- This event is over. However, time travel possible through our Audio & Video! See upcoming events
Mahabharata: The Women
The Female Lens on War: Gandhari, Kunti & Draupadi
Artistes
Gandhari, Kunti and Draupadi are the three women intricately woven into the tapestry that is the Mahabharata. They weave in and out of all the major events leading to the war at Kurukshetra. Who are these women? What part do they play in the oncoming war? What dilemmas do they confront, and how does it shape their lives?
Indian-Scottish storyteller Gauri Raje and Scottish musician Mairi Campbell tell the stories of these three women in the Mahabharata, the world’s longest epic. This telling of the Mahabharata creates a story woven from classical and folk versions of the epic where Scottish and Indian rhythms meet to question the consequence of wars on women, and their complicity in them.
Adapted and performed by Gauri Raje
Musically directed and performed by Mairi Campbell
Directed by Kath Burlinson
Produced by KT Producing
Link to the trailer.
This event is a part of the two day Storytelling Theatre Festival curated by Vijay Padaki. The link to the other event is here.
In collaboration with:
Supported by:
Artistes
Gauri Raje
Gauri Raje holds a PhD in Anthropology, diploma in film editing and has trained in storytelling in India and the UK. She has trained and worked with Theatre of Witness in Northern Ireland and England, a performance approach that focuses on biographical storytelling by people who have no experience with theatre. During her field work among communities in south Gujarat, she found herself engaging with displaced people, traditional healers and their patients. Much of the time was spent listening stories and narratives in their many forms became the main focus of her interest. When she began to live in UK, she found writing inadequate to explain many of the stories and her experiences. She came across storytelling as a counter cultural art form when she was researching a simpler, more everyday word for ‘narratives’. There followed a decade of un-writing. In order to understand the radical nature of the oral word, she stopped writing, trained in storytelling and began to work orally with stories. Since 2019, she has acquired confidence to regard herself as a storyteller.
Mairi Campbell
Mairi Campbell is a pioneering Scottish musician receiving critical attention for her remarkable singing, powerful concerts and unique solo music theatre productions. Her music, which combines voice and viola, has a rooted quality, encompassing Scottish dance music to soundings and improvisations. As an interpreter of Scots song, with David Francis, Mairi has contributed a significant number of songs to its current canon.
After studying classical viola at the Guildhall School of Music, she has become an established member of Scotland’s traditional music scene. She is the recipient of six national music awards including the Inspiration Award and has been inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame. Her award-winning Pendulum Trilogy: Pulse (2016) Auld Lang Syne (2018) and Living Stone has received critical acclaim and toured widely. Mairi plays a Victor Unsworth viola that she acquired at the age of seventeen.
Mairi’s voice has been heard worldwide thanks to her version of Auld Lang Syne, with David Francis as the Cast, being used in the pivotal New Year’s Eve scene of the blockbuster movie Sex and the City.
Kath Burlinson
Kath Burlinson specialises in devised/ensemble work. Credits include: When Mountains Meet (Celtic Connections, Scottish Tour); Mairi Campbell: Pulse, Auld Lang Syne and Living Stone (Ed Fringe, Celtic Connections, Vault Festival, Made in Scotland showcases), The Old House (High Tide, Camden Fringe), Motherhood: Unspeakable Unspoken (AboutFace Theatre, Brighton Dome), Stolen Voices, developed at National Theatre Studio, (Tête à Tête, Arcola, Grimeborn), Unbroken Line (Ovalhouse), Emily: the making of a militant suffragette (Cambridge Devised Theatre and Production Exchange), Hallaig (Robhanis Theatre). Authentic Artist Collective Productions: Wolf (text Iain Finlay Macleod, Escalator East to Edinburgh), Tender Age (Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds), solo shows InVisible Lines (Assembly Roxy and Audacious Women Festival) and the award-winning The Mother’s Bones. www.authenticartist.co.uk
