Rency Philip

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA under Project 560, will involve the making of a podcast series with five episodes, as audio performances for walkers to experience the city of Bangalore. The series will be based on urban research and interviews woven together through sound engineering. Rency Philip is the Project Coordinator for this project. 

Rency Philip is a theatre-maker based in Bangalore working as a performer and scenographer. Trained in Kalaripayattu, Capoiera, animal flow, calisthenics, contemporary artistic puppetry, physical comedy and mask work, she has performed for children and adult audiences at various festivals and venues in India and internationally. Rency was selected for a two-month residency in Theatre du Soleil, Paris, in 2017. She won the Inlaks Theatre Award for Puppetry and Masks in 2018. Rency was a scholar for the International Forum at the Berliner Festspiele, Berlin in 2019. Given her experience, Rency is best placed to be the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

The project titled From Roaming to Rooting will involve the making of a guided walking podcast series that features five episodes of personal stories and histories of five iconic locations, against the backdrop of city soundscapes and lyrical melodies. Five iconic locations will be identified in the initial research phase of the project, followed by productions of a pilot episode, and subsequent episodes, including soundscaping, recording and site testing. The focus of the podcasts will be on the impact of the drastic changes that the city of Bangalore and its people have gone through. The audio performance walk will be guided by spoken narratives as well as interviews with new and old residents of Bangalore. The spoken narratives will be primarily about retelling the stories of Bangalore from the late 1990s and early 2000s through the perspective of early migrants who have now become the residents of Bangalore and call it their home. 

Each episode will be woven together with urban research, voice performance, interviews and sound engineering. Key collaborators in the project will be Dr Usha Rao (Bangalore historian, filmmaker and anthropologist), Maya Jayapal (Bangalore historian, author and counsellor), Kirtana Kumar (actor, director and filmmaker), Sachin Gurjale (sound engineer and music composer), Abhaydev Praful (classical guitarist and music composer), and Anushka Meeenakshi (filmmaker, editor and sound engineer). Along with walking through predetermined routes referred to in the audio performances, the walkers/listeners will be privately listening to the podcasts from their devices on earphones. The primary intention of the project is to encourage pedestrian interaction between the city of Bangalore and its people, and their experiences and memories, including local food, music influences and forgotten micro-histories, which will help them to connect with the city, especially if they are new to the city.   

The outcomes of the project would be a podcast series of five episodes of approximately 30 minutes each, and two short performance walks with theatre actors and live musicians, and talks with city historians. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the podcasts along with audio-video documentation of the artistic process.

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Project 560 programme in the manner in which it tries to artistically address the city of Bangalore, through audio as an artistic medium, as a counterpoint to the primacy of the visual, when it comes to artistic research on the city.  

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.

This project is made possible with support from BNP Paribas India Foundation.