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.