After more than a year, Chauraha – the NCPA’s informal arts forum – is back!
Chauraha will be relaunched in April with a diverse range of events including a deeply moving human-interest documentary by an award-winning filmmaker, a discussion with Kathak dancers who explore contemporary women’s poetry, a reading by the city’s leading poets on ‘Poetry in Times of Trouble’, and interactions with practitioners of the ancient dance theatre traditions of Chhau, Sattriya and Kutiyattam.
Chauraha began its journey in January 1995, and over the years has been host to a plethora of fascinating moments, for example Ramu Ramanathan directing a reading of three plays – Wada Chirebandi (Marathi), Doongaji House (English) and Mulraj Mansion (Gujarati) – that explored the decline of a social order; theatre directors Rahul da Cunha and Zubin Driver delivering their divergent dramatic takes on Harold Pinter's One for the Road ; Shanta Gokhale's reflections on the process of translating her Marathi novel, Rita Velinkar, into English; animated discussions about architecture, curated by Himanshu Burte; a sprightly performance of the ancient Kerala temple art of Chakyar Koothu in English by KK Rajan; film screenings by directors as diverse as Anand Patwardhan and Arun Khopkar; plus dozens of literary events. The list could go on!
Chauraha is not a forum for slick, immaculate presentations. It is a forum to falter, to try, to fail, and try again. It's a forum where artists can share process instead of product, and where the viewer can turn participant. It’s a forum for the experimental, the incomplete, the provisional, the halting.
Welcome back to Chauraha.
Text and curation by Arundhathi Subramaniam
