A unique theatrical experience from India The Kitchen, directed by Roysten Abel, is featuring at the Auckland Arts Festival 2015.
Drama, drums and a traditional South Indian dessert called payasam will take centre stage at the festival in the New Zealand premiere of the production.
Be prepared to be stimulated by a ritual fusion of sights, sound, smell and taste- all at once and all the way from South India.
On stage will be a husband and wife enacting a drama without words, stirring huge steamy vats of payasam, involving 100 kilos of rice, sugar, almonds, milk, raisins, cardamom and ghee. It’s a reality cooking show unlike any other. Behind them, under coppery light, 12 drummers will beat out a surging rhythm on their sacred mizhavu drums, while the fragrance of aromatic rice wafts through the theatre. This mesmerising mix soon combines to reach a boiling point delighting all the senses, including taste as the audience is invited to share the payasam afterwards.
The mizhavu drum is an ancient pot-shaped percussion instrument made of copper or clay with the mouth covered with stretched hide. Unique in producing a vibrant tone enriched with classical rhythm and purity, it is an integral part of the performing arts of Kerala in South India, such as Koothu, Koottiyattam and Nangiar Koothu.
Kerala born Roysten Abel is a well known Indian theatre director and playwright. He is known globally for his larger than life, grand scale productions. Founder of the Indian Shakespeare Company, he gained international recognition with The Manganiyar Seduction, a production featuring 45 Rasjastani musicians and set inspired by the Hawa Mahal palace, which was a hit at Auckland Arts Festival 2011.
He describes The Kitchen as a metaphor for evolution, juxtaposing the act of cooking with cosmic truths about the universe.
“As the couple cook on stage, they are cooking their souls too. It is about the journey of life,” he says.
The inspiration for the play came during a visit to the shrine of the 13th century Sufi poet Rumi in Turkey.
Taken to Rumi’s kitchen, Abel says he was struck by the scene that used to be enacted there, where the poet, surrounded on a platform by his swirling dervishes, would pray and meditate.
Alongside him, two pots of food were being cooked. Novices, seated on a lower level would not be allowed to eat or drink until their souls had “cooked”, or were spiritually ready. “The novices were (figuratively) being cooked, while Rumi and his dervishes were cooking on a cosmic level,” says Abel. “It was the ultimate kitchen!
This is what The New Indian Express had to say about The Kitchen, which first opened at the International Theatre Festival of Kerala in December 13:
“Breaking the conventional norms of theatre… the perfect cocktail, tingling the senses”
According to Auckland Arts Festival (AAF) artistic director Carla van Zon, The Kitchen is a co-production of AAF and joint funded with the Sydney and Holland Festivals.
“Roysten Abel is an artist I admire and like. For 2015 we wanted to have a work by an Indian artist out of India,” she says.
After the huge success of The Manganiyar Seduction at the festival in 2011 she had been taking to him about what his new show would be.
“He came back to us, and said he had a new idea. He locked in the co-producers. So all of us went to India to take part in a workshop around The Kitchen.”
The Kitchen shows at the SKYCITY Theatre on Saturday 14 March and Sunday 15 March at 8pm and from Monday 16 March to Wednesday 18 March at 7pm.
Bookings can be made at Ticketmaster outlets: www.ticketmaster.co.nz or telephone 09 9709700 or 0800 111 999.
For more information regarding Auckland Arts Festival which runs from March 4 to March 22 check out www.aaf.co.nz