Kirtana Kumar
Maker of love, music, theatre, films, apple pie, doggie food, dreams, ice creams. • Infinite Souls Farm and Artists Retreat • queen of fucking everything
Kirtana is an actor, director, dramaturg and film-maker with 35 years stage experience. With her company, Little Jasmine Theatre Project, she has created 15 original works of contemporary Indian theatre including Shakuntala (Bangalore/London) and The Big Bolly Boo Hoo (Bangalore/Mannheim). She is a trustee of Women Artists Group and runs Little Jasmine Theatre Project, Theatre Lab (Youth) and Infinite Souls Farm & Artists Retreat. She currently serves as chairperson of the Board of Trustees at Visthar Institute of Development Studies. Her partner in love and laughter is the amazing-gorgeous-goodness personified-guitarist, Konarak Reddy. Her daughter deigns to visit, correct her grammar and tweeze her chin hairs.
Bangalore India
music, theatre, trees, swimming in the ocean, a perfect caramel custard, animals to cuddle and animals to be wary of, learning new skills like how to build a wall or a treehouse, laying camera traps, working with found footage, sustainability.
Affiliations
Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore
Projects
Nagamma's Letters
This project will take the form of a digital archive and documetary performance.
Supported by Goethe-Institut Bangalore/Max Mueller Bhavan.
Dreamed up at Villa Waldberta, Kulturreferat der Landeshauptstadt München
Director: Kirtana Kumar
Featuring Nagamma of Vardenhalli grama
Dramaturg: Julia Dina Hesse
Design: Arjuna/Fizz Gonecasescenario
Production: Little Jasmine Theatre Project
In a world full of dusty post modernist constructs, we imagine that information must flow in one direction: from the economically developed to the economically underdeveloped, from the informed to the uninformed. Cynicism being the tool of cool, we are often unprepared for it to flow both ways. Or, that information may be uninteresting or trivial in the context of another. Or that it may be only marginally interesting. When we allow anything to flow in the opposite direction, it is usually transactional: what does it do for us? Does it look good on us, is it hip, does it make us woke and so on.
The intention of this project is simply communication between two women - one being Nagamma and the other being Kirtana. The one is doing manual work on the farm. The other is curating a theatre festival in Germany. One is an employee and the other, employer. In this situation, are there liminal spaces within cultures that allow us entry? That enable us to perceive human beings in new ways?
In the way of women talking in the angala (courtyard) or on a katte (hangout) or in the santhe (marketplace), this conversation will be about day to day details :
what is snow
what will you cook?
is it cold or hot over there?
have you planted the chillies
why are the trees so tall
what news of the chirathe (leopard)?
how did the king disappear into the lake?
anything new happen in the village?
Except, we are not in the same physical space or geographical imaginable. Except, reality and myth are indistinguishable.
Nagamma is in a 35 ℃ summer in Vardenahalli, India and Kirtana is in a 2 ℃ spring in Feldafing, Germany. One reality includes a leopard that comes for the cattle, the other - the swans on Lake Starnberg. One is already thinking of Ugadi, which is the first day of the new year as per the Hindu lunar calendar, signifying a change in the moon's orbit. the other is thinking of coffee. One is certain the village deity, Maramma, will keep Corona virus away and all of us safe. The other took a Covid test before coming to Germany and will spend the next ten days in quarantine in Rapunzel's Tower.
Little Jasmine Theatre project
Infinite Souls Farm & Villa Waldberta
Cause it cuts across class and allows us to interact in the realm of the imagination
Working Title: Bangalore Love Story
a book of short stories about Bangalore
Little Jasmine
Bangalore
Because this sort of thing hasn't been written...about Cantonment Bangalore, about maverick characters and strange ideas about the city
Global Guitar Gita/ World Guitar Nights/ All India FingerStyle
Guitar Festival that includes concerts, workshop and a platform for young Indian guitarists
Infinite Souls Farm
Infinite Souls Farm & Artists Retreat
Because young guitarists in India are largely without a credible platform and community and this offers them one.
In the Hour of God: 50 Actors read from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri during the pandemic
An attempt to draw actors together, in introspection, at a time when we couldn't perform in physical spaces
Little Jasmine Theatre Project
Infinite Souls Farm & Artists Retreat
1. It's the longest English language narrative poem written 2. The projects draws a community of actors together through the reading of this work about the big questions - whither Life, whether Death - in the middle of a pandemic. 3. This text is not very well known.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOmw2jy-yic&list=PLxYsEKuLR_tGMdQ2uiDanl0nSsH1Oh5B3
Jobs & Calls for Collaboration
Digital designer
super fly creative, willing to create custard from reality. or maybe stone soup.
A great German guitarist (female or trans hopefully, but basically looking for quality)
Bangalore
Great playing and a unique voice
Book cover and format designer
Bangalore
great design skills and an interest in the odd stuff in Bangalore
Website designer for an online installation of all 50 videos
Bangalore
Design skills, interest in philosophy
Kirtana Kumar on the Web
http://www.infinitesouls.org
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