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When she got on the floor last year to make her first live show after the pandemic, Delhi-based performer Mallika Taneja faced a severe sense of fatigue, heaviness and anxiety about how to take a step on stage. She has been among those who had successfully negotiated the online space with her play, Allegedly, after the first lockdown but wanted to start making theatre the way she had always known it. As she worked on her latest play, Do You Know This Song?, which will have a private show in Delhi before travelling to Europe, Taneja admits that she is back but with a shift in her body and mind. The play will be staged at Saraswati Music College in Delhi on June 11.
Do You Know This Song? also starts from a personal point as Taneja was looking for the way to speak about loss and grief (Source: Hansa Thapliyal)
The actor’s most powerful performances, Thoda Dhyan Se, Allegedly and Sorry for the Interruption, have roots in personal experiences. Do You Know This Song? also starts from a personal point as Taneja was looking for the way to speak about loss and grief as well as her search for a particular voice. She has been searching for this voice for 20 years in a passive way but actively for the last six years. “In the process of looking for that voice, I found a newness in my own, perhaps, for the first time I found my own voice,” says Taneja.
Do You Know This Song? is full of songs and is the first time she has sung in her play. Previously, Taneja has been part of a few choirs. “I have always wanted to do it but didn’t feel supported enough to do it or didn’t find a way to do it. For this particular piece, I’ve been singing for the last two years with Bindu Malini Narayanaswamy, a classical vocalist and composer. The morning practice with her helped me find my own voice,” she says. Before this, she had made many attempts to learn music, from piano to flute to singing, but could not sustain it because she didn’t have have time, money or encouragement.
Her most powerful performances, Thoda Dhyan Se, Allegedly and Sorry for the Interruption, have roots in personal experiences. (Source: Hansa Thapliyal)
Taneja grew up watching the evolution of theatre in Delhi as her father, Banwari Taneja, a Sangeet Natak Akademi award winner, performed with greats of the form, from BV Karanth and BM Shah to Anuradha Kapur, Nadira Babbar and Kirti Jain. But, it was at Kirori Mal College that she found the right guidance under Keval Arora. Arora, famously, insists that students question the ways of the world as well as themselves and their art. Taneja directed Tattoo in college, a 1993 play in verse on the difficult topic of incest. After working with several theatre directors and a stint with the Tadpole Repertory in Delhi, she created her niche as a solo performer who spoke on uncomfortable and political subjects, such as sexual violence in Allegedly. During the anti CAA movement, she presented Zanana ka Zamana as a piece of protest theatre.
A major influence in Taneja’s theatre is the solo performer Maya Krishna Rao. It was a conversation with her in November 2022 that pushed Taneja to start the process that would lead to Do You Know This Song? “It is as if the conversation, which I listened to many times, gave me the permission to begin and said, ‘It’s okay, just walk,’” she says.
Do You Know This Song?, like her other plays, breaks the proscenium format. The story, which is told with dolls, a harmonium and a microphone, moves between two spaces and the audience sits on both sides. In many ways, the piece follows the traditions of oral cultures as it is based on a series of conversations and interviews with people about stories, memories and experiences. “The performer encounters different parts of herself in the show. At one end of her journey is the dark space of broken dreams and, at the other, the slippery slope of happiness,” she says.
Do You Know This Song? will be staged at Saraswati Music College on June 11, 4 pm and 7.30 pm. Contact: 9100856410; khoyepaaye@gmail.com
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