For all the dreamers

Amruta Mapuskar’s one person show traipses around surreal landscapes to explore the ‘dream self’

The colours and textures of dreams provide the wellspring of ideas for a new one-actor show, Rapid-I-Movement that opens this weekend. Performed by Amruta Mapuskar, and directed by John Britton, this Madman and Me presentation was developed over a period of nine to ten months. The title, quite obviously, refers to REM sleep, the phase in a standard sleep cycle during which our dreams are at their most vivid. According to Mapuskar, who recollects and writes down her dreams as a force of habit, the ‘dream self’ during REM, is perhaps as real as the ‘waking self’ and indeed, scientifically, from the point of view of brain activity, it is so. In what will be her first solo performance, Mapuskar explores the subconscious id (signified by the ‘I’ in the title), traipsing around the surreal landscapes conjured up by the inveterate dreamer.

Subliminal messages

As research for her project, Mapuskar not only wrote reflections of her own reveries, but created an archive of dreams recounted by her friends and acquaintances. She came across what she describes as “collective dream experiences” shared by many. “Flying, shivering, being naked, having sex in public, were the motifs I encountered,” she says. From there, she was able to mount what might be described as a universal stream of expressiveness rather than the representation of just one individual’s subliminal meanderings. Her physical performance derives its essential qualities from the dreamscapes that are its inspiration. In a dream, proceedings leap from one event to another in rapid segues that are disarmingly seamless. In

Rapid-I-Movement

, the movement, equally serendipitously, gives way to speech.

For instance, when Mapuskar suddenly finds herself delivering a Ted Talk on ‘hard-core’ neuroscience. And, in the same way that a dream, logically warped though it might be, has a unity all of its own, Mapuskar’s piece finds its chassis in these perfectly balanced subconscious patterns.

Incubating ideas

The texts she explored as preparation ranged from Karl Jung’s

The Dream Theoriesto Matthew Walker’s

Why We Sleep . The latter, especially, is cutting-edge in its scope, and takes cognisance of recent dramatic scientific findings. With Britton, her mentor and collaborator of several years at the Duende School of Ensemble Physical Theatre, Mapuskar arrived at a script which will accompany the movement score she has devised over long painstaking hours. Almost a decade ago, she had watched Jyoti Dogra’s raw and visceral solo-performance

The Doorway , which had inspired her immensely. In the years that followed, she did constantly put off attempting something so emotionally forthright and vulnerable herself. It was when her mentors, quite unequivocally, told her that ‘she was ready’, that Mapuskar finally took the plunge. The watchful eye of Britton, who attended a few sessions as the all-seeing ‘outside eye’, and her personal investment in Jerzy Grotowski's psycho-physical approach to acting, gave shape to the production. “The process is indeed long and difficult. Working on your own mandates its own kind of discipline, but in the end, it did deepen my own practice,” she reflects. It was a solitary path marked with both self-doubt and self-discovery but, in the end, a piece ready to be showcased publicly is its own reward.

Rapid-I-Movement will be staged today at 6 p.m. and on October 7 at 6 p.m and 9 p.m. at Studio Tamaasha, Versova. Seats are limited and entry is by invitation only, no children allowed; for more details RSVP on info.rapidimovement @gmail.com or WhatsApp on 9874355007