I want women to reclaim their legacy as performers: Theatre director Sharanya

By Sravasti Datta
Bengaluru theatre director and artiste Sharanya Ramprakash believes rest and creation are key to artistic innovation. “If you want to radically reimagine the world, you need the time for it,” she says.
“I believe that one needs to honour one’s cycle of rest and creation. Taking one’s time is kind of a political act, especially when it comes to women’s bodies. We are expected to produce and be of service all the time. But to take one’s time, I think, is political,” she says.

‘We hardly find mentions of Kannada women directors & performances in records’
The theatre director, who recently staged a Kannada play, Project Darling, said the creative process took two years. “It included travels to places like Dharwad, Hubli, and Gadag—searching for women performers. It was a search for performers before me; a search for my ancestry not of blood, but of profession. We hardly find any mention of Kannada women directors and performances in writing or in records,” she says.

‘Women intrinsically are resilient performers’
“When I was researching for the play, I found that women perform so beautifully and fearlessly, and in such strikingly modern ways. I did not want to do a disservice to them by relegating them one more time to history. I wanted to reclaim their legacy and say they are alive in my theatre practice now. The play has so many modern forms and devices. We use a search engine on stage, typewriters, light cameras, projectors, etc. This kind of contradiction doesn’t exist between modernity and women’s performance bodies, they, in