Daughters Opera
An Indo-Australian Collaborative Project
Daughters Opera is a contemporary performance work created by artists from Australia, India, Portugal, UK, and Chile. It is an attempt to work across disciplines and languages. Why one language associates with one another: translates, adapts and is modified by another is often unpredictable and processual. The process had been shaped by all its moving elements – music, movement language, and scenography; text work and theoretical frames are provided by many readings including Kumkum Sangari’s book Solid:Liquid – A (Trans) National Reproductive Formation. The process has been based on ‘figuring out’ quite literally what it means to bring women’s visible and invisible labor on stage.
Eleven Fado, one Zarzuela and live experimental electronics comprise the musical vessel of Daughters. The choice of Fado was in part to harness the character of Saudade, the untranslatable Portuguese word that underpins a genre that is almost always sung by women with almost always male musicians. Additionally, this choice nods to Portugal’s 500-year administrative occupation of regions of India. The conceptual idea begins with an opera about daily life, which is something that the operatic form does not usually attempt to. The space has been divided into a cold desolate subway below and the world above. A large abstracted box moves up and down the space in a monotonous and ominous manner revealing the underlying violence of each moment of the performance. The commuters have only one intention which is to reach the destination that may never arrive.
Supported by the Australian Council for arts and the Australian high commission of India the Daughters Opera project is an Indo - Australian production that tries to address the issues of gender violence. The initial idea for this performance comes from the music composed in the form of Fados (a Portuguese form of music characterized by melancholia and nostalgia). Most of the songs depicted extreme acts of violence and referenced actual incidents of sexual violence across the world. At the same time, the production unravels everyday acts of violence that are gendered and create a grammar of gestures and images for invisible labour to run alongside the threat of extreme violence that looms large
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I joined the production as a production controller, and unlike my previous works in this production, I could focus fully on the managerial aspect of theatre-making. The final stage of the process and the shows happened at Blackbox Okhla’ (Delhi) with actors, dancers and musicians from around India, Australia, Portugal, UK, and Chile. As a production controller, my responsibilities were to coordinate with all departments of production and make sure everyone was on the same page. Arranging accommodation, food, and travel for the team, managing finance, book-keeping (accounts), scheduling, managing and coordinating with stagehands, prop making and management, basic safety assessment, coordinating with the Blackbox officials on behalf of the production team, etc were some of the works I had to do as a Production Manager for this production.
Performed at:
Black Box Okhla, Delhi.
Director
Anuradha Kapur
Librettist
Tammy Brennan
Composer
David Chisholm
Scenographer
Deepan Sivaraman
Choreographer
Victoria Hunt
Live Electronics
Marco Cher-Gibard
Production Dramaturg
Purav Goswami
Light Design
Ben Hughes