Venu Menon
Wellington, June 16, 2023
Indian Ink, founded by Jacob Rajan and Justin Lewis and hailed as New Zealand’s leading international theatre company, is launching its 11th stage production from June 16 to August 20,2023. Dirty Work will feature over 20 people on stage and is described as “ a joyful comedy that celebrates an unsung hero and tips the modern office on its head.” The production will tour Auckland, Nelson, Christchurch, Wellington and Tauranga.
Jacob Rajan spoke at length to Venu Menon about his vision and practice as a playwright. Excerpts:
Q. So, 25 years on, where is Indian Ink at in terms of goals, itinerary and creative benchmarks?
A. It’s a really interesting question because, with 25 years, now we’re looking to end the company. We’re looking at how much longer we should go on. Then there is the idea of leaving a legacy. When [co-founder] Justin Lewis and I started out, we were two angry young men railing against what we saw were very limited stories. The way they were told were not satisfying to us. So, we set about to start a company that created the kind of theatre that we would want to see. And now, 25 years on. we’re still doing that. But now we really have to focus on the final four [plays]. We would like to go out with a bang.
Q. You are looking at the curtain dropping?
A. Yeah.
Q. Have you set a date?
A. Not yet, no. But it’s about four [more] plays. But as an actor, I’ll always be available for work.
Q. But what about the creative benchmarks? Are you comparing your body of work with other playwrights in New Zealand or beyond? Or does it stand on its own?
A. Yeah, I think it is its own thing. It tends to be a baton passed from one place to the other. So, when you research a play, you go down so many rabbit holes. You find so many interesting things that never make the light of day in the actual play that you write, but then have a residue that goes on to the next play. I don’t think we consciously compare [ourselves] with other companies.
Q. Is Krishnan’s Dairy, your debut play, drawing larger audiences, touring more, getting better artistically?
A. Krishnan’s Dairy has been put to bed for New Zealand. I’m pretty clear that I don’t want to perform that play again. The 25 years felt like a good place to end that chapter. [That’s] not to say that it won’t have another life because we’re working with the producer for the film adaptation. We had a sort of half-idea to perform Krishnan’s Dairy in Mumbai. It was performed in Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore, where it was well received. There’s a new theatre being built by [Mukesh] Ambani in Mumbai and it’s a magnificent kind of marvel edifice. It’s got a 250-seat black box theatre within it and we thought Krishnan’s Dairy would sit beautifully in there. And just the way that play was received, I thought that would be a reason to do that play again.
To have the prodigal son returning back to India performing the story of immigrants, that that would be interesting. But otherwise, I think Krishnan’s Dairy has had such a full life that I want to leave it while I still enjoyed performing it rather than trotting it out for the sake of other people who haven’t seen it. It’ll have that beautiful thing that theater is, which is it lives in the memory of people. It’s not recorded. So it’s like it’s like it’s so ephemeral and that’s part of the preciousness of theatre.
Q. A year ago, your oeuvre stood at 11 plays. Any new additions to your body of work?
A. Shall I do the math? Krishnan’s Dairy, Candlestick Maker, Pickle King, Dentist’s Chair, Guru of Chai, Kiss the Fish, The Elephant Thief, Welcome To The Murder House, Mrs Krishnan’s Party, The Smalls [a children’s show that never got made], Dirty Work. We are [now] at number 11.
Q. A year ago, Indian Ink had notched 65 international tours. The tally today?
A. Well, we did the Sydney festival at the start of the year. We went to Woollongong, we went to Vancouver. So that’s at least another three. Mrs Krishnan’s Party will be going to Kentucky at the end of the year. I’ll be going to Melbourne in a month. Well, in a few weeks really, and possibly Adelaide. So by the end of the year, it will be 70 [ international tours].
So, I think we are by far New Zealand’s most successful international theatre company.
Q. Do you have a busy calendar ahead?
A. In October, I should be heading for the Oz-Asia Festival with [my play] Paradise or the Impermanence of Ice Cream. I’m doing two centres on the outskirts of Melbourne. We’ve got this film, as well as a completely different project that’s not Indian Ink- based.
For the first time I was able to do a play last year for a different theatre company in Sydney. There was a Sri Lankan playwright who’s written this three-hour epic that involves eight South Asian actors, two Indian classical musicians on a revolving stage in Sydney. I was in Sydney for three months last year.
I had about nine roles in it. I was acting. But the playwright has written the screenplay for a related thematic thing about the Sri Lankan civil war and he auditioned me and is casting me in that. It is slated for around the end of this year.
But otherwise, I’m working on my own film project with Indian Ink. And thinking about the next play as well, which we don’t have. I have a few ideas floating around, but nothing I’m willing to put into print.
Q. Krishnan’s Dairy is the starting point of Indian Ink’s long journey. It centres around the ubiquitous corner shop or dairy. With all that’s happening in terms of ram raids and the dairy now being an institution that’s struggling to survive, and dairy workers such as Krishnan fearing for their lives, do you think the play is at risk of being somewhat out of touch with current reality in New Zealand?
A. Well, I think it’s more prescient than out of touch. When I performed the play 25 years ago, one of the reviewers critiqued it for not being realistic because the dairy owner dies at the hands of an intruder. He was basically saying that stuff doesn’t happen in New Zealand.
But I never intended it to be a political piece. It was a love story set in a corner shop. The love of a dairy owner and his wife compared to the love [Mughal Emperor] Shahjahan and Mumtaz Mahal. By the end of the play the dairy becomes a monument to love that is the equivalent of the Taj Mahal. That was the challenge of the play.
So, the dairy owner dying at the end suddenly, that gets taken over by the news. Art meets reality. And that has also burgeoned interest in the film, because the film is all about what is happening today in this part of the world.
I also think in a way that whole move towards nationalism everywhere, that fear of the other, is also part of why these things happen. The play deals with the isolation of these dairy owners. The woman longs to go back home because she has no community here. That is not true today. So the play is set back in time.
Q. But the victims of ram raids are ready to shut shop and go back, because they say they have not come to New Zealand to get killed.
A. That is right.
Q. When it was first performed, Krishnan’s Dairy could be said to symbolise the resilient immigrant entrepreneurial spirit. With dairy owners now shutting shop because of rampant retail crime, would it be fair to say that the entrepreneurial spirit is under threat? And the dairy worker as the symbol of the heroic pioneering spirit has transformed into an embattled species facing the threat of
extinction?
A. Totally, yes. I agree with that, but then I think that it’s always been under threat from its inception. Dairies were the only things that were open during the weekends. Then supermarkets stayed open weekends. Then the service stations started opening 24 hours. So all of these encroached into that kind of way of life. Now with the physical threat, that makes them, as you said, an endangered species.
Q. Krishnan’s Dairy is a tale told through laughter and caricature, with masks amplifying the comedic element. With all that’s happening today in terms of retail crime, with dairy workers emerging as victims, would you say that the comedic element is tinged by pathos?
A. Our central philosophy at Indian Ink is the serious laugh, opening the audience’s mouth with laughter in order to slip something serious in. Krishnan’s Dairy was always marketed as a comedy. So, people are shocked at the end when the dairy owner dies. They signed up for a comedy. And it’s a gut-wrenching punch at the end [when the dairy worker is killed by an intruder]. But it leads to this wonderful empathy. Initially, we laugh at them [characters], at their funny accents, the arguments, the bickering between wife and husband. And then, we grow to love them. Then we have a connection. It’s not the differences but the similarities that are celebrated.
Q. How does comedy, amplified by masks, stand up in the face of tragedy?
A. Why the mask is in Indian Ink’s DNA is that it’s such a theatrical device. By putting a piece of papier-mâché on my face, I’m saying to the audience, “I am pretending.” But it requires the imaginative act of the audience to believe that I am real. And that happens only in the theatre. When you have a big nose, and the character is led by that nose, the audience becomes curious. That outside-in approach is how we make our theatre. We look to the physical impulse rather than the psychological. So, in that way, the mask is still critical. There’s a brand new play that we’ve been rehearsing for the last five weeks. It’s our largest play. It has 24 people on stage every night. The world of the play is a modern office. I’m the boss who’s based in Bangalore, and I zoom in and cause havoc. The play is called Dirty Work. It’s our boldest, most crazy idea for a show ever.
It’s opening on Friday [June 16] in Auckland. It’ll come to Wellington on August 2.
The hero of the play is a cleaner. That is our nod to the time of Covid, when we became appreciative of the unsung heroes such as nurses, the supermarket workers, those people who did the dirty work.
Q. Has any of this reshaped your vision as an artist holding up a mirror to your own immigrant community to keep your largely Western audiences laughing?
A. The form that we’re using is Western. The Indian community is well served by classical dance and music, and they have their own auditoriums for that. But to get the Indian community to come to a Western theatre takes a lot of education. I’m not drawing on an Indian tradition. I’m drawing on my Indian perspective but using a Western theatrical form.
Q. So Krishnan’s Dairy is a relic as we speak?
A. Yeah. It’s 25 years old. I was the first Indian graduate from the National School of Drama. so Krishnan’s Dairy was one of the first, if not the first, Indian play. So that was where the focus was [at that time]. Now, there’s a whole bunch of South Asian actors and writers that have come through the drama school that are doing their own work. Within the canon of Indian Ink, [Krishnan’s Dairy] is just one thing.
Q. How do you think Indian audiences in NZ receive your plays?
A. Those that come, love them. But it’s still incredibly rare to see Indian people on stage in a Western theatre. Indians could act in a Shakespeare play. But to cast an Indian in a contemporary play written by a [European] Kiwi playwright would just not make sense. The audience would be asking too many questions. How did an Indian arrive in this family?
Q. It’s a bit sad that Krishnan’s Dairy is now a relic.
I don’t want to come out on stage feeling tired of having played a part for too long and when, clearly, the love is gone. I don’t ever want that [to be the case] for Krishnan’s Dairy. I love those characters too much. I don’t want it to feel like it’s a job, that you’re suddenly part of one of those musicals that goes on for years and years, like [the musical] Cats. That would be terrible.
Q. You have said your plays shine a light on a community that is an “invisible and unseen culture.” Given the new- found visibility, albeit of a negative kind, of the Kiwi Indian community that has been thrust into the limelight by the spate of ram raids on dairy’s, would you say you’re your characterisation is accurate today?
A. Yeah. You can’t say that Indian culture is defined by the abuses put on it. If a dairy owner gets ram raided, how many people reading that article would know whether they are Sikh, Gujarati, Hindu or Malayali? What part of India they come from? What are the festivals they celebrate? What is the particular food they eat? Those are the things of the culture that are rich and diverse and to be celebrated, not the fact that they are victims.
That is not visibility.
Q. You call the mask the “conduit to the truth.”
A. Yes
Q. Will the mask have to change in order to reach a truth that is itself changing?
A. How do you mean the truth is changing?
Q. I mean, will the mask have to now go behind the counter to capture the reality of the dairy worker who fears for his life?
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to answer that question. This idea of the truth changing seems strange. You’d think the truth is the truth. Where masks and theatre for me rests is with poetry, the art form that theatre is most closely allied to. Theatre and masks are creating a distillation of life. It’s not life in the minutiae of reality. Life is pretty boring. We do the same things over and over again. [Rather], theatre is a concentration of life, where things happen that don’t happen in our daily lives, necessarily, but give us an insight into our meaning and our purpose. That’s what the mask does.
Q. Mercifully, we are at the last question.
The mask works through exaggeration and provoking laughter. How does the mask work in a context where a dairy worker is stabbed to death by an intruder ? How do you laugh at that?
A. Well, you don’t laugh at that.
Q. So you admit that you can’t laugh at that?
A. You shouldn’t [laugh at that]. You shouldn’t laugh at somebody being stabbed. That’s terrible.
Q. If you can’t laugh at that, then does the mask as a device fail when comedy turns into tragedy?
A. [There is] the happy mask, the sad mask. That’s been the symbol of drama since the Greeks, since masks were invented. The masks inhabit both spaces [tragedy and comedy]. They draw the audience in, in a way to empathise. You need to have the pathos.
The laughter is just a vehicle in which you can say something more meaningful. I believe, when you have that within a theatre experience, you have nourishment of the soul. We [the audience] want to be moved. So, if we rest on laughter [alone], we are not moved. If we rest on tragedy [alone], we lose our empathy very quickly with tragedy as well. If people are on stage crying all the time, we are annoyed with them. When we get the movement from laughter to sadness, that’s life. We humans wear different masks all the time.
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington.
