On Monday, 14 September, the award-winning one person show -
C Sharp C Blunt - takes to the stage featuring the acclaimed actress MD Pallavi playing Shilpa – an attractive, interactive phone app.
Playing on the digital frontier
C Sharp C Blunt introduces Shilpa, a user-friendly mobile phone app that has been projected to be the most popular app of 2013. Using the latest technology, Shilpa sings for you - in the flesh. She sings the songs you want to hear with her chracateristic sugary and husky voice. She shakes her hips when you want her to dance to your favourite tune. And to the delight of the men, she behaves in exactly the way women are supposed to behave; that is, until the next update is released. Starring singer-actress MD Pallavi in her first ever solo performance, this one woman show is a witty, humorous and satirical interrogation of what it is like being a woman in the entertainment industry today.
Helmed by German director Sophia Stepf,
C Sharp C Blunt is the latest offering by Germany’s Flinntheater in an Indo-German collaboration that explores the realms of digital dramaturgy to create a new hybrid form of theatre-meets-performance art. Audiences can try the app in a beta test that will have them roaring with laughter as Shilpa charms with her sparkling personality.
C Sharp C Blunt is based on the concept of the loop. An electronic musician is live on stage, he creates and layers loops from live sound. The loop in its nature reflects the training of the singer through endless repetition, but also the process of cultural and social programming. This cultural programming also defines the specific way, girls and women are supposed to behave.
The play looks at traditional gender roles as engrained by culture and the classical performance training versus the woman as the globalised consumer living in a new market that caters to her wants and needs. We look at the performer as a site of battle between purity and consumption, between servitude and ego, between being looked at and self-determination.
C Sharp C Blunt opened in Jagriti/Bangalore in March 2013 and has been performed in Bangalore (Ranga Shankara), Mumbai (NCPA Experimental and Prithvi Theatre), Berlin (Sophiensaele), Kassel (Dock 4) and Singapore (Kalaa Utsavam Indian Theatre Festival, Esplanade). In 2014 it has been invited to the
International Theatre Festival of Kerala (ITFoK) in Thrissur, the
META Awards in Delhi, the
Secondo Festival in Switzerland and the
Zürcher Theater Spektakel in Zürich, as well as touring Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai with support of the Goethe-Institute India.
Tickets are R100. Bookings can be made by phoning Strictly Tickets on +27 82 553-5901 or online via
www.strictlytickets.com. Alternatively, phone the theatre’s box office +27 11 883-8606.