help of Culture.pl.
Łukasz Chotkowski and Magda Fertacz describe their project:
We visited India may times and we know the country. The performance we are working on will be based on interviews with widows from Vrindavan and texts written by them during workshops we conducted in the ashram of the non-governmental organization Maitri, who takes care of the women. We want to show individual stories of widows and their everyday life. We want to make the invisible people visible. We want the women to speak with their own voice. The voice nobody wants to listen to.
On 12th September 2015 Wysokie Obcasy, Saturday suplement to the largest Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, published a report by Mike Urbaniak, who dokumented the life of widows and the work on the project.
Organizer: Culture.pl
Partners: Theatre Group Kasba Arghya from Calcutta, Zygmunt Hübner Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw
Source: www.sopotnonfiction.pl
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