Maya Krishna Rao

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA will lead to the creation of a manuscript on the theatre-making processes of veteran theatre actor and director, Maya Krishna Rao. Maya herself will be the Project Coordinator for this project. 

Maya Krishna Rao is a renowned theatre artist, a stand-up comedian and a social activist, based in Bangalore. Her rich body of work in theatre, specifically over the last three decades has been across dance-theatre, cross-media, comedy, applied theatre, participatory theatre for school children, agit-prop interventions in social movements, lecture-performances, and audio theatre. Her ingenuous theatre-making processes as a solo performer and as a committed teacher have been inspirational for theatre students and teachers. She is the recipient of the Sangeet Natak Akademi award and a grant from the Australia Council of the Arts. Maya has been a member of many advisory committees including that of the National School of Drama, Gati Summer Dance Residency, National Council of Educational Research and Training among others, and has been a visiting faculty at the Ashoka University, Shiv Nadar University, Leeds Playhouse Theatre-in Education Company to name a few. Given her experience, she is best placed to be the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA. 

Recognising the significance of consolidating Maya’s performance vocabulary, tools and structures, this project enables the preparation of a manuscript that details the essence, modalities, insights and reflections of Maya’s unique performance language. Since much of her process has been solo work and has not been witnessed by any other individual apart from a camera and part-time collaborators, it is of relevance here that Maya herself should be the Coordinator for this project. Far from relying on a ready-made script or a director with a production apparatus, her inner world of process has been structured primarily around long hours of improvisation, which have been built around illuminations of the unconscious and psychophysical juxtapositions of memory and sensation. Undeniably, the challenge in writing this book is to excavate this process and find a language for it that is both concrete and suggestive. 

The manuscript will be structured around three broad sections. The Introduction will be written by performance scholar Rustom Bharucha who has for long years known Maya’s work closely. He will introduce the reader to the performer’s oeuvre – the cultural, artistic, and political circumstances in which the performer makes her work, and will outline the structure of the book, its selected themes and concepts.  In the process, he will also set the frame for looking at the different sections in the book. The second section on Process will be a detailed description of Maya’s theatre-making process accompanied with sketches, diary jottings, images of improvisations and the final production. This description constitutes the core of the book and is meant to provide the reader with a hands-on feel of how process evolves into performance. The final section will consist of conversations between Maya and Rustom. These will address the individual chapters of the Process section of the book, teasing out its contradictions and enigmas, the unanswered questions, the questions that remain to be formulated. Beyond this close interrogation of different aspects of the process, the Conversations will also raise larger questions of the social, artistic, and political moorings of the performer and the lens through which she looks at art-making. It will also extend to themes flowing from the book that resonate with those of the larger landscape of theatre practice.   

Given the range of making scenarios, and the hands-on intention of the book, the manuscript will have a strong visual quality. Over the last thirty years, Maya has meticulously documented both her process and performance in still images and video; so there is a large bank of images to draw on for the book. The book will include descriptions of different projects in rehearsal, handwritten rehearsal notes, images from finished productions, along with commentary and photographs, sketches, and other images.  

The book is addressed to those interested in theatre and the processes of theatre-making. It may be of particular interest to those who either devise on their own or may want to launch into devising theatre without the presence of a director or the availability of a written text. The book therefore is intended to bring the reader closer to the live experience of theatre making. In Maya’s own words, this book will share the - “dives I’ve made, the swims through long and varied waters, and the pickings from the vast bed of the ocean that is theatre.”

The outcome of the project will be the manuscript of the book. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA along with the final reports will be photographs and notes generated during this project as well as copies of the manuscript.  

This project suitably addresses the broad framework of IFA's Arts Practice programme, and the Productions category in particular. One of the key intentions of the programme is to enable new articulations, vocabularies, discourses, insights and reflections in the area of arts practice. As a book that will encapsulate Maya’s artistic journey and evolution through a consolidation of processes that have been unique to her, this work would be a significant contribution to theatre makers in India and elsewhere. IFA believes that this book will serve as an important guide and a resource book to future generations of artists.  

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.