The Absent Lover
1st March, SRI RAM CENTRE, 7:30 pm
 |
Produced by: Thresh Language: English & French Duration: 1 Hour 10 Minutes |
The Absent Lover is a play in which the search for the lover is both literal and metaphorical. While we each seek the ‘right’ lover in our life’s journey, we encounter many relationships, some fulfilled, and some not. Each encounter leaves us with a small clue to the next step and gives us the next key in unraveling the eternal question- who is this lover? There is no beginning and no end, just a sense of spiraling…
The Absent Lover is inspired by the fourth episode of Kalidasa’s 5th century play, Vikaramorvashiyam. The nymph Urvashi runs away from her beloved Pururavas in a fit of jealous rage. Through a poetic search in the dense magical forest, the king encounters his own fears some exaggerated, some casual. Ultimately he needs to find that absent lover within himself to find his beloved Urvashi. Each section leads to bizarre encounters with nature and makes a familiar environment unfamiliar.
The original script, music, design and direction are all about the missing links in communication. What if I didn’t understand the language or recognize the gestures of a movement? What else can I choose pay attention to? In very rare circumstances a true sophisticate may understand all language systems – verbal, motion and environment. But the truth is that there is always something ‘absent’ that we chase as in the production. The elements come from a contemporary aesthetic, yet its roots emerge from the very thread of ancient ritual and vocabulary.
Something familiar has been rendered unfamiliar because we have shifted it.
-Preeti Vasudevan
SYNOPSIS
The Absent Lover, a theatre production about loss and rediscovery, is inspired by a 5th century play (Vikramorvishyam) by Sanskrit poet-dramatist Kalidasa.
The play begins when a wandering story-teller, the Sutradhara, invites us into a mysterious forest glade, invoking the magical spirits of the forest from the inner realms of the dense forest to reveal the ancient story of love story from the pods of a magical tree.
A King (Pururuvas, Son of the Moon) has lost his beloved wife (the nymph-Queen Urvashi) in the forest. It is a wild and stormy night. As the King struggles through the forest, he encounters strange and wonderful manifestations of nature. His ordeal becomes a metaphor, an intense crucible of self-examination. Through pain and longing, he journeys towards redemption and true love.
NOMINEES
Best Stage Design: Delphine Ciavaldini
Delphine studied fashion and theatre costume in London, where she worked in many of the West End’s most prestigious houses, including the Royal Opera House and the English National Opera (La Traviata, Don Giovanni, Macbeth, Nabucco, La Boheme). Her designs have featured in several international dance festivals, and she has been involved with a number of major award-winning shows including Matthew Bourne’s Car Men. After 8 years in London Delphine moved to the island of Corsica, where she created costume and set design for local theatre companies & short films. Now in Paris, she creates set and costume designs for film, music, theatre and dance.
Best Lighting Design: Les Dickert
Les Dickert recently created the lighting for Yvonne Rainer’s RoS Indexical in New York, Vienna and Berlin. Les has worked with international dance venues, including the Edinburgh International Festival; Sadler’s Wells; The National Ballets of Denmark, Belgium, England, Holland, Canada and Australia.
In his native United States, he has designed for Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Kennedy Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and many American regional and off-Broadway theater companies. As past resident designer of the White Oak Dance Project, he collaborated with artists such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Lucinda Childs, Mark Morris, Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton and Richard Move. Les studied lighting design under Jennifer Tipton when he attended the Yale School of Drama. He lives in New York City.
Best Sound Design: Ben Foskett
Ben Foskett’s music encompasses concert, dance and theatre works, and has been performed at festivals throughout Europe, the United States and India. Players of his music include: the London Sinfonietta, clair-obscur, Psappha, the Agon Trio, Thresh and the London Children’s Ballet.
He studied at the Royal College of Music under Edwin Roxburgh and later at the Royal Academy of Music under Simon Bainbridge. He is the recipient of a bursary from the RVW Trust and a Leverhulme Trust composition fellowship.
Foskett also works widely as orchestrator and arranger.
Best Choreography & Best Director: Preeti Vasudevan
Preeti Vasudevan is a performer and choreographer whose creative explorations derive from her deep training in Indian classical dance (Bharatanatyam) as well as multiple other modern and contemporary forms. Her goal is to develop a new language of movement through a multi-disciplinary approach to dance and theatre.
She was a delegate to the first American Dance Festival in India (’90) and was awarded a one-year cultural scholarship for cultural studies in Japan (’94). In 2003 she was selected as one of the emerging choreographers by the Joyce Foundation, NY and invited for the International Choreographer’s Residency, American Dance Festival. She was faculty for the 2004/05 American Dance Festival teaching contemporary Indian dance technique and composition. As a classical soloist, Ms. Vasudevan has been the recipient of prestigious awards for her outstanding contribution in the classical arts of India.Ms. Vasudevan has a Bachelor’s in Psychology and a Master’s in Dance Studies from Laban Centre London specializing in choreography and movement analysis.
