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Animation: Disposable House 1 (Little Boxes)
Animation by: Samudra Kajal Saikia
Done on: 25th January 2011
While working and researching on the theme: The Imagery of House in Individual and Collective Memories, the song “little Boxes” inevitably came to our mind.
The profundity of the satire is attested by a professor at the University of Miami,"I've been lecturing my classes about middle-class conformity for a whole semester. Here's a song that says it all in 1½ minutes."
Earlier we have used the song in an earlier performance of Kankhowa: GHAR KATHA, Chapter One, in the 75th anniversary celebration of Baroda Ameteur Dramatic Club, 28th August 2010.
The performance was designed into seven different sectors. The Prologue takes place at the outside of the auditorium of Shreyas High School, Manjalpur, Baroda. The first Sector: The Narcissist Actor, takes place at the threshold of the auditorium.
As the performers and the spectators enter into the main hall, after breaking down a “wall”, the second sector: Little Boxes takes place.
There is an installation with little box like houses made up of origami and a mosquito net lit up with translucent light. Two performers are inside the net with hanging origami houses and a singer sings a country song once popularized by Pete Seeger: “little boxes made of ticky tacky”…
Simultaneously two other performers drags, pulls and pushes a cluster of card-board houses towards the stage through the hall.
Performers of this part of performance:
Udita Bhattacharya, St. Stephens College, University of Delhi
Diya Sen and Thomas, Faculty of Arts, M S University
Abhimanyu Mishra, Ahmadabad
Sebastien Merges, Esban, France
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"Little Boxes" is a song written by Malvina Reynolds in 1962, which became a hit for her friend Pete Seeger in 1963. The song is a political satire about the development of suburbia and associated conformist middle-class attitudes. It refers to suburban tract housing as "little boxes" of different colors "all made out of ticky-tacky", and which "all look just the same." "Ticky-tacky" is a reference to the shoddy material used in the construction of housing of that time.
Pete Seeger's rendition of the song is known internationally, and reached number 70 in the Billboard Hot 100; Seeger was a friend of Reynolds, also a political activist, and like many others in the 1960s he used folk songs as a medium for protest.
Watch Pete Peeger in this link:
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