The Outsider

"In a universe suddenly divested of illusion and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger.

His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home

or the hope of a promised land." Albert Camus (The Outsider)

Thursday, January 10, 2013

The Body House of an Actor



As an artifact the body constructs its viewers (and their expectations), while viewers' expectations construct a body's contours...

Actors are probably the only art makers who can be told (in response to gestures they make with their vocal and physical apparatus, their own attributes and their responses) by an observer that what they have palpably executed is not real or truthful.

Anuradha Kapur, "Actors Prepare",
Theatre India, National School of Drama's Theatre Journal,
May 2004, Number Nine, ed. by, K S Rajendran, pp. 8-9


 
1
House Arrest

The roof of Kankhowa’s house leaks
Thousands of eyes from the evening sky
Keep staring at me
I cannot go out
I cannot stay in

 2
I am an actor

I am an actor. Very limited my abilities are.
It’s been a long time I left home for my studies,
I know a lot of you share the same story.
But as an actor I dwell in this particular body.
This body of mine is my house.
Wherever I go, I carry this house with me.

Or, say, this mobile house brings me within it.

I cannot get out of this house.
If I do, I’m no more an actor.
Sometimes I feel neither can I enter in this house of mine.
You might laugh at my words,
But these things have always disturbed me.

If acting is an art, I transform this very body to an art object,
and present it in front of you.
My dear audience, look, please look at me,
even now I am doing the same thing.

Right now I cannot go out of this space even if I wish to,
I cannot go and take a nap,
I cannot go out for some tea.


3
Buy me. Purchase me.

Sometimes I wish if I were a barber
And give you a hair cut
And if I could make some money out of it.

I am an actor with limited abilities.
I know very little things, very little things I can do
I cannot fly kites,
I cannot drive,
I cannot play a dotara,

 
I love you so much without even knowing you
I don’t know how much I will love you after I see you.  I hardly can assume

I don’t know how to write a poem.

 
It would have been better if I were a farmer.
Or a retailer of garments.
To sale my goods and make money.

Buy me. Purchase me. I am for sale. I am a commodity.
It would have been better if I were a painter.
I would have painted and made money.
But I am just an actor. A performer.

I turn my body to an work. I don't make art. This body of mine is an object of art.

Buy me, I want to make some money.
Buy me.
Purchase me.

I don’t have a house that I can sell and make money.
I cannot rent a house to dwell in.

I carry a house, my body, all the time.



4
I am an actor

I am an actor. Before and after being an actor, I am a spectator.
I see, I can see,
It is important that I should see.
I have to see other people looking at me.
Therefore, if I am an actor,
there are many spectators inside me, They share the house with me.
That is why I am confused, how many people live in my house.
I lose myself in my own house.
My house is so full of people that I cannot enter my own house.


I remember Lalon Fakir. I remember Kabir.



5
I exit in, I enter out

There is somebody else dwelling inside my house.
Neither I can see nor can I touch, beyond of my knowledge.
Though I hardly know his name, I can feel his grief.
We stay in the same house, but we are far apart.

No postman ever came, in search of him.
The telephone never rang for him.
I mostly buy vegetables for him as well
When I do it for me, I care for him.
.
I cannot lock my house while going out
Since he never comes out of the house.
He never sleeps properly like someone suffering from asthma.
Because of him I too wake up many times during the night.
 
The moment I play the ektaara, you pick up the percussion
But who's there to  play the false notes, I can't guess.
You prepare the color and I paint the canvas with passion
But who is there to make it a mess?[1]
 
I go in and come out all the time
Looking for him,
I go in and come out, go in and come out.
And a time comes when I don’t know, if I am inside or outside.

I exit in, I enter out.



6
There is a house inside the house

Dear,
Amongst the crowd I do search for you.

There is a house inside the house.
And there is a house in the house that is again inside the house.
And there is a house in the house that is inside the house of that house.

And there is a house inside the house of that house which is inside the house of that house which is again inside the house of another house….

And then another house inside the…
I don’t know which house you live in. where do you inhabit.
I enter a house looking for you and you enter another house,
I enter another house and you go inside a different one.

Thus I spend my days.
It’s been a long time I’m neither inside the house, nor outside actually

I don’t know how many houses are there inside my house.
I don’t even know who built this house.
I just know that you are there somewhere

You are there.
With a constant stare.

 

Notes:


THE BODY HOUSE OF AN ACTOR
was partially performed in Ghar Katha, a disposable theatre experience by Kankhowa as a part of the 75th anniversary of Baroda Ameteur Dramatic Club
Manjalpur, baroda, 28th Aug. 2010

On the same text there was a wall painted animated movie done with the students of National Institute of Design (NID), in Ahmedabad, February, 2011

The Assamese version was published in SADIN an Assamese weekly published from Guwahati

The Text was later explored in an experiemental theatre experience “HouseHOLD” at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi, in November 2011

In February 2012 the text was explored in various public art projects under R. A. P. E 2012 (Regional Art, Performance and Events), in Guwahati.

The text is a part of a larger multidisciplinary project undertaken by Kankhowa (Samudra Kajal Saikia) known as “Disposable House”. Presently preparing for some book publishing projects and an exhibition at Vadhera Art Gallery, New Delhi.
    



A Performance Text by: Samudra Kajal Saikia
kankhowa@gmail.com
mobile: 9811375594





[1] a traditional Baul song of Bengal