Things That Happened (Part 2)

-Keith

The Play So Nice, They Cast It Twice

WAKE UP!

Sanyasi in the City.

We're in NYC for Round 2 of the Fringe Fest.

Got our first show today @5:30 at the Kraine Theater,
New York and the New Cast are a bundle of fun.
Many more adventures to be had...

FringeCENTRAL

The stream of time has stopped,
on whose waves dances the world,
like...Ameneh and Jeremy.

ByTheWay,
Meet one of our new storytellers: Jeremy
-Keith

Fringe NYC begins

Yesterday was the first rehearsal for FringeNYC with Evan Sanderson, Monica Flanagan, Tobin Mitnick, Yonaton Gebeyehu, Giselle Gastell, Jeremy Goren, Marion LeCoguic. It was sooo fun! 


We had a quick intro session (Skyping Tobin in from Texas - I love the internet) and everyone told their favorite deserts. I swear, we almost didn't get to rehearsal, people were salivating at the idea of cheesecake, ice cream, and tiramisu! 


Once we did get started, the first read was so fun. How thrilling to hear this play with new voices! There are some fun surprises coming, including some gender bending, some silly pairings, and some real depth to come. 


We start exploring the text tomorrow. A lot of work will be happening in the next two weeks, between acting and promoting and re-costuming, it'll be a sanyasi whirlwind!! Stay tuned for more info, and get your tickets soon, because we are aiming for a sell-out. 

caption contest!!!

Leave your caption suggestion in the comment section for a chance for a free ticket to the final performance of Sanyasi on July 23rd at 6:30pm!

photo credit: ryan maxwell

Opening Night!

By Ameneh Bordi

We have opened!! Tuesday, July 12th marked the first time the general public saw our show, and it was a magical experience. It was so surreal to finally move this show from my hands into the hands of the audience. We were lucky to have a wonderful venue director at Spooky Universe, and so our tech went smoothly, and then we opened at 6pm ! The show went perfectly - all our rehearsing with the set and the costumes paid off and the actors were able to execute the show perfectly. It was wonderful to have friends and family in the audience to see our work, and feel their energy at the closing.

I hope that everyone gets a chance to check out the show - it is getting rave reviews, and was chosen as a "Pick of the Fringe" by DC Theatre Scene. We're having so much fun doing it, and learning from each performance.

Photos to come!!

Things That Happened (Part 1)

The Ensemble Storytellers: Nora Achrati, Vishal Vaidya, Betsy Rosen, Thony Mena, and Amie Cazel!

The Producer/Director (Ameneh Bordi) and Star (Evan Sanderson) at the Fringe Preview!!

Evan Sanderson (Sanyasi) and the dynamic Nikki Massoud (Vasanti)!!

Nora Achrati in her dazzling costume!

Jennafer Cranmer & Renana Fox distributing more of their beautiful costume designs!!

Mmhmm, The Actors, workin'...

The Gang, chillin'...

The Visionary, Ameneh Bordi, representin'...

...back to work...

-Keith

Capital Fringe promo video!

The Saga of the Set

By Ameneh Bordi, Director


This weekend was the weekend of set building! After the great idea was presented to me by costumer Renana Fox, I went into implementation mode. The idea was to create a free-standing structure that would allow us to hang our costume accessories (scarves, hats, etc) from clothesline around the room. The problems: 1. we couldn't affix to the walls. 2. I wanted it to be able to be set up in front of the audience's eyes. 3. money!

So solutions began. Jennafer Cranmer, the other amazing costumer, had cut a lot of bamboo from her garden for me. I began by planning to build concrete bases for this bamboo. Problems with this idea: concrete is heavy! Not only would I have to move all of the bases myself in and out of the DC venue, but I also had to transport the set to NYC, and that would be a drag on my poor little car.

My father, genius engineer that he is, suggested we try umbrella stands. BRILLIANT! However, we went to home depot and a Sears, and neither had them... back home to discover, via the wonders of the internet, that Ace Hardware carried a plastic umbrella stand that was pretty cheap and could be filled with water/sand. Back out to Ace Hardware in Georgetown and Tenlytown to pick them up!

So now we have the stands and the bamboo. We tied several pieces together, set up a trial, and.... the bamboo leaned. Like, A LOT. It's bamboo, after all, strong but bendy... We tried filling the umbrella stands with sand instead of water (using a funnel made out of a local theater's subscription mailing - I will come to all your shows next year, I promise!!) That didn't really work, thought it made it a lot heaver. By this time it was pretty late on Saturday night, so I called it quits.

In the morning, my brilliant mother (very smart parents, I have) suggested something she had found on her run: DRY BAMBOO! She had dragged a piece of it from the path and it really did make a much more excellent stand. So in the afternoon, we went dry bamboo scouting. It was hot, and we looked silly, but we got some pretty great pieces of dry bamboo. I also bought a fifth umbrella stand, to cut the distance between the span in half (the upstage side was having to run 30 feet, too much for even the strongest bamboo not to sag when the clothes got added).

And today, I assembled the bundles. Each stand has one piece of strong, dry bamboo and three pieces of bendier green bamboo shoved in to the base of the umbrella stand, with a bit of cushy paper towel to make it more secure. I think it will work, we'll see at Wednesday's rehearsal!!

Sitar Lesson with donation!!

Hello All!

We just worked out a really sweet deal with a local musician:

Alif Laila, a local SITAR teacher, has offered a one-hour introductory sitar lesson in exchange for a donation to our show! There are only 4 (FOUR!!) slots available for this offer, so please act quickly!

The first person who responds with a $75 donation will get the lesson AND a free ticket to our show!!

For more info on Alif, go to:


http://aliflailasitarmusic.blogspot.com

 or 
www.aliflailasitar.com 

Contact sanyasi2011@gmail.com for more details on how to get this great lesson/opportunity.  I mean it's the sitar people!!!

Serendipity

Posted by Amie, Ensemble

At rehearsals, we have been talking about serendipitous happenings surrounding our production of Sanyasi. For example, last night we played with staging that was sweeping and semi-circular: arc-like. Ameneh got all lit up when she realized that we had been talking about Sanyasi's journey as an arc, rather than a circle, and that our staging ended up reflecting that without us doing so purposefully. 
  Today, in the bathroom at the center at which I volunteer, I saw a plaque with a quote from our very own Tagore! My first thought was, "how delightfully serendipitous!" I took a picture (posted above) on my little camera phone. You can barely see "Tagore" written in small letters next to the quote: "The smile you send our returns to you."
  I googled this quote and couldn't find any reference to Tagore having written or said it, which, I guess backs up what Wikipedia says about "His 'elegant prose and magical poetry' still remain[ing] largely unknown outside the confines of Bengal."
  Wikipedia also states: "His poetry in translation was viewed as spiritual, and this together with his mesmerizing persona gave him a prophet-like aura in the west."
  Other ways of saying serendipity could be a "happy accident" or "fortunate chance". Personally, I prefer a definition that carries a little more weight. As one who doesn't believe in coincidences, I like to see these "happy accidents" as confirmations. Confirmation that I'm in the right place at the right time, that what I'm doing matters or that a force greater than myself involved. (Occasionally, I even go so far as to see these instances as, like Tagore's persona, prophetic.)
  I was having a conversation this evening with a good friend, and she brought up the topic of confirmations. She said, "to me those moments make everything seem so much more purposeful, like there's something divine in this."
  My friend had started the conversation recalling an experience we had both shared where many people involved in one project were individually inspired with similar thoughts, and when everything came together, the outcome was beautiful and unified. We knew that on our own, we couldn't have pulled that off. Everything fell into place, and we felt as if there was a hand of blessing on us.
  I've been feeling something similar while rehearsing with the awesome Sanyasi team. That is, the joy of working with a group of invested individuals, each bringing their own creative instincts and inspirations. Every person involved has their unique strengths, gifts and abilities and, when combined, it's almost as if the stars have aligned. Call it spiritual, call it a coincidence, call it what you like. Maybe the smile we are sending out is returning to us.
  Or are we the ones returning the smile?

Tickets are now on sale!

Hello everyone!! Tickets are now on sale for the DC Fringe festival. You can find them here:

https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/842405


Or you can call 866-811-4111 and ask for "Sanyasi"

The tickets are $17, but you need a one time purchase of a Fringe Button for $7 as well, so if you're just buying for us, it'll be $25. We really really appreciate your support!

AND please don't forget to donate! We really really need your support - we're about halfway to our goal, but we need YOUR help! Please consider making a tax -deductible donation, or buying a VIP ticket ($75 gets you a reserved seat, and an invite to a post show conversation, and our undying love!)

https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/fiscal/profile?id=4377


THANK YOU!!

Sing Sing Sing

Vishal!! Amie!! Thony!!

Cool
Awesome
Talented
Singers!

We just rehearsed the songs for the first time,
and they picked up on the tunes super quickly!
I am very humbled to hear them singing
my songs so well for only the first time.
Much respect and gratitude! It's going to be good!
Time for me to take the quality of my music up a notch.

-Keith

Jonathan Franzen on love

posted by Nora

Different friends have been posting this to Facebook: a Jonathan Franzen essay adapted from a commencement speech he gave on technology and self and the world and the difference between "loving" and "liking." Mostly it's about love.

In it he describes a personal journey very much like Sanyasi's -- away from the world and from caring for it, toward contempt and isolation (or "being cool"), and back again, in spite of himself, to the world, through a very specific and surprising kind of love. The push-pull of Franzen's story is identical to Sanyasi's, and the lesson he gives is the same: love is where our troubles begin.

I am quoting a lot of it here, because I like the way he tells the story. The rest of it can be read here.

When I was in college, and for many years after, I liked the natural world. Didn’t love it, but definitely liked it. It can be very pretty, nature. And since I was looking for things to find wrong with the world, I naturally gravitated to environmentalism, because there were certainly plenty of things wrong with the environment. And the more I looked at what was wrong — an exploding world population, exploding levels of resource consumption, rising global temperatures, the trashing of the oceans, the logging of our last old-growth forests — the angrier I became.

Finally, in the mid-1990s, I made a conscious decision to stop worrying about the environment. There was nothing meaningful that I personally could do to save the planet, and I wanted to get on with devoting myself to the things I loved. I still tried to keep my carbon footprint small, but that was as far as I could go without falling back into rage and despair.

BUT then a funny thing happened to me. It’s a long story, but basically I fell in love with birds. I did this not without significant resistance, because it’s very uncool to be a birdwatcher, because anything that betrays real passion is by definition uncool. But little by little, in spite of myself, I developed this passion, and although one-half of a passion is obsession, the other half is love.

And so, yes, I kept a meticulous list of the birds I’d seen, and, yes, I went to inordinate lengths to see new species. But, no less important, whenever I looked at a bird, any bird, even a pigeon or a robin, I could feel my heart overflow with love. And love, as I’ve been trying to say today, is where our troubles begin.

Because now, not merely liking nature but loving a specific and vital part of it, I had no choice but to start worrying about the environment again. The news on that front was no better than when I’d decided to quit worrying about it — was considerably worse, in fact — but now those threatened forests and wetlands and oceans weren’t just pretty scenes for me to enjoy. They were the home of animals I loved.

And here’s where a curious paradox emerged. My anger and pain and despair about the planet were only increased by my concern for wild birds, and yet, as I began to get involved in bird conservation and learned more about the many threats that birds face, it became easier, not harder, to live with my anger and despair and pain.

How does this happen? I think, for one thing, that my love of birds became a portal to an important, less self-centered part of myself that I’d never even known existed. Instead of continuing to drift forward through my life as a global citizen, liking and disliking and withholding my commitment for some later date, I was forced to confront a self that I had to either straight-up accept or flat-out reject.

Which is what love will do to a person. Because the fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it.

When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might love some of them.

And who knows what might happen to you then?

Audio inspiration

By Ameneh Bordi, Director

At a rehearsal earlier this month, we had an amazing exercise where we listened to the a song called "Love like a sunset" by the band Pheonix at the beginning of rehearsal. Then, at the very end of rehearsal, we walked through the rehearsal space responding to the moments in the music. In my preparation for this play, this song really strikes me as hitting on all the beats of "Sanyasi," his loneliness, his angst, the rush of the village scenes, the calm of the little girl's arrival. Confused as to what I mean? You'll have to come to the show, and then listen to the song and tell me what you think!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5Lh9uyx1Zw&feature=artist

My favorite things

I was going through the script pulling out some of my favorite lines, and I was just reminded how beautiful this play is. I wanted to share those lines with you all as well!
By Ameneh Bordi, director
-----
Can’t you keep quiet, like all decent dead people!?

My hand is a little bird that finds its nest here. Your palm is great, like the great earth which holds all. These lines are the rivers, and these are the hills.

To me, things that are beautiful are the keys to all that I have not seen and not know.

These hell creatures clatter their skeletons and dance in my heart, when their mistress, the great witch, plays upon her magic flute.

You seem to me like a cry of a lost world, like the song of a wandering star.

Nature, thou art my slave

But where is my little girl, with her dark sad eyes, big with tears?

Let us salute those stars which did throw us together. If for a moment, still it has been much.

The finite is the true infinite, and love knows its truth.

My girl, you are the spirit of all that is – I can never leave you.

tagore _ inspiration _ innovation

50 years ago,
legendary Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray
adapted and directed three stories by Rabindranath Tagore,
originally set and written in India
50 years before.

Teen Kanya (The Three Daughters)
is the feature that's composed of the shorts
and you can watch them all on youtube for free:

The Postmaster
Monihara (The Lost Jewels)
Samapti (The Conclusion)

each piece--as with Sanyasi--highlights a young female character
who unexpectedly challenges the lifestyles of an older man.
(The Postmaster, for sure, is worth a watch.)

50 years later,
as we prepare OUR n.e.w. c0ntEmp0rarieey production of Sanyasi,
these serve as insights on how Ray freshly readdressed Tagore's stories
while maintaining and complementing the fundamental elements that
50 years won't bury.

-keith

p.s. the shorts also have original scores (written by the director, Satyajit Ray)!

Some images I wanted to share

My two favorite images wouldn't actually let me download the photo so here are the links:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/newdimensionfilms/4775987436/

http://www.123rf.com/photo_5394277_tree-silhouette-on-fabric.html


None of these are my photos.  I do not claim copyright, they are simply research images.  And awesome pictures.

Very excited about this project.  The ideas in the images that are exciting to me are: dead trees/twigs (beauty in the naturally gritty) - especially in silhouette since we have curtains, transformation, deep color and/vs. neutrals, specific directionality, texture (light is coming through trees, leaves, etc), unexpected combinations (twigs that are tangled around a light... and what does it look like if the twigs are dropped off?), man made things composed of pieces of nature.  All of it is super preliminary and just floating.

Can't wait to chat more about it.

-Stephanie P. Freed, lighting designer

Image!

Hey Guys! Check out this cool graphic, designed by Jamie Gahlon and shaped into a post card by Michael Williams.

We are officially in the NYC Fringe, as well! Dropped off the forms and the check to them on Saturday, and they were all so nice and welcoming - they even knew the show!

Fundraising efforts are beginning, so if you'd like to be a part of this wonderful journey, contact us at Sanyasi2011@gmail.com!

Tagore event!

There is a really cool event being thrown by the Asia Society to honor Tagore!! How cool is that? It's may 12th (TODAY!?) - I may try to go check it out!

http://asiasociety.org/events-calendar/tagore-beyond-artistic-borders-celebrating-life-and-works-rabindranath-tagore?utm_source=Asia+Society+eNews&utm_campaign=dfc432e308-eNews_051011&utm_medium=email

Wish I could be there - evan

I know that Ameneh's starting rehearsals, and everyone is busy and struggling to find time and space to rehearse this puppy and get done the myriad things to get done before the summer, but I wanted to say I wish I could be there, and I'm starting to get that pre-project excitement. Not to say I wasn't excited before, but to be honest, I was a little skeptical - would we choose a play people wanted to do, once we did, would a play like this sound active and engaging outloud, once it did, could we get enough smart, talented people to put it on its feet? and ameneh did, which is an incredible feat in itself. I sort of mentioned to people casually I was doing "this thing" in DC over the summer, half expecting it to fizzle, but now that it is, indeed, happening and I've met the group of people working on it, I'm really truly excited and thrilled to be doing it. every theatre artist I've met whose given me advice in the last 4 years has talked about the need, the urgency, to find a group of collaborators and start from scratch, to make the kind of theatre and create the kind of opportunities that we want to be a part of as young actors, directors, designers. To stop waiting, and do. It's absolutely awesome that we, as a group, are doing just that - even if right now, focus is split a million different ways. There is something decisive here, above the idea of simply pumping out another play. Not only that, but its really gonna be fun. Can't wait to start!
also, ive started growing my beard. it will, most likely, be incredibly gnarly.

BIG NEWS!

Today we got big news from two sources! We got our Capital fringe venue assigments and dates, and we got an invitation from the New York City fringe festival to participate this year! Watch out world, here comes Sanyasi 2011 to rock your socks off!

In DC: 

Venue:  Spooky Universe - Universalist National Memorial Church

1810 16th Street NW Washington DC20009

Performances:

Tuesday July 12 @ 6pm

Thursday July 14 @ 8:15pm

Saturday July 16th @ 11pm

Sunday July 17 @ 2:00pm

Saturday July 23 @ 6:30pm

Visual Inspiration

By Ameneh Bordi, Director

Had some down time at work today, started googling some images. A little visual stimulation!

Shiva, Rabindranath Tagore, and Satyajit Ray

-by Keith Adams (Composer)

Happy belated Maha Shivaratri!
Thursday evening, at the Kali Temple in Burtonsville, MD,
I celebrated the annual Hindu festival, Maha Shivaratri (The Great Night of Shiva),
with my friends by watching devotees pour milk over a linga,
honor the Lord Shiva through offerings, songs, and prayers,  
and receive their tripundras: three lines of ash across each forehead.

As the ash (vibhuti) is a remnant of a physical deconstruction,
[and the product of a consecrated fire (homa) 
symbolic of the sun burning in eternal heat,
illuminating the universe in penance for God]
the tripundra is a physical sign of one's spiritual bonds with Shiva--
a reminder of the transitory nature of the material and the eternal purity of divinity.
These three lines represent the states, concepts, or actions called anava, karma, and maya
that one finds in spiritual knowledge, purity, and penance.

A sanyasi's goal is to reach these bonds through spiritual liberation
by dedicating his entire life
to detachment from the physical and
to unify himself with the eternal divine: 

"The stars, like sparks of fire, flown from the anvil of time, are extinct;
and that joy is mine which comes to the God Shiva, when, after aeons of dream,
he wakes up to find himself alone in the heart of the infinite annihilation.
I am free, I am the great solitary One." (p.3)

Heavy.

Check out this informative documentary I found on the life of the playwright, Rabindranath Tagore.
It was made by one of my favorite, and certainly one of the best Indian film directors ever: Satyajit Ray.

http://vimeo.com/3838865

Also, I've gathered, especially from here, that Sanyasi is an obscure reworking of one of Tagore's more widely known Bengali works, Prakritri Pratisodh (Nature's Revenge), which he had written when he was only 22 years old. In 1917, while living in England at the polished age of 56, Tagore completely reconstructed Nature's Revenge into English as Sanyasi. So, as we read Sanyasi, we are experiencing Tagore's intended language and his experienced revisions of a play that he valued so much in his memoirs: "This Nature’s Revenge may be looked upon as an introduction to the whole of my future literary work; or, rather this has been the subject on which all my writings have dwelt—­the joy of attaining the Infinite within the finite."  

Fantasy to Reality

By Ameneh Bordi, Director

So I was feeling a little restless at the beginning of this week, with the looming deadline of the acceptance materials for Capital Fringe, and our team's busy schedules which were making me feel a little disconnected from them. However, I spoke with Keith (the composer) and he reminded me that we are in that weird state between fantasy and reality, where its no longer fun as a dream, but its not quite fun because we don't have regular meetings and rehearsals. That made me feel better, and a bunch of pieces fell into place! This blog is now in place (so excited to share with you guys!), the application to Cap Fringe has been submitted, and we just got our Fractured Atlas acceptance!! It's so cool - they have so many tools to help companies that are just starting out, I can't wait to explore the site. It also has a page for secure online donations (hint hint nudge nudge) if anyone is wondering how they can get our little company off the ground!
I'll put a link on the sidebar, but here it is as well:
https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/fiscal/profile?id=4377

Anyways, can't wait for the reality to get fully real. Talk to you soon!

you are to me as this blue sky is - you are - yet you are not

This is the first post of what will be a long and fruitful process of discovering the play "Sanyasi."

We are very excited to begin this process - we know we'll be producing it at the DC Fringe, but that will not be the whole life of this show. We are so excited to get to know you! As a brief introduction, below is a letter from the Director, Ameneh Bordi to the DC Fringe.

To the NYC Fringe,

“These birds are word-peckers.” So says Sanyasi, about the endless talking of the villagers. I lead with this to say that I hope my words can persuade you, but in the end, I can only hope that you choose this production to have a life in the festival because I believe it is truly beautiful.

I, Ameneh Bordi, am proposing to do a production of “Sacrifice” by Rabindranath Tagore, an Indian politician, musician, and playwright of the 19^th century. The play is about an ascetic who has rejected the world and everything in it – not because he thinks it will bring him to a higher point of understanding, but because he genuinely hates the world and everything in it. He then meets a young girl who gently shows him the simple beauty of connecting with other people, and though he deserts her out of fear initially, he returns to the village, having seen the truth of her outlook. It’s too late, though – she has died. In between all of these scenes, the daily life of the village plays out, little scenes of humor and mundane exchanges that both show the triviality of our lives and the simple pleasures we live for.

I am working with Keith Adams, an amazing guitarist and composer, who will be creating original music for the piece. In one of our initial conversations, he said to me: “I’ve started thinking about eastern sounds to incorporate.” I asked him – why? You’re not from the East. You’re from America . Let’s create the music that the poetry asks for, that tells our story. I think this play is so lovely because it allows for that – it has a simplicity that leaves so much room for interpretation.

We will be creating this story together, Keith, Evan Sanderson (playing the lead character) and I, along with the rest of the team of actors. The chorus of villagers is about 35 characters, but we will be working with a team of 5, so creating the dynamism required will be an exciting challenge. We will be using the chorus to create the world of the village – they will never leave the stage, switching in and out of character as the parts require, sometimes acting as one, sometimes acting as 10.

I’d like to share the opening and closing images that we have been using as starting inspiration. We think this world is one of cloth and texture – in the ideal production there would be thick swaths of cloth draping the playing space, perhaps with the audience sitting on different levels, even on cushions or in the round. Sanyasi (the ascetic) would emerge from the audience at the start of the play – the house would go dark, and from the back he would begin to speak, emerging from his cave. The beginning of the play is an out breath – the chorus is sitting either scattered through the house or on the play space breathing the play into existence. The last line of the play is: “She can never be dead.” When you are reading it, you want to turn the page, but the page is blank. To get this feeling, the play will end with a sharp intake of breath, and the disappearance of all the actors from the play space, and hopefully with all the fabric falling to the ground.

We greatly appreciate your consideration, and we hope to bring this show to the festival as an example of the beauty of classical work done by contemporary theater artists.

Sincerely,

The Sacrifice Team