About The Event
‘Nava’ tells the stories of 9 urban transwomen through the 9 rasas (Navarasa). In this performance, the 9 transwomen, who have never been on stage before, bring their bodies, voices and stories, deliberately silenced and wilfully ignored to reclaim their rightful place – the centrestage. The performers sing, dance, laugh, regale, provoke and defy fixed notions of what constitutes the Navarasa and who can be its Nayakis. Chandri’s Abhbuta is about how she wore a saree for the first time. Shanti flips our understanding of Bhibatsa with a story of how she crawled through a sewage pipe to come out clean on the other side. Prarthana tells you her secret to Shrungara, Thara makes a journey to meet her son and discovers Karuna, while Swetha explores a memory of her childhood friend.
The play is in Kannada (with English Subtitles).
The play is funded by the International Relief Fund for Organisations in Culture and Education 2021 of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Goethe-Institut and other partners. It is supported by Ranga Shankara and India Foundation for the Arts.
About the Director
Sharanya Ramprakash is a Bengaluru based theatre maker. She places her work in the intersection between gender, tradition and language, with a focus on Kannada culture. She writes, acts, directs and collaborates with a range of forms, communities and theatre makers across local, national and international locations. Her play ‘Akshayambara’ won the Best Original Script at the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META). She is an INLAKS scholar and Member of the Lincoln Centre Director’s Lab, New York.
