Actors Prepare - From Ravan to Mahatma Gandhi

I love watching actors get ready for their roles. I find fascinating the process of putting make-up and costumes and to see the person change form in front of me. Over the years, I have had some great opportunities to watch the actors get ready for their roles. This post presents some of my favourite images of the theatre actors from India, Italy and some other countries.

India - Actors of Ramlila and Other Sacred Stories

Let me start with some images from India. All these images are related to Ramlila, the enactment of Hindu epic Ramayan. During the days leading to the festival of Dusshera, hundreds of Ramlila plays are organised across big and small towns in northern and central parts of India.

The first image above is from the Bhaona enactment of Ramayan at the Majuli island in Assam (India). The actors were getting ready for the "Sita Swayamvar" scene, where princess Sita has to choose her bridegroom and different kings have come from all over India, hoping to marry her. The image shows the actor playing Lord Ram help one of the actors playing the role of a rival king, get ready.

I have some wonderful memories of watching Ramlila as a child at the DCM grounds near Rohtak Road in Delhi. I was especially fascinated by the figure of Ravan, the Rakshas king with ten heads, who kidnaps Sita. His booming laugh made me feel afraid, but I also felt a bit of pity for him.

The image below is from Ser Jatra from Puri in Odisha during which actors wear masks and go in a procession. The image shows the actor playing Ravan getting ready with a ten-headed black mask, along with an actor playing Arjun (from the epic Mahabharat).

In Delhi, one of the oldest Ramlila traditions is from Chandni Chowk in the old city, started during the reign of Mughal king Bahadur Shah Zafar. This Ramlila play takes place in the open grounds at Ajmeri Gate, known as Ramlila grounds. The actors of this Ramlila get ready at a Dharamshala near Esplanade Road in Chandni Chowk. The image below shows the actor playing Lord Ram's younger brother Lakshman, get ready. The make up man is Mr Shyam Chandra Trikha who has been doing make up for this Ramlila for the last 25 years.

Often people playing actors say that for them playing a role in Ramlila is a kind of sacred benediction.

The last image of the Ramlila actors is from Kochi in Kerala, at the southern tip of India. The Kathakkali actor is getting ready for a temple dance-drama performance. Kathakkali has specific rules about the colours to be used for the make-up of different characters.

The next three images are of characters from other sacred stories of India. The first is of the Goddess Durga and is from the Ser Jatra in Puri in Odisha. The person getting ready to wear the Durga mask is a man, Mr. Bhimsen Mahapatra.

From Sikkim in the north to Kerala in the south, India has a wonderful tradition of using masks in the traditional theatre and dances. The use of masks provides ready-made faces for theatre, thus avoiding the need of spending hours on make-up. The next image has the masked Buddhist monks from Sikkim in the traditional Vajra (Lightening) dance.

The last image is that of Mr. Sunil Kumar getting ready to play Yamraj, the god of death, for the Ramlila procession in Chandni Chowk (Delhi), where he is going to sit with a noose around the head of an actor playing Markandeya.

The story of Yamraj and the boy Markandeya, where the boy is saved from death by Lord Shiva, appears in two sacred texts - Bhagwat Puran and Mahabharat. I ask him, why there are Yamraj and Markandeya in a Ramlila procession, since they are not a part of the Ramayan story? With his flashing eyes and a shining scimitar, Sunil Kumar does look a little scary, till he smiles at me benevolently, shaking his head. He would make for a wonderful image in the procession and their audience knows their story, so it is does not matter if he is a visiting celebrity from another sacred story.

Actors prepare in Europe

The next few images are from Bologna (Italy) where I had my first experiences of watching actors prepare for their roles.

The next image is of Mario Barzaghi, an Italian theatre actor and dancer who is also a trained Kathakkali dancer, getting ready for his role as Hanuman from the Indian epic Ramayan. This image can give you an idea of hours of preparation needed for the make-up and putting on of the Kathakkali costumes. The day I had clicked this picture, he was going to enact the episode when Hanuman flies to Lanka in search of Sita.

It is said that early Romans and Greek actors did not use any make-up or costumes. The use of the masks in the plays came much later. The traveling actor-comedians of the Italian Commedia dell’Arte in the 16th century had developed a set of stock characters, such as Arlecchino, who used masks. The image below shows some medieval puppets from the Bargellini museum of Bologna, wearing iconic costumes and masks of the Commedia dell'Arte era.

Introduction of electricity in the 19th century provided better lighting for theatre. Thus actors had to change their make-up techniques to adapt to the lights on the stage. In 1890 Carl Baudin used a mixture of flesh-coloured paste of zinc white, yellow ochre, vermilion, and lard, which was given the name of grease-paint. Even today often we use the term grease-paint to talk about the make-up of actors but with time, now we have much better water-soluble make-up. Rather than flashy and gaudy colours, modern theatre prefers the natural look with its own techniques of make-up.

The next three images are all from cultural events in Bologna showing actors putting on the make-up with water soluble colours to paint rainbows on their bodies.

The last image above has my friend Jana Daniela as the make-up artist. Jana herself is a cinema actor and has used amazing make-up for her role as a zombie in a recent film.

Actors From Americas

The next image shows animal-masks used by a Brazilian dance group from south America.

The second image from Americas is from Washington D.C. (USA) where the two actors of Indian origin, Subodh Sen and Natwar Gandhi, are getting ready respectively for the roles of Jinnah and Mahatma Gandhi for the play "A Tryst with Destiny", about the independence of India.

Conclusions

Selecting images for this post was immensely pleasurable. I loved going through my image archives to search for them, and in the process, rememberd many of those performances and the persons behind the make-up.

The concluding image of this photo-essay is of Mario Barzaghi getting ready to play Hanuman for the Kathakkali performance.

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Trampolieri - The Fabulous Sky-walkers of Bologna (1)

"Trampolieri" are the people who walk on stilts. Bologna (Italy) where I live, has a group of dedicated stilt-walkers who use wonderful creativity and imagination to choose new styles, costumes and colours for each of their public appearances.

This photo-essay is a homage to this group of people. It presents some of their pictures that I have clicked over the past 8 years. This first part of the post focusses on the period 2005-2011.

Let me start with some general information about stilt-walking. The art of stilt-walking goes back a long time. There is a mention of stilt-walking in ancient Greek texts, more than two thousand years old. When I was a child, once I had seen a tribal group do a dance on stilts in India. People living in marshy areas build their houses on stilts and sometimes use stilts to cross marshy-watery places. So stilt walking is common to many countries and cultures.

There are different kinds of stilts. You can read more about them on Wikipedia.

In the image below you can see the stilts used by the Bologna group of stilt-walkers - these are made of sturdy wood. A wooden flat piece is fixed to the sole of the shoes, which is then fixed to a wooden piece on the top of the stilt. It requires a good sense of balance and lot of practice to do stilt-walking safely.

2005

I saw the the Trampolieri of Bologna for the first time at the preparation of the summer festival parade (Par Tot parade) in Villa Angeletti park in 2005. I was not too impressed by them. They had a pale hooded dress with black designs on their faces and bodies.

Clicking their pictures while they were moving on stilts was difficult as they were moving quickly and probaly I was standing too close to them. Here are two pictures from that first encounter in 2005.

2006

In 2006 I saw them at the summer rave party. Rave parties are about losing inhibitions, dancing, drinking, and making a lot of noise. It also means getting stoned by smoking weed or taking stronger drugs. In that occasion, the costume of the Trampolieri was simple and in line with the spirit of the rave party. Once again, I was not too impressed with them, though they seemed to be having a good time and enjoying themselves.

2007

The summer festival preparations of the Par Tot parade at Villa Angeletti park in 2007 was the first time that I looked at the Trampolieri with more attention. They had a colourful look. Some people had painted their bodies in gold, some with white and red and some others with red and blue or red and yellow. The costumes had red, purple and black with blue-yellow hats. Thus, in 2007 I clicked a lot of their pictures and started recognising them as a group.

2008

In 2008, I had a glimpse of the Trampolieri at the Bologna GLBTIQ (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transexual, Intersexual, Queer) pride parade. It was very crowded and noisy, and I could only see them a from a distance. So not many pictures came from this encounter. My favourites in this occasion was a young couple in blue.

2011

I didn't find any good images of Trampolieri in my image archives from 2009 and 2010, and I only found them again in 2011. At the Par Tot parade in the summer festival at the Piazza Maggiore of Bologna, the Trampolieri were present in two main groups. The first group was part of people dressed as giant insects, like the two guys dressed as black spiders shown in the images below.

The second and more numerous group was that of devils and angry spirits, like the followers of Shiva, in different colours and shapes. They were all closed in a prison of a white chain linked to a wooden pole held by the lead couple. Though they were trying to be scary, I think that they looked nice - in my opinion, it was their best look so far. The quality of their body make-up and costumes had improved.

Conclusion

I hope that you have liked this brief introduction to the Trampolieri stilt walkers of Bologna.

To close this post, the last image is from the 2007 Par Tot summer festival parade, of a girl dressed as the sun.

You can check the Facebook page of the Trampolieri of Bologna for more pictures and to know about their other initiatives. You can also read the second part of this post that presents their costumes from 2012 and 2013.
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Meaning of dance

This post is on reflections about different meanings and ways of interpreting dances, and presents some images from World Dance Day celebrations in Bologna (Italy).

If someone asks you, "what is the meaning of dance for you?", what would you say? Perhaps my question is not so clear, and another way of putting that question could be, "How would you define dance?" or even, "what kind of feelings does dance give you?"

I think that if someone asks me this question, I would think about the drum beats, the rhythm, the desire to move my feet with the beats. As a child, I used to go the school, where my sister was learning kathak and I was supposed to study arts. Kathak has a basic step, "Ta thai thai tat, aa thai thai tat", just watching my sister do it for hours every day, I must have picked it up from there. Now, when I watch a dance that I enjoy, I often find that my feet still follow that old rhythm of Kathak.

If I think of classical dances like Bharatnatyam or Odissi, the same question would make me think of grace, harmony, beauty and years of practice.

Yesterday was the "Giornata Mondiale della Danza" (World Dance Day) and our city, Bologna celebrated it in grand style. Culturally, Bologna is one of the most exciting cities in the world. If you love archeology, arts, dance, music, films, literature, or even history and philosophy, Bologna gives you ample opportunities through out the year to choose events, where you can interact with artists, thinkers and writers and participate in wide variety of events, often free of cost. Still, yesterday's dance event was really special, even for the Bologna standards.

The organisers had asked different dancing schools and groups of Bologna to present their works in the different city squares. Most of these are open spaces, but there are also a few covered squares in the city. Such wide open spaces with fountains, statues and old historical buildings, can be seen in many countries of Europe, but are distinctive character of Italy.

In India such spaces, without people trying to sell things or motorbikes and cars passing through, are unimaginable. But then, India with its burning hot sun for most parts of the year, is probably not suitable for open "Piazzas" (squares), though till 20-30 years ago, certain parts of New Delhi, around Birla Mandir and Parliament house had many open spaces. However, I am digressing here, let me go back to my theme of dances.

While I walked from one square to another, feeling like a guest at a wedding buffet, tasting one dance here, moving to another dance there, I was thinking about the meaning of dance, especially the modern interpretations of dances.

For example, what do you think when you see a group of children with disabilities dancing? Do you feel a little goody-goody, thinking that everyone has right to be happy and to participate in dancing and thus even disabled children have a right to dance? I suspect, that such feelings are sometimes accompanied by certain other thoughts, that we may not say to ourselves, because they are not "politically correct". This is because we attach certain expectations to how we expect people to dance and to be good looking, to be graceful and to be perfect? Perhaps if we can accept that dance is about being happy and expressing that happiness, we can appreciate that dance better?

Yesterday one of the dances that I saw was very strange. In Galleria Galvani, next to the archeological museum, a girl was wrapped around an old pillar, with its paint peeling off. She was staring at some detail of the pillar and moving in extreme slow motion. Another girl with sad face, hid behind another pillar. A third girl with a basket on her head, her dress torn, a shoe on one foot and the other foot shoeless, her face lost in her own thoughts, moved slowly down the stairs. A boy with a old cord tied to his t-shirt like a tail, pulled an old broken table. There was no music.

My first thought was that this is some kind of new-age dance and it will be better to go and look for something better. Fortunately I statyed there, looking at them and letting my mind run free. Perhaps they are representing life in stones and "inanimate" objects, I thought, since I feel that everything in this universe has life, including mountains and houses, may be in different forms. Then I thought of mental illness, the pain of depression, the bottomless grey pit from which, it is difficult to come out.

Suddenly watching those dancers, moving in slow motion was a strong emotional experience. Feeling their pain, I felt like crying. So I think that meaning of dance is to transmit emotions, and if it can then it is a good dance, even if it is not about rhythm or beats.

In an old gallery, that widens into a covered square, there was a group of "oriental" dancers. They were wearing little clothes, with open hair and middle-eastern or arabic music, doing sensual belly dances. Most the persons watching these dances were women and they were very loud in expressing their appreciation by blowing whistles and clapping. I think that dancing is also about expression of sexuality, a liberation from all those taboos that chain us.

Wild movements of hips and powerful drum beats from Africa that pulsed in the whole body, making me sway and move, were also about sexuality, about being free from all shackles, about expressing ourselves without shame or inhibitions. This dance was in the wonderful setting of Piazza Nettuno.

Close by in Piazza Maggiore, in front of the municipal pharmacy, there was Kairos, a group of young people doing strange contortions accompanied by songs that used everyday words in new ways. Can contortions, arms and legs intertwined, mean dance?

One of the most emotional moment yesterday was during the Bharatnatyam recital, when the CD player had some problems and got stuck. The Narthaki group under the guidance of Alessandra Pizza was embarrassed for a moment, till Alessandra decided to sit down and sing the song herself. The Sanskrit words, her voice full of passion and emotions, her hands drawing the gestures in the air, she seemed like an ancient Indian guru, graceful and wise.

Just watching her made me feel goosebumps all over. She was not dancing herself, only guiding her students to dance, but looking at her was as electrifying as any dance could be. So perhaps for dancing, people do not really need to dance, they can just make our imaginations dance? What do you say?

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This post was originally written in 2010