Performance Praxises in the Staging of “Rasik Sampaadak” (The Playful Editor) at Centre for Theatre & Film, University of Allahabad

An ensemble of “rejected actors” gets fed up with the paraphernalia of auditions and at the brink of going berserk, they decide to perform Munshi Premchand’s “Rasik Sampaadak” (The Playful Editor). The text provokes us to unravel the human condition of judging a person by their looks and interrogates the cliché of our patriarchal order. In this vein, this process-based devised performance has mapped out five rotors (working parts), which has guided the ensemble to express it in the language of parody. Along this line, four performance praxises have also been tested — With-Through, Tariqa, Perform-e-ability and Affective Sublation