Where does one go in search of an agent provocateur – an inciting agent who brings to mind acts that are bold, rash or barely legal? The typical Mumbai rehearsal space, with its sewage-stained walls and faux wooden flooring, is an unlikely hunting ground. It leaches out all hints of mystery and menace, both plot and performer unmasked by the harsh fluorescent lights that bounce off an array of full-length mirrors. Yet, in one such space, performance-maker Sujay Saple and his motley crew of performers at the Shapeshift Collective are contemplating these words, locating the collective ‘anxious’ state of society in their own bodies. The outcome is Agent Provocateur , a dance-theatre performance that plays this week in the city.
Personal political
Devised and performed by dancer-actors Surbhi Dhyani and Arpit Singh, and musician Harsh Karangale, Agent Provocateur attempts to examine the body’s response to heightened intolerance and indoctrination. The socio-political landscape becomes a map of personal experiences and memories, which the performers colour in through snatches of conversation and movement. The music is not meant to please. It is jarring and treats noise as a focal device of enquiry. The movement is relentless – arms flung about, heads that shake constantly, and pelvic thrusts galore – enough to leave the unsuspecting viewer dizzy.
In embracing this performative chaos, Agent Provocateur differs from Shapeshift’s previous work. Saple comes from theatre and often works with dance, in search of hybrid performance languages that combine the visual and the physical. He favours evocative imagery; previous full-length works, Moonfool (2014) and Unselfed (2012), fragment ideas of the body and self by dwelling on images that are intentionally esoteric, eerie and absurd. Saple’s current work comes out of a process of examining his relationship to form and context. He asked, “What does it mean to be making work in your own context? Is there an expectation that the work needs to showcase your culture? Also, if you work out of a place that is going through conflict, are you expected to address the conflict through your work? It’s an odd situation, which produces anxiety when artists begin to manipulate and change their process to integrate ‘context’ into their work. I am trying to re-examine what my aesthetic is, where it comes from, and what it means to make work truthfully.”
Besides asking questions about themselves, the collaborators also ask questions of society. Ultimately, the urge to craft a performative response won over concerns about knowledge. Never having conceived of themselves as political people, Shapeshift Collective were unsure of where they stood in relation to their subject matter. Were they artists, activists or citizens? Thus, the making of the work turned into an experiment in using practice to find a voice of resistance.
Creative partners
Saple roped in two dramaturgs – performer-writer Rachel D’Souza and playwright and critic Vikram Phukan, to nuance these connections between the personal and the political. Before the performers entered the rehearsal process, the dramaturgs discussed the themes Saple wanted to incorporate into his work, directing the thought process at a conceptual level while supporting the maker’s vision. Once the performers arrived, their training backgrounds added to the nuance.
Karangale’s drumming sets the tone for the piece. Sometimes, it issues instructions – prompting the dancer to stand still, execute an action, or simply leave the stage. At other times, it operates from the shadows, offering pace and rhythm to the movement. Dhyani and Singh begin to execute a score of four actions, making innocuous poses or shapes in the process. Soon, the score is distended as they fall out of the sequence, their arms straying towards a breast, bum or crotch. Sometimes, they return to the score, but with each transgression, they move further away from the original set of movements.
In another instance, Singh draws a litany of unfortunate incidents out of Dhyani, as the latter chops a pile of beetroot. There is a fight with a bus driver in Alwar, a fractured foot in Kurukshetra, and a hostel eviction in Pune. Then, in a seemingly involuntary move, a bewildered Dhyani rises up on her toes. Her arms arc out to the sides and she begins to tiptoe across the room. Her body begins to give in to a balletic impulse – the arms circle above her head while her feet brush outwards until the toes are stiffly pointed. She recites her own movement instructions – “brush, plié and stretch” – even as she keeps up a perfunctory stream of details about accidents and mishaps. Tentative movements of the feet give way to a flutter of the arms. Soon, Dhyani is screaming her instructions as she executes a series of jumps over the chopped beetroot. This leaves a pink mess on the floor, driving home the sudden escalation of physicality – from soft to violent.
By incorporating text and movement, Shapeshift’s work engages with two distinct forms of performative expression. What has the process of arriving at ‘hybridity’ meant for its artists? Saple has some answers. “I’ve worked with people who have been strong performers in general. Mostly, they’re excited about going out of their comfort zones. We look at the devising process as a laboratory where we push ourselves to go beyond what our bodies know and find the new. The sense of hybridity is not just the aesthetic of the piece but in the ethos of the process itself.”
Agent Provocateur will be performed at Prithvi Theatre today at 9 p.m. and on September 27 at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. More details at bookmyshow.com
