THE ENGLISH CONNECT
BRITISH COUNCIL INDIA’S NEW DIRECTOR, ALAN GEMMELL OBE, IS REACHING OUT TO THE CONTEMPORARY INDIAN BY REINTERPRETING SHAKESPEARE AND LOCAL TUNES
Five years ago when Alan Gemmell OBE, of British Council dropped into Chennai, he was working with the organisation in Mexico, and possibly viewed this south Indian city from a distant vantage point. This time, he arrived as British Council India’s director and came with an agenda as enterprising as his position and as dynamic as the city.
“I should say that this is my first proper visit to Chennai. And it’s about two things—me understanding and being inspired by the things we do every day and conceptualising new initiatives that will mark the upcoming year of culture between the UK and India,” he says.
“India is the British Council’s biggest and most important operation. We have 600 colleagues working around the country. There are brilliant projects running already, and my job is a bit like a conductor,” he adds.
Cultural exchange remains Gemmell’s prime point of focus and as part of it, he has announced ‘Mix the Play’, British Council’s collaborative work with Indian playwright Roysten Abel to take Shakespeare to young audiences through their smart phones. The process is simple—Abel will choose a scene from one of Shakespeare’s plays and take Indian actors, costume designers and musicians to record this several times. He will then work this together with a British digital business called The Flying Object. This would enable people to explore over a hundred variables to this scene, helping them direct their own scene of the Shakespeare play and share it with their friends on social media.
“It will celebrate Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of his death. We also believe that his plays and the ideas he addresses in them are just as relevant today as they were 450 years ago. We want young people to connect with those issues through these plays, and this project with Roysten is going to do just that,” says Gemmell. This is scheduled to start in November.
The second key initiative is ‘Mix the City’. If Mix the Play is about you becoming a director, Mix the City is about you turning into musician. “We’ve asked Sonia Mazumdar of the world music label Earthsync, to help us create the sights and sounds from north, south, east and west India, with the help of local musicians,” says Gemmell.
“Coupling this work with The Flying Object, you’ll be able to remix and reinterpret it, and share it on social media. It will celebrate contemporary life and music-making in these cities, and is set to launch from January next year,” he adds.
In addition to these cultural exchanges, the British Council is training one million teachers and working with 35 million children as part of its programme in government schools in India, according to Gemmell.
“Right now, we are just as keen to have the strongest possible educational, cultural, economic, social and diplomatic relationship with India. We’ve just come through a referendum, we’ve got a new Prime Minister and through these exchanges, we want to be most connected to the contemporary Indian, than India in general.”