Unbound- a performance project

Prakriti Foundation

presents

Unbound- a performance project
dedicated to the centenary of Hind Swaraj and based on the Swaraj writings of Mahatma Gandhi and J.C. Kumarappa Additional text: Mahatma and his ism by EMS, Social Justice: Identity Politics by Nancy Fraser, Buddha or Karl Marx by B.R Ambedkar, Dalit Rights are Human Rights by Clifford Bob and writings and sayings of Srimad Rajchandra Direction, design and dramaturgy: Parnab Mukherjee

performers: Parnab Mukherjee and Cordis Paldano

installation: C. Krishnapriya








About the director:

An independent media analyst and a performance consultant by profession, Mr. Parnab Mukherjee is one of the leading alternative theatre directors' of the country. He divides his time between Kolkata, Imphal and the Darjeeling hills.Currently, a consultant with two publication initiatives, he has earlier worked for a sports fortnightly, an English daily and a Bengali daily. He is an acclaimed authority on Badal Sircar's theatre, Shakespeare-in-education and specialises in theatre-for-conflict-resolution and theatre-of-the-campus.
He is considered as a leading light in alternative theatre in the country having directed more than 150 full-length/workshop productions. These include full-length plays, workshop performances, theatre interventions, structured work-in-progress and installation-based performance.
Parnab has created a personal idiom of using spaces for theatre exploration. He has extensively worked on a range of human rights issues which include specific theatre projects on anti-uranium project struggle in Jadugoda, Save Tenzin campaign, rehabilitation after industrial shutdowns, shelter issue of the de-notified tribes, a widely acclaimed cycle of 12 plays against Gujarat genocide, and a range of issues on north-east with special reference to Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958.
He is the artistic director of Best of Kolkata Campus- an autonomous non-registered performance collective and a performance foundry, that has completed 18 years of doing dedicated theatre in found spaces and public arena.
Some of the most memorable productions of the collective include Trilogy of Unrest (Hamletmachine, Necropolis, This room is not my room), The Country with a post office, Rehearsing Antigone, Raktakarabi-an urban sound opera, Bhul Rasta, Kasper-dipped and shredded, They Also Work, River Monologues, Dead-Talk series, Conversations with the dead, Crisis of Civilisation, Shakespeare shorts, Man to Man talk, Inviting Ibsen for a Dinner with Ibsen, Your path wrong path and And the Dead Tree Gives no Shelter.
Four of his major workshop modules: Freedomspeak, The Otherness of the Body, Conflict as a Text and The Elastic Body have been conducted with major theatre groups and campuses all over the country. He has written four books of performance texts.He curates a series called Talk Gandhi specifically to integrate places all over the country related to Gandhi with events that incorporate the dissent writings of that place.