Tickets: £12.50
Universal Credit: £8
Under 26s: £6
Could she ever have been something more than memsahib with her punkawallah?
Rooted in Chrys Salt’s highly regarded 2017 collection The Punkawallah’s Rope marking the 70th anniversary of the Partition of India and the India-UK Year of Culture, and born of her performance at the Kolkata Book Fair in 2016 and an immersive month in Kolkata and North East India, this multi-media performance explores the vibrant textures, voices, and contradictions of a continent both dazzling and daunting.
Through layered poems, evocative visuals by artist/film maker Ken Smyth, and haunting instrumentals played by international composer and musician Richard Ingham on alto clarinet, bansuri, gopi yantra, aludu and tongue drum, The Punkawallah’s Rope poses the complex question: how can a middle-class white woman begin to understand and engage with this most challenging of continents?
The Punkawallah’s Rope is the fourth major collaboration between poet/performer Chrys Salt, composer/musician Richard Ingham and artist/film maker Ken Smyth. Previous projects are Home Front/Front Line, Weavers of Grass and the award winning film Skookum Jim and the American Dream which have scooped numerous awards and accolades including an Award of Recognition from the IndieFEST film awards. Their collaboration has been described ‘as a sensory feast of vivid poetry, harmonious voices, exquisite drawings and evocative music’.
Duration: approximately 50 minutes straight through.
Recommended age : 14+
Descriptions of war
The Punkawallah’s Rope – A selection of images by Ken Smyth
Praise for previous work
A brave, beautiful and deeply unsettling way of making the reader look at long-familiar events
Morning Star on Home Front/Front Line
A treat for anyone who enjoys unpretentious but profound poetry
Writers International on Grass
A work of urgent, universal relevance
Gerda Stevenson poet, writer, actress, BAFTA award winner on
Home Front/Front Line
The rhythmic heartbeat of this piece will compel you forward, wrapping you in a tale of creation, compulsion and devastation
Annette Badland, actress on Skookum Jim and the American Dream