Matters of the Art
COMIC ARTISTS, IMMERSIVE THEATRE PRACTITIONERS AND VINTAGE DANCE MUSIC BANDS, BANGALORE IS NURTURING NEW TALENT LIKE NO OTHER CITY.
Comic artistes, theatre practitioners and vintage dance music bands, Bangalore is nurturing new talent like no other city.
SURAJ STEPHEN D’SOUZA DOODLING AWAY in his notebook in second grade and often being punished for it, Suraj Stephen D’souza, 25, never imagined it was something he would make a career out of. In fact, until he left school he didn’t know one could actually go to an arts college. “My brother got admitted to Chithrakala Parishath and that’s when I discovered the existence of a new world, of art colleges and the atmosphere in them”, says D’souza. He completed a five-year long course at Ken School of Art and began experimenting with mixed media, photography and sculpture. While art remained his first love, D’souza needed a job to manage his finances. That’s when he decided
to become a part-time bouncer at Geoffrey’s Pub, Royal Orchid Hotel. “Since I was well-built, it was a rather natural choice,” he says. “But to my luck I met a lot of interesting people at my job and even got to put up my own stall at an exhibition at the hotel. My artwork actually started to sell,” he adds.
It is in November this year that D’souza finally quit being a bouncer and turned a full-time artist. An exhibition at Kala Niketan, Mysore and a nomination for the Lalit Kala Academy Award had a lot to do with that he admits. He spends his days painting and is keenly exploring sculpture as a medium now.
Music for the Soul PARVAAZ
ENTHRALLING MUSIC lovers in Bangalore for nearly six years, Parvaaz is known for performing Urdu and Hindi poetry with classic rock sounds. Started as yet another college band by two Kashmiris—Mir Kashif Iqbal, 29, and Khalid Ahmed, 29, old friends who met in college in Bangalore and began jamming, Parvaaz released their first full-length album Baran in 2014.
All self taught musicians, their influences range from Radiohead and Aracde Fire all the way to Indian Ocean and city-based Thermal and A Quarter (TAAQ). The band has been through a few line-up changes and now includes Sachin Banandur, 26 on the drums and Fidel D’souza, 29 on bass guitar. From being relatively unknown to having a steady fan base that even travels for their gigs, Parvaaz has come a long way. “We are still more appreciated for our live performances and are going through a more rigorous recording process for our new album due for release in 2017,” says Kashif Iqbal. “We are also recording live songs and releasing them as EPs,” he adds. Their song writing process is rather fluid, starting off with a jam or ideas or pieces of old poetry. “We still share music with each other but end up following more Indian bands than International ones now,” says Fidel D’souza. Between five to six gigs a month through the season and an album in the offing, Parvaaz is well on the road to stardom.
Many Talents, Many Mediums NITHYA J RAO
ALL OF 24 YEARS of age, Nithya Rao could be spotted doing as many as five different things during the day. From directing to acting, conceptualising a research fellowship all the way to consulting patients as a trained psychologist, there isn’t a dull moment in her life. It is no surprise then that she is bubbling with energy and eager to talk about her work and we try to keep up. “I come from a family of artists. Every child had to learn at least one art form. For me, it was Bharatanatyam at first, then Carnatic music until I began volunteering at Ranga Shankara where I watched a lot of plays”, says Rao. It was then that she decided to pursue a degree in performing arts over medical college.
Rao proceeded to work as an actor for several city-based and national theatre groups including The Actors Collective and Ranga Shankara Productions. She also co-founded Lahe Lahe, a newly launched expression space in the city that hosts performances. However, Rao’s deepest interest lies in sharing real life stories through theatre leading her to cofound the theatre group Katharsis Productions. “I am very interested in using art to better family relationships. The idea is to invite people to share stories which can then be performed. The experience is truly cathartic,” she explains talking about the idea behind Katharsis and a series of performances titled Katharsis Karicatures.
Besides bringing her knowledge of psychology into theatre, Rao is also determined to break the fourth wall and perform museum style theatre in the future, where the audience moves around the space to experience different performances.
Comic Relief MADHAV NAIR
A GRAPHIC DESIGN student at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Madhav Nair, 21, was always looking for a reason to draw. It was as a part of an exchange programme in Netherlands that he got to study illustration and began looking at comics. “It was like an epiphany”, he says. Nair proceed to intern at Kokaachi, a comic publishing house based in Kochi where he worked on a 30-page graphic novel that is due publication.
It was on a visit to a bookstore that Nair bumped
Many Talents, Many Mediums NITHYA J RAO
ALL OF 24 YEARS of age, Nithya Rao could be spotted doing as many as five different things during the day. From directing to acting, conceptualising a research fellowship all the way to consulting patients as a trained psychologist, there isn’t a dull moment in her life. It is no surprise then that she is bubbling with energy and eager to talk about her work and we try to keep up. “I come from a family of artists. Every child had to learn at least one art form. For me, it was Bharatanatyam at first, then Carnatic music until I began volunteering at Ranga Shankara where I watched a lot of plays”, says Rao. It was then that she decided to pursue a degree in performing arts over medical college.
Rao proceeded to work as an actor for several into his artist hero, graphic novelist George Mathen aka Appupen. “We spoke and George saw my work. When he was working on some graffiti as part of ST+ART festival, he invited me to join him”, he says. Ever since, Nair has been working on Brain Ded, Mathen’s Facebook page of comic strips and is in the process of creating a ten-episode series titled Room Service. “As a comic artist, there is often a lot of pressure to lean towards political satire. But that doesn’t interest me now and I stick to fiction,” explains Nair. “I am still trying to find a voice and experimenting with different things because you need to be able to draw everything before you decide on a style,” he adds. city-based and national theatre groups including The Actors Collective and Ranga Shankara Productions. She also co-founded Lahe Lahe, a newly launched expression space in the city that hosts performances. However, Rao’s deepest interest lies in sharing real life stories through theatre leading her to cofound the theatre group Katharsis Productions. “I am very interested in using art to better family relationships. The idea is to invite people to share stories which can then be performed. The experience is truly cathartic,” she explains talking about the idea behind Katharsis and a series of performances titled Katharsis Karicatures.
Besides bringing her knowledge of psychology into theatre, Rao is also determined to break the fourth wall and perform museum style theatre in the future, where the audience moves around the space to experience different performances.
Vintage Love CLOWN WITH A FROWN
WHAT DO A bunch of teenage music lovers do when caught in a single room? Dig out their parents’ old favourites from the 70s and begin jamming. That is literally how the city’s best known funk rock band Clown With a Frown came to be in 2011. “We were literally blown away by some of the music from the 70s. We realised there was no band doing retro music and we started jamming”, says Jonathan Reuben, 24, Guitarist and one of the only two members from the band’s original line-up. Jam sessions brought them together regularly and the CWAF had soon carved a niche for itself winning as many as 28 college band competitions at a time. They graduated to playing at prestigious music festivals in the country such as the NH7 Weekender and Strawberry Fields at NLSIU. The band with five permanent members, has since gone through 22 changes in its line-up and often plays as 10-piece with a full horn section.
Their debut album Love Intoxication, released in November this year is a collection of their songs produced between 2011 and 2016. The five members, all full-time musicians include Pramod Pratap on the drums, Pradyun Manoj on the keyboard, Jonathan Reuben on the guitar, Keerthana Sudarshan on the vocals and Aashish Paul, the youngest member of the band at at bass guitar.
Besides playing to a large audience of fans in the city, the band is busy touring around the world playing at festivals and working towards an album release in March. “Our new material will be a little more towards crossover music, with more modernised sounds and no horn section,” Reuben explains.
Drama of the Senses ARUNA GANESH RAM
SHE BEGAN HER theatre journey in school with a single line in the play Twelfth Night, but it was performing arts beyond the proscenium that always intrigued her. Aruna Ganesh Ram, 31, Creative Director, Visual Respiration, once a well-known theatre artist in Chennai is now breaking barriers to create a new body of work in the city. Armed with a degree in Advanced Theatre Practice from the Royal Centre of Speech and Drama, Ganesh Ram specialises in Immersive Theatre, a form that engages all your senses during a performance. Her 2013 |production Replay about traditional Indian games saw the audience being placed in a large ludo board and be part of the performance itself. A Moment of Memory, her second production, brought audience into the performers’ world and ended with a serving of tomato chat. “At a re-run of one of my earlier plays Swami and Friends in the city, we tried to recreate the smells of the household in the performance using coffee and incense,” she says. She calls her form of expressive, experimental performance ‘experimence’ and recently concluded a solo show on food memories at the Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa in collaboration with chef Manu Chandra. After photographs, smells and stories, Ganesh Ram is keen on exploring gender through performance. “I want to explore how gender bias creeps into children at an early age. I am working with Nirmala Menon of Interweave Consulting that addresses gender bias in workspaces for that,” says Ganesh Ram.