Appealing to the olfactory and by extension, the gustatory, are notions that theatre-makers have more than toyed with over the years, with varying degrees of success. Of course, smell and taste are part and parcel of the theatrical ‘food’ experience that might provide all the illusory flavors of a meal, without necessarily having to recreate a dine-and-serve set-up to a T. The performative qualities of cooking — experienced even in real-life kitchens, roadside stalls, or the high-end teppanyaki eatery — often translates well to the stage. A live kitchen, with only its essential trappings placed in the hands of a consummate actor, can yield metaphor upon metaphor that are, quite often, prescient to the storytelling. The pleasures of cooking lie in its processes, in slicing and chopping, or garnishing a freshly plated dish, or tossing and sautéing mystery ingredients in a pan. On stage, when we partake of these rituals as spectators, the visible labour can draw us closer not just to a character’s quotidian existence, but her hopes and aspirations.
Food as a metaphor
Amir Nizar Zuabi’s Oh My Sweet Land , staged at the Prithvi Theatre Festival a few years ago, was set in a Parisian kitchen in which the performer, Corrine Jabber, went about cooking kibbeh, a traditional Syrian meatball dish, virtually from scratch. The backdrop of the piece is civil unrest in Syria with its excruciating memories and unhealed wounds. A fridge stuffed with carcasses, raw meat quartered over a kitchen table, blood that seems real, oil boiling over — all creating a sensory and emotionally rich experience that perfectly complements Jabber’s relatively undemonstrative delivery. This is a piece that is often performed in kitchens rather than traditional performing spaces. The cooking isn’t completely ‘real’, each signpost in the cycle being previously prepared — the dough is kneaded, a tray of dumplings already moulded, and the meatballs lie cooked before time in an oven — but the intricately calibrated sleight of hand might induce many to buy into the play as a real-time execution of an authentic recipe. Perhaps, the allegorical weight carried by an equipped kitchen if often too obvious, almost too literal, but it cannot be denied how the teasing of one’s palate might transform the manner in which a piece is received.
Fragrant with meaning
While Jabber’s meat-balls remained out of reach, some plays like Seema Pahwa’s Saag Meat , and Roysten Abel’s The Kitchen , cook up a storm in cauldrons and serve up the resultant dish in small servings after the performance formally ends. Abel’s piece takes place against the colossal backdrop of mizhavu performers on an impeccably lit three-tiered frame, and Dilip Shankar and Mandakini Goswami play husband and wife who simultaneously cook payasam in two giant copper vessels, as if pre-ordained to commit unremittingly to the same cycle of life, and simmer with the same preoccupations. There is little love lost between the two, but as the cooking continues, the players churn the rice and the milk to the right consistency, the movement of their ladles akin to paddling with oars in choppy waters. There are rapids up ahead, as the furious drums announce, and there are lulls, when the river is still and the beats acquire a meditative quality. In a performance at the International Theatre Festival of Kerala, the payasam itself, ostensibly suffused with the negativity of marital discord, was unremarkable in taste and texture. Similarly, while Pahwa’s performance was characteristically robust and earthy, her live-cooked preparation, served afterwards with rotis, was only adequately satisfying. In Aruna Ganesh Ram’s immersive piece, Stand on the Street , her actors stood in as roadside vendors of momo outlets or chaat stalls. While their performances were top-notch, none of the food was prepared live, and the previously assembled bite-sized servings perhaps did not invigorate the senses as one might have hoped, even if their presence in the piece was without a doubt absolutely necessary.
Next year will mark 20 years since the opening of Neelam Man Singh Chowdhry’s Kitchen Katha , which served up community tales with food prepared live and served — pakoras, roti with chutney, jalebis and popcorn. As the director herself wrote, of her time cooking at the family gurudwara’s langar, “A papaya being cut into halves (suggested) the birth of man. The sensuality of the aubergine. The sense of touch while kneading dough nurtures the spirit and renews our sense of life. This breaking of bread, this sharing of food, bonds and connects us to the earth from where it is produced.”
