“The everyday and the extraordinary merged seamlessly to make a symphony of visuals, sounds and moments of unusual power. While the idea of waiting was explored in its many ramifications –social, satirical and philosophical – haunting questions about political decision making and the environment crisis were also raised. The boundaries between the ubiquitous and astonishing, humour and horror shifted constantly. But the potency of the *tour de force* never waned.”
Kathakali Jana, in the project review for the SAF catalogue

In March 2023, I received an unexpected and open-ended invitation from the Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa: to create a site-specific work for their annual festival in December 2023. The site was the third floor of a multi-level car park at the corner of a busy junction in the city centre of Panjim in Goa. On the site visit in May 2023, I was struck by two things.

TWO
The sides of the parking lot were open, and the low ceiling, parapet and pillar created long slits through which you could view the outside – like a panorama photograph. And the trees, the water, the air seemed to be wanting to come into the space, to take over, to reclaim what had been taken from them

Epicentre emerged from these early inspirations through a 3-week devising process in Goa, with the full participation and contribution of the whole cast, designers, and production people.

There is a world of neither here nor there which is a transit waiting room. Corridors in hospitals where families await news of loved ones; lock-ups in police stations where the arrested await trials that will decide their fate; daily queues of unskilled workers where they await a job for a day; taxi drivers in a multi-level car park awaiting customers; souls in purgatory awaiting judgment and away out or onward… At that point and space, we lose our individual identities – we are all waiters, stuck in time at the mercy of someone somewhere else making the decisions – or not. As we wait endlessly, patience frays to frustration, hope droops to despair, expectation sinks to boredom, control explodes to violence. And still, we wait…The multilevel parking space is one such limbo land where very little happens – apart from waiting. But it is at the epicentre, beginning, and end of many other journeys. 

In this devised performance piece, these ghosts that inhabit the parking lot meet the ghosts of characters from several texts, as well as ghosts from the performers’ own lives. These various stories filter into each other. What could these characters say to each other? Can they release us all from a place where time seems to have stopped, as the world implodes, explodes and re-emerges around us with the slow tenacity of the elemental?

Epicentre brings together text, movement, design, and the site, in a multi-sensory manner, exploring moments of varied experience that interconnect into a whole, rather than a single narrative thread.

[clockwise from top left: Rushikesh, Akanksha, Titas, Shadab, Alisha. Images by Serendipity Arts Festival and Sromona Saha]

The Epicentre company comprised performers, designers and technicians from Calcutta, Delhi and Goa – some who I had worked with before, and many I met for the first time. The 3-week devising and creation process saw us come together for full-day intensive rehearsals in a villa where the non-Goans stayed, and that doubled as our rehearsal space. It’s a rare gift in the Indian context to have the resources to put in entire days of work, and enabled us to devise a piece that was collectively created with the full participation and contributions of the cast and all the designers and production people. The finished piece saw six sold-out performances over four evenings of the Serendipity Arts Festival, 2023.

Company Credits
Concept and Direction: Vikram Iyengar
Created with and performed by: Akanksha Dev, Alisha Lazarus, Rushikesh Sawant, Shadab Kamal, Titas Dutta
Lighting Design and Execution: Sudip Sanyal
Sound Design and Execution: Ian Noronha
Musicians: Rajeswary Ganguly Banerjee, Sudokshina Manna Chatterjee (Vocal), Siddhartha Bhattacharyya (Tabla)
Scenography: Sukanya Ghosh
Costume Design: Alistair Hyams
Production Manager: Rebecca Johns
Stage Manager: Amit Kumar
Volunteers / Ushers: Anzel, Aryan, Dinesh, Jahanavi, Kiran, Milind, Nikhil, Parag, Sai Kumar, Yash, Zaid

List of Texts
We used, referenced and transcreated several texts in the piece – both in the original, and in translation into Hindi, Marathi, and Bangla.
Oh, the Places You’ll Go! | Dr. Seuss
Waiting at the Gynaecologist’s Office | Karuna Ezara Parikh
As I Lay with my Eyes Wide Open | Alisha Lazarus
tata tita krita radha | traditional kathak poem from the repertoire of Smt. Rani Karnaa
The Magic of the Night: a night at the waterhole | Anne Bonfert
Untitled text | Akanksha Dev
Words Whispered to a Child under Siege | Joseph Fasano
Waiting | Karuna Ezara Parikh
The Gaza Monologues | testimonies written by the youth of ASHTAR Theatre, Palestine in 2010

Lyrics and Songs
The original soundscore and music for Epicentre was created by Ian Noronha, incorporating the following songs and lyrics:
Vilambit Tarana in Raga Ramdasi Malhar | from the repertoire of Vidushi Veena Shasrabuddhe
baithe soche brija bam | traditional Kajri in Raga Mishra Pilu
megher pore megh jomeche | Rabindranath Tagore
chha rahi kali ghata | traditional Sawan in Raga Gaud Malhar and Raga Des rendered by Begum Akhtar
deep nibhe geche mamo | Rabindranath Tagore
amar onge onge ke | Rabindranath Tagore