Interpreting trauma
Watching the video interviews conducted by oral historians for Concordia’s Life Stories of Montrealers Displaced by War, Genocide and other Human Rights Violations project, Sandeep Bhagwati noticed the unusual gestures people make when speaking about heinous events.
“Their gestures became awkward ... broken,” says Bhagwati, the Canada Research Chair in Inter-X Art Practice and Theory at Concordia.
Bhagwati has isolated more than 100 of these gestures without sound to present at Ephemeral Roots, a theatre installation showing on display April 1. The exhibit also features an “echoing” by actors in Bhagwati’s filmed production Lamentations, as well as videotaped interpretations by interviewers.
“Actors engage their full bodies, while the interviewers concentrated on hand gestures only, leaving their faces impassive,” says Bhagwati, who explained his research in detail on March 12. He also restores the interview dialogues, accompanied by his own music, in the lecture-performance, Explorations of Shadows and Echoes.
The events are part of the research by the Oral History and Performance Working Group led by Edward Little, a Concordia professor in the Department of Theatre, as part of Montreal Life Stories. One of eight members of the project’s coordinating committee, Little is the only Faculty of Fine Arts representative in the interdisciplinary group.
“We’ve engaged with the recorded interviews to bring them to new life through theatre, dance, music, installation, radio and video presentations that we hope resonant with more people in a way that meaningfully contributes to a culture of ‘never again,’” Little explains.
State of Denial, a new play by Teesri Duniya Theatre’s artistic director Rahul Varma, explores why a respected elderly Muslim woman shares a heart-wrenching secret mere days before her death. Teesri Duniya Theatre, a community partner of Montreal Life Stories, will stage the premier March 15. State of Denial features current theatre student Deborah Forde in her directorial debut.
On March 18 and 19, a new bilingual play titled Déraciné/Uprooted by affiliate Jenny Montgomery will be read. Montgomery, a Fullbright scholar, has interviewed refugees and Quebecers to deepen her understanding of “being at home” and yet feeling “otherness” within a pluralistic society.
Montreal Life Stories artist-in-residence Lisa Nedjuru will share Le Petit Coin Intact on March 21. Her one-woman show reflects on how Rwanda’s narratives of colonialism, war, genocide, dislocation and poverty affect a Rwandan-Canadian family.
On March 25, two Living Histories Playback Theatre workshops will encourage audience members to share their own stories. “In playback theatre, a storyteller who comes up from the audience then selects which actors will play the characters when that individual’s story is ‘played back,’” Little explains. “The goal is to generate greater reflection.”
It’s Only Sound that Remains by Montreal-based artist Shahrzad Arshadi on March 29 uses the words, archival recordings and actual voice of Ziba Kazemi, the photojournalist who died while in Iranian custody in 2003.
All of the performances – as well as many other presentations – are the culmination of the five-year Montreal Life Stories research project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Related links:
• "Seven-year project wraps with many interdisciplinary events" - NOW, March 14, 2012
• Montreal Life Stories Rencontres calendar and program
• Montreal Life Stories changes to the calendar
• Montreal Life Stories
• Oral History and Performance Working Group
• Department of Theatre
• Sandeep Bhagwati’s matralab