“You Really Want to Know My Story?” — Tales of Incarceration and Death Row in India | Performed by Maya Rao in Conversation With Alisa Solomon
Columbia's South Asia Institute and Barnard's Movement Lab present: “You Really Want to Know My Story?” — Tales of Incarceration and Death Row in India | Performed by Maya Rao in Conversation With Alisa Solomon
Wednesday, October 30th | 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Here are two searing stories of prisoners even today on death row in India.
The first is the account of a low caste bus driver, and the second, a Muslim migrant worker.
The performance was made after studying researchers’ accounts of several prisoners, their families, and details of prison conditions.
These stories are told with movement, text, and music. They sharply remind us of how skewed the criminal justice system is, how it dehumanizes people who lack resources and education.
While both accounts are real-life stories, some details have been changed to weave the narratives into a short piece of theatre.
Maya Krishna Rao is a performer, director, theatre educator, podcaster, digital creator and stand up comedian, based in Bangalore, India. A trained Kathakali performer, Rao has been making work for the last five decades across a range of genres include solo performances, multi-media shows, comedy, agit-prop theatre, applied drama and audio theatre. Her shows include most recently "The Name is Women" (2021), "Lockdown Stories" (2020), "Loose Woman" (2018), "Not in my Name" (2017), "The-Non-Stop-Feel-Good-Show" (2013) and "Ravanama" (2011). She is the recipient of the Sangeet Natak Akademi award and a grant from the Australia Council of the Arts. Rao has been a member of many advisory committees including that of the National School of Drama, Gati Summer Dance Residency, National Council of Educational Research and Training among others, and has been a visiting faculty at the Ashoka University, Shiv Nadar University, Leeds Playhouse Theatre-in Education Company amongst others.
Alisa Solomon is a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she directs the MA concentration in Arts and Culture and also teaches at Sing Sing through Columbia's Prison Education Project. She is a contributor to Jewish Currents and her work has appeared in The Nation, New York Times, NewYorker.com, The Intercept, Public Books, Theater, TDR, and other publications, and in the Village Voice, where she was on staff from 1983 to 2004 as a critic and reporter. Alisa is the author of the award-winning books, Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender and Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof, and the co-editor of half-a-dozen anthologies, including (with co-editor Framji Minwalla), The Queerest Art: Essays on Lesbian and Gay Theater and (with co-editorTony Kushner), Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2003). As dramaturg, she works with the playwright/performer Anna Deavere Smith.
Doors open and event begins at 4:00 PM
To visit, please RSVP and contact us via email at movement@barnard.edu at least 24 hours before the event. We will coordinate your entry through the main entrance (3009 Broadway). Visitors with Barnard/Columbia IDs can walk in.
Capacity in the lab is capped at 40 audience members. Attendees who have RSVP'd before the event will have priority, and admission will be determined on a first come first serve basis on arrival. If you RSVP before the event but arrive late, we reserve the right to give your spot to someone on the waitlist.
Attendees who have not RSVP'd will be put on a standby waitlist if they arrive in person before the event.