Exploration Of The Unknown

Flinntheater and Jagriti Curtain Raiser’s present
C sharp C blunt

Flinntheater Kassel/ Berlin is proud to present its latest offering C sharp C blunt, an Indo-German collaboration. Drawing on a wide range of talent, this innovative devised performance is bound to intrigue as it goes on an exploration of the (un)known. Directed by Sophia Stepf from Berlin, Germany, singer actor MD Pallavi performs in her first ever solo performance, writers Irawati Karnik and Swar Thaonoajam contribute as content writers for the play.

Over the past years, Sophia Stepf has worked on various projects with Indian theatre artists and has formed formed close ties with the Bangalore theatre community. In C sharp C blunt she takes this collaboration a step forward to explore the realms of digital dramaturgies, of repetition and user choices, creating a new hybrid form, that meets on the crossroads of performance art and theatre.

C sharp C blunt is made for the Bangalore audience. The show will be newly created for the German audience and will be presented in Berlin and Kassel/ Germany in September 2013.

About the Play

She is an App. The Singer App. Attractive, user friendly and very efficient. According to a recent survey she is projected to be the most downloaded App in 2013. Flinntheater will run a Betatest of the App from march 15th to 17th at Jagriti.

In C sharp C blunt, director Sophia Stepf from Berlin and singer actor MD Pallavi from Bangalore, have invited co-conspirators to create a piece of interrogation into what it means to be a professional woman in the entertainment industry today.

In her first ever solo performance, MD Pallavi takes us through this funny, sarcastic and political rendition of the latest App in the market. Come and exclusively meet the creators of the App – the body, the voice and the programmer.

Bring your smartphones, leave them on and use the App.

Date(s): 15th – 17th Febuary 2013

Time : 8:00 PM (Fri & Sat); 3:30 and 6:00 PM (Sun)

Venue: Jagriti Theatre

Duration: approx 1 hour depending on audience

Language: English

No interval

Tickets available at the Jagriti Box Office now, and are priced at Rs 250. For information call 78294-50191 or email contact@jagrititheatre.com. Tickets are also available at www.bookmyshow.com and at the Box Office.

Further Information: sstepf@gmail.com
Facebook: Flinntheater

Performer: MD Pallavi
Director: Sophia Stepf
Text collaborators: Swar Thounaojam, Irawati Karnik
Assistant Director: Rituparna Bhattacharya
Live Sound: Nikhil Nagaraj
Light Design: Muhammad Mustafa A
Production Management: Shilpa Somashekar and Veena Appiah
Music Consultant: Andi Otto
Photography and Design: Shamik Sengupta

Background

C sharp C blunt is based on the concept of the loop. An electronic musician is live on stage, he creates and layers loops from live sound. The loop in it’s nature reflects the training of the singer through endless repetition, but also the process of cultural and social „programming“. This cultural „programming“ also defines the specific way, girls and women are supposed to behave.

The play looks at traditional gender roles as engrained by culture and the classical performance training versus the woman as the globalised consumer living in a new market that caters to her wants and needs. We look at the performer as a site of battle between purity and consumption, between servitude and ego, between being-looked-at-ness and self determination.

MD Pallavi was born in Bangalore, raised in Goa and returned to Bangalore as a teenager. Being born into an artist’s family she has started to sing and act from childhood. She has a BA in Hindustani Classical Music and an BA in English, Psychology and Journalism. She performs Sugama Sangeet in Karnataka very regularly for audiences between 500 and 30.000 people. She regulary records songs for Kannada Films and has won several awards including the Karnataka State Award. She has acted in many theatre productions and recently in the Indo-German coproduction Boy with a Suitcase, directed by German director Andrea Gronemeyer. She has acted in the National Award winning Indian English film ‘Stumble’ directed by Prakash Belawadi and in another National Award winning Kannada film ‘Gulabi Talkies’ directed by Girish Kasaravalli. She recently completed a film making course from Gutenberg, Sweden and is now also venturing into filmmaking.

Sophia Stepf was born in Kassel Germany and lives in Berlin. She has an MA in dramaturgy for theatre and media from Leipzig and Toronto and has worked in theatre for the past fifteen years, as a director, dramaturge, critic and scout. She is the Artistic Director of the company Flinntheater that has developed acclaimed performances with writers and performers from India and Nigeria. Her play India Simulator won several awards in Germany and her documentary play A small small world travelled to Dhaka, Bangalore, Bremerhaven and Hamburg. Her new play The Power Play  was invited to Lagos/Nigeria in december 2012. In 2013, she will develop music documentary theatre with the interdisciplinary string quartett Quartett PLUS 1 in the residency flausen in Oldenburg /Germany. A theatre nomad for the last ten years, Sophia has worked for Linz 09 with Arjun Raina, was a dramaturge for Vienna Festwochen in 2007 and has developed programms in theatre for children and theatre pedagogy for the MMB Goethe-Institute in India. She was the dramaturge of the partnership Do I know U? between Schnawwl Mannheim & Ranga Shankara Bangalore between 2009 and 2012. Sophia also works in education and in the corporate world focusing on transcultural competence, live communication & global learning. She teaches the course Intercultural Dramaturgy at HMT Leipzig and regulary writes for the German theatre magazine theater heute. Since 2012 she is a board member of the International Theatre Institut (ITI) Germany.

Flinntheater Profile

The company was founded in 1992 in Kassel /Germany and has since produced and co-produced 17 plays. Since 2007, the sisters Sophia and Lisa Stepf are the artistic directors of Flinntheater and work with small professional teams of actors, writers and musicians. Since 2009, the plays take up globally relevant issues and are devised with the input of writers, performers and musicians from other countries, so far India, Bangladesh and Nigeria. This multi-perspective work uses digital communication technology as a vehicle to incorporate perspectives of people who look at the world from a different angle. The style of each Flinntheater production is tied to its performers and writers  and their specific talents. It creates theatre shows on the borders of performance art and music concerts, often with satirical views on global problems. Flinntheater also has an education branch and shows its performances for schools and young people from the age of 15 +. The plays are supported by the city of Kassel, the state of Hessen, the Hauptstadt Kulturfonds Berlin and other foundations. They are co-produced by venues like Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Dock 4 Kassel and by Goethe-Institutes in Bangladesh, India and Nigeria. In 2009 Flinntheater was awarded the art award of the city of Kassel and the culture award of the Dr.-Wolfgang-Zippel-Foundation. The 2009 play India Simulator won several awards. The 2011 and 2012 plays have toured India, Bangladesh, Germany and Nigeria.