Finally, in September 2005, the academic work came together with the elements of live performance -- music and forms of South Asian folk theater -- and multi-media technology in the shape of a workshop production at the University of California in Berkeley. Produced by the Department of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies, it was made possible by the Townsend Center for the Humanities with their prestigious "Artist-in-Residence Fellowship" to Suman Mukherjee to come to Berkeley and create this piece with Sudipto Chatterjee, who by then was an Assistant Professor at UC, Berkeley.

By this time, more than 15 years had elapsed since Suman and Sudipto had first imagined this as a collaborative project. Their thinking had matured over time: Lalon's philosophy and music were by now inhabiting their inner mind space. They were now ready to realize in terms of scenograhy, text and mise-en-scene what had thus far been a cherished dream. They worked furiously over August and September in a unique process of theatrical creation.

This was no straight-forward play with a predictable plot line, with the usual highs and lows of conflict and climax. Rather, it was a heady mix of academic archeology and musical expression, brought together by means of performative devising. Given these difficulties, the written text first emerged in the form of 5 pages of "structure notes." These notes then became the basis of the first attempts at the creation of a stage mise-en-scene and scenography. As the stage visions kept emerging in rehearsal, they goaded the rest of text to emerge. Lalon has hundreds of songs that the creators felt were worth including in the play, but since that was not possible, often only snippets from the songs were kept and the lines of the songs themselves seemed to guide the emergent text, along with the visual suggestions that came from the director's scenographic "realization" of Lalon on stage. The final play performance text, thus, emerged through a unique circular exchange between visual imagination, literary creativity that is informed by rigorous academic research, and a deep spiritual knowledge shared between the director and writer/performer.

After additional field research in 2008, this symbiotic modus operandi shall be explored further in 2009, at the next developmental phase of the project, to re-examine and add to the mise-en-scene.

[Click + sign on visuals to enlarge them.]

Poster for the 2006 New York run, also designed by Proshot Kalami, based on her own painting.