update

the post...discussion on the nature of performance has been updated...check it out.

open day...wrk in progress

work in progress....one day to go

pageunderconstruction for a complete photo documentation of paulo nazareth in chadni chok and mena bazzar check out http://daywithpaulonazereth.blogspot.com/

paulo in nehru place

page under construction A small piece of history was made yesterday by Paulo Nazareth.....he made a calculated impromptu performance at the nehru place market.

hmmm...

this stunning art work happened in Khoj sometime ago....

oreet...angelia and me...out on last sunday

with what degree of transversing would one be satisfied.

dressed as a conservative....slightly shabby nearly middle aged jewish lower middle class male.Oreet was out being tourist in delhi. early summer sunday.....great light for a photo shoot....and certain delights Oreet went through...i could only sense..but could never be a part of. the act of gender crossing had shielded Oreet from the male gaze ...'letting her be' for a while. By the time we arrived at the delli haat, angelia (oreet,s friend a practising psycologist from london who has teken a holiday and come down on a holiday to assist oreet in the final week of the residency) were already high on some grass.....tripping and looking forward to some nice photo shoot. it was fun vdo shooting oreet having her potrait sketched...one could see that the potrait artist had taken oreet to be a male...a sharply depicted angular jaw line sealed this observation. people dropped in to see what was going on...drawn in by the odd looking jewish man and the cameras. Some lunch...some shopping later we came back to the potrait guy....this time with oreet having an palestenian scrarf over her/his head...... This time s/he attracted much more attention. The catchy

red and white pattern....and the scarf giving her gender identity an interesting twist. some of the onlookers could actually sense that it was a difficult potratit to sketch...and soon a small crowd gathered around the artist to watch him render the potrait. it was apparent that the artist was by now completely confused about Oreet's gender identity....maybe even a wee bit disturbed. this infact went on to affect the quality of his work....at the end we got a confused sketch.....disappointing a bit too. However....must admit the guy is very good with capturing expressions of the eyes and capturing a vurnerable expression.

out of delhi haat we went.....had kind of a bad trip when we could neither locate our cab....nor its driver. ........off we went for a drive around lutyens's delhi....the grassy fields around India Gate.......in the evening sun was really inviting. we picked up some beer and got back there........being brought up in india was feling a bit tied up about drinkin around in public spaces...but oreet and angelia cared a heck. ...big time heck. by now oreet's moustache kind of had begun to melt in the sun....and s/he was beginning attract a whole lot of attention. .......As soon as we took our cameras out a crowd had begun to gather and .....hooo soon we were absolutely swarmed. being stared at by a crowd (an interesting collection of kids, toddlers brash youthful men and women of the family) .........my instant reaction to being stared upon was to take out the spare still camera and click away at our 'audience'....this lead to a friendly exchange of random clicking....loads of group photograph.......then peace as the crowd disspersed.

at this point oreet took off her moustash....making her feel more comfortable....and behold her persona comletely changed....suddenly she was transformed into this.....smart sexy jewish boy..... Oreet's change in appreance had a significant impact over our outing....suddenly s/he stopped attracting attention...allowing us to chill and open our beer cans.

as the evening drew to a clso .....some how the clours began to make a sharper imapct (was that due to the beer) ...angelia and i moved into our shutter happy mode while oreet was just lazing around in sheer relish. it had been hard...and fun days work for us and thia was really winding down . light soon started to fade and.....could no longer carry on our clickin spree....it was time to call the day off.....and venture into the evening??? we moved on to the alliance francaise and watthc a movie

Dianne's dance worshop with the the residents of khirkee has been an interesting story by itself.....ups...downs ...and loads of fun. visit Khoj community - http://khojcommunity.blogspot.com

funcky photos.....all the mad house ''freaking out"

partying at khoj

diane's posting

Diane's short note on the nsd wrk shop. The drag king workshop at NSD was with six 1st year students from 11am-9pm on Sunday, March 12. It was the first drag king workshop I presented in India! What excitement! During the workshop each participant gets a make-over with facial hair, five o clock shadow, etc. which is a pre-requisite to their developing a male character. Some of the students went on observational field trips on campus to check out their male counterparts - how the men articulated themselves physically - behavior, gesture, facial expressions, voice, etc. Others in male garb were confronted by some male students, "Why are you doing this? This is a male-dominated culture. You should not be doing this!" (they clearly were offended by this deconstruction of "man") or some male students were sympathetic and wanted a separate class so they could transform to women.

Diane's sunday....

March 19 – Workshop held in the National School of with 3^rd Year Students

the students participating in were......Laxmi Rawat – male character name “Kapil Rao”, Madhu Smriti Shukla – male character name “Bobby Singh”, Rasika – male character name “Anil Sharma” and N. Kritika – male character name “Abhilash Natrajan”

Each of these students was extremely serious in their engagement with the workshop. They are in a reflective frame of mind as their time at NSD is coming to an end. The workshop brought up issues for them about their situation as 5 female students in a class of 15 males, and the struggle they have had to have a voice over the last three years. They spoke about overall sexism in the school – the fact that no female student has ever had a position, as Union Rep, School President, etc. Also about the selection process for the school – that it is predominantly male students who are on the selection panel. Then they talked further about gender politics in the Staff at NSD, which made me realise that sexism was not just confined to the student population. Additionally, the workshop confronted the students with their situation once they graduate from NSD. They discussed being an actress or working in the theatre in a culture where it is not considered respectable employment for a woman and, for some families, is even approximating prostitution. We deviated from the schedule of the workshop in order for discussion to take place.

Diane was assisted in the make-up by Meeta Mishra, an ex student who contributed to the discussion by describing her experiences of working in theatre in other countries, and how this was a possible strategy as a way to develop confidence as a theatre artist. Meeta a new make-up technique – a method of making a thick moustache or beard – something that also had a few new make up trips that were shared with Diane....like making thik beard and mousthaches....which were not wasn’t essential for diane before she came to India!

Laxmi Rawat said in the introduction that she is curious about experimenting with taking on a male character. In her family she does not have a problem being a girl. She feels free. Laxmi spoke in Hindi when she was in her male character, which was fine, though I missed some of what she said as him. Her character, Kapil Rao, is 26 years old and a graphic designer. He is single and has many friends. In developing the male character, Laxmi tended to act as “Kapil” and had difficulty becoming him. Her performance as “Kapil” in the class improvisation was as if she was on stage, and it was not until we hit the streets of Greater Kailash that Laxmi came into his own. Laxmi coupled with Meeta Mishra, and went to a restaurant together. In the restaurant, they discussed their relationship as boyfriend and girlfriend, with Meeta insisting that she only liked Kapil and Kapil declaring his extreme love for Meeta. Their conversation became impassioned, much to the distress of the woman at the next table, who held up her hand as if to shield herself from them. Kapil was thoroughly enjoying the situation and proceeded to kiss Meeta which apparently shocked those at nearby tables. Meeta played her part and insisted that they be “friends” and nothing more. In the van driving back to NSD, Laxmi was very animated and said she hadn’t ever had so much fun.

Rasika never felt forbidden to do things as a girl, but she sometimes felt that nobody should look at her and give her special attention as a woman. She doesn’t want to be noticed – wants to be part of the crowd. She hoped that as a man she would be able to achieve this invisibility. Rasika is very expressive, and has "fluttering fingers". She uses each finger individually, which is an unusual skill, especially for diane – coming from the West. However, this expressiveness in the way she uses her fingers, arms and whole body, is not useful in becoming a man. Her expressiveness is very much a part of her, and she found it almost impossible to be aware of it, and to change it. Consequently, when she went out in public, she found that people were staring at her even more. She was somewhere in between being a man and a woman, and this held even more of a fascination for onlookers than if she was merely a woman. The experience made her frustrated, but also brought her, and Madhu, who accompanied her, to think about people who are transgendered – how it must be for them. I

Madhu Smriti Shukla in the introduction wanted to develop a different perspective. She wanted to separate from how she thinks as a woman, and wanted to discover, for example, what is a man’s process when he looks at a woman or when he talks to other men. What is it like on the other side? As the male character, Bobby Singh, his parents are from Punjab and he did his education – B.Commerce in Bangalore. His ambition is to become an engineer but he knows that his father will give him money to open his own businees and he is planning to open a woollen factory. He likes girls. Likes to talk to them. He was in a co-ed school where the girls would steal his parathas, but he didn’t mind. He likes girls. As Bobby Singh, Madhu was very successful. It was fortunate that Bobby Singh accompanied Anil Sharma to the McDonald’s at G.K. Market, as he was able to maintain confidence when Anil was losing his. One thing that Madhu noticed was that there was a man eating in Mcdonald’s and he had extremely feminine gestures – he was even more feminine than Rasika. It made her wonder what it must be like for him, and for others who don’t fit into the gender stereotype. This experience gave Madhu some sympathy for them. Madhu was courageous to take such an extreme character as a Punjabi Sikh, but she pulled it off with flair, and was particularly good at maintaining a male voice. Though as a young Punjabi man, her voice could have a light and playful quality which was not so far removed from her own.

N. Kritika, in the introduction, talked about a production she had done with other students where they were looking at gender and at transformation into something else. Rasika, for example, had played the part of a eunuch. She saw the workshop as an extension of that enquiry. As the director, Abhilash Natrajan, she was impersonating one of the Acting Directors at the school with whom she had been working on a production. N. Kritika is a big woman and very self-aware. The transformation into her male character was not difficult, and probably was made easier because she had worked closely with the person she was impersonating. Her size was useful in exercises like learning to take up space and to hold your ground. I coupled up with her when we went out publicly to G.K. Market. However, first the whole group went to Nathu’s Pastry Shop in the Bengali Market – a daily hang-out for the students. It was interesting for the students to interact with counter-hands who see them regularly but didn’t recognise them. At G.K Market, Abhilash had a plan, and I followed him through the whole market walking at a fast pace, never stepping aside for anyone and even bumping into some stationary people, without a backward glance. Our destination was a local bar/disco where we had a couple of beers and even danced to the Bollywood numbers, bringing our beer glasses on the dance floor. This last action filled N. Kritika with mirth, as she later recalled the experience. We did not attract any special attention and were generally ignored by passers-by, who got out of our way – two men on a mission! In the feedback session afterwards, N. Kritika said that it was the first day she had not been conscious of the fact that she is fat. She felt it was OK to be fat as a man – that it was not a problem. On the way back to NSD, N. Kritika bought a bunch of white roses, whilst we all observed his interaction with the flower seller from the van.

Diane was rewarded with a bunch of roses, when Abhilash re-entered the van. That was a special thank you from the students.

Long may they thrive!!!

wu's sunday

ok guys last sunday when oreet, angelia and i were out havin fun and shooting in the city, Wu was having an alternative adventure of his own. out for a vdo shoot with two of his new found chinese friends, Wu went the the khirkee mosque and was doing a naked shoot on the terrace....oblivious to the huge crowd of women who had gathered in the balcony to watch him..........obviously their men were not in a mood to take see the women watching a naked chinese man. before Wu and his friends realised it a group of around thirty men had surrounded them.......and had begun to issue threats. none of these guys understand hindi.....and by then all of them were shit scared. thankfully one of them could speak english and called up hemant at office. reaching there with a small group of friends hemant saw Wu shivering and scared .....bowing his head and saying sorry....and the crowd sensing that they could make money out 'hapless tourists'. having spent loads of time in the streets of delhi and various cities across india......hemant knows what urban crowds are all about......giving them a spree about colonialism and the body hemant managed to hit their sense of context....the crowd did not get the tamasha they had set out to create. wu was safely back...not before a one of his chinese friends had hurt him terribly by running away form the spot. under the pressure of the moment wu had erased all his footage....and the next day Paulo and i went back to the mosque with him. the ASI gate keeper was dead suprised to see us there....never thought that Wu would come back.....after a small round of chatting up a bit of talk about 'public spaces' ...i managed to get Wu the permission to shoot again .....this time with a robe on. .....what do you guys think. ..........?

check out...treat for your eyes

Wu ye