Samyuktha Pritham Chakravarthy

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA under Productions, will lead to the creation of a theatrical work that will reflect on women's lives, their work, bodies and identities. Samyuktha Pritham Chakravarthy is the Coordinator for this project. 

Chennai-based Samyuktha is a writer and director who works across film, theatre, literature and new media. In the domain of films, she has worked in various capacities as script editor, screenwriter, director and associate producer. In theatre, she has worked as director, playwright and actor. She has been a senior consultant for theatre research conducted by Crea-Shakti from 2016-19. She was also the curator of the Conquer the Concrete Street Art Festival in 2015, and research lead for a study on Skills Gaps in Chennai’s Cultural Sector in 2016. Given her experience she is best placed to be the Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

Around 2014, Samyuktha began working with Madhumita Dutta, an activist from the Vettiver Collective in Chennai, who was then engaging in herr PhD research on labour geography in the University of Durham. As part of this work, she was documenting the lives of women workers in a mobile phone factory in Sriperumbudur, Chennai. As Madhumita’s interpreter, Samyuktha began travelling to Kanchipuram where a group of these women workers employed with the mobile phone factory lived collectively. In due course, Samyuktha and Madhumita began using participatory action research models to document the lives of these women. This documentation took the form of a 10-episode podcast called The Mobile Girls Koottam. The title played on the idea that the women worked in a mobile phone factory, and also conveyed that these women were rural migrants leading fairly autonomous lives where they felt they had more control over their time, bodies, thoughts, daily routines and mobility. These podcasts organically brought together conversations around women’s everyday encounters on the streets in towns and villages, at homes, around their bodies, work, mobility and menstruation. Within a few months, the mobile phone factory closed down and the podcasts turned into both a protest platform and a space of grieving the loss of a significant part of their identity. In an attempt to hold on to this memory and share it with other women across Tamil Nadu, Samyuktha and the women came together and wrote a play.

The present project aspires to turn this playscript into a theatrical production also titled The Mobile Girls Koottam. The play is set over one day in the room in Kanchipuram, where they all have a surprise holiday from their shifts. Following their usual ritual, over tea and coffee, they decide to cook biryani and share a fun day together. However, as the food gets made the sudden news of the closure of the factory arrives and shocks them. What follows is a tale of chaotic, funny and deep conversations where the women grapple with their identities, their sense of home, love, society and their futures. 

For this production, a small truck from a scrapyard will be transformed into a ‘mobile’ tea-shop, which will travel across different places within Tamil Nadu, and also to Pondicherry and Bangalore. The actors will perform on the truck and following the performance will sit along with different communities and dialogue around women's lives, their bodies, work and identities. The play is scripted in such a manner that all scenes can go beyond the fourth wall and act as invitations for conversations.

There will be eight shows of the performance as part of this project. The performance will travel to the Oorur Olcott Kuppam, Stella Maris College and Loyola College in Chennai, followed by shows in Pondicherry, Ambattur, Kanchipuram, Bangalore and Sriperumbudur. All the performances and the conversations that will follow will be documented.   

The outcomes from this project will be the eight performances of The Mobile Girls Koottam, a travelogue booklet with sketches, photographs, and notes on experiences from the tour drawn from writings by the performers, crew and audience members, and audio-visual documentation of the tour that will be presented as episode/s on Youtube. The Project Coordinator's deliverables to IFA along with the final report will be the booklet, still and video documentation of the performances and the tour, and the links to Youtube. 

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Practice programme in the manner in which it creates an artistic, dialogic space to reflect on women's lives, their bodies and identities. Further, it also pushes the boundaries of Samyuktha’s own artistic practice. 

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 Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.