Mythology Workshop & Play-Read by Hemang Yadav

As part of Centre 42’s Co-Lab Residency, Brown Voices’ Hemang Yadav is back with another playwriting mini-series, this time exploring mythology in plays! Hemang’s brand new work-in-progress, Purana Residences, will be presented alongside with a two-part workshop titled Makyng the Myth Myne: Using Mythology in Playwriting this October!

Purana Residences — A Work-in-Progress Reading

Purana Residences allegorizes Indian mythology as a residential apartment, inhabited by well-known legendary characters. The play scrutinizes a variety of situations faced by numerous married couples from Indian epics, legends and folktales, albeit with a modern-day lens. In doing so, the play explores the relevance of these stories to our contemporary world. Does modernity compel us to reread these stories in new ways, thus interrupting the grand narratives of tradition and culture? Or are we repeating these prototypes and their traumatic potentials over and over again? Is social change possible?

Purana Residences is written by Hemang Yadav and directed by Gavin Low.

• Purana Residences is a by-invitation only presentation, please fill in this form to register for an invitation if you would like to attend. You will receive an invitation email from Centre 42 confirming your seat thereafter
• All registrants of Purana Residences are invited to sign up for the Makyng the Myth Myne Workshop.

Makyng the Myth Myne: Using Mythology in Playwriting — A Workshop by Hemang Yadav

Myths are compelling and powerful, for they are not merely purveyors of familiarity and tradition but also eternally potent framing devices for issues of the present day. Unfortunately, their potency is rarely explored in playwriting, and they frequently end up being relegated to costume-dramas or treated as museum pieces, embalmed in their traditional contexts. This workshop explores how mythology can be usefully employed or subverted to create new play scripts. Hemang Yadav’s script Purana Residences, a work-in-progress, will be used as a case study of a play that consciously uses and perhaps deconstructs mythology to investigate tradition while exploring contemporary topics.

Through the workshop, participants should gain a greater consciousness of the ways in which mythology and its potency can be used to explore current issues and come up with a concept-paper for a play using mythology.

• Please note that this is not an introductory workshop for playwriting, however, so participants who are completely new to theatre or to writing may not fully benefit from this workshop. Some basic knowledge of staging and the form of a script would be necessary.
• All participants of Makyng the Myth Myne: Using Mythology in Playwriting are highly encouraged to attend the play-reading of Purana Residences.

Purana Residences Work-in-Progress Reading

• 8 October 2021 (Fri), 8pm
  @ 42 Waterloo Street, Black Box
  

Makyng the Myth Myne Workshop 

• 9 October 2021 (Sat), 3pm – 5pm
  Online via Zoom
  Part 1: Lecture on Mythology in Playwriting & Question and Answer

• 10 October 2021 (Sun), 3pm – 5pm
  Online via Zoom
  Part 2: Hands-on Activities, Writing and Discussion.
  There may be assignments to complete between Day 1 and Day 2 of the workshop. 

Register for Purana Residences and/or Makyng the Myth Myne now at https://forms.gle/j1wNykxxR6CG6DcQ9.

Please note the following for Purana Residences:

• Purana Residences is a by-invitation only presentation, please fill in the form above to register for an invitation if you would like to attend. You will receive an invitation email from Centre 42 confirming your seat.

Please note the following for Makyng the Myth Myne:

• Registration for the workshop ends on 7 October 2021 1200hrs.
• All participants will be contacted by 8 October 2021.
• All participants must attend both sessions on 9 & 10 October 2021.
• Please note that this workshop is recommended for writers and those who have basic knowledge of staging and the form of a script.
• Participants are capped at 15 pax for this workshop. We seek your understanding that allocation will be on a first-come-first-served basis.

HEMANG YADAV
Hemang has penned and directed a number of plays, including a modern Noh play All The Crazy People (Wisdom of Monkeys, 2010), Maya: Demon Architect (Esplanade Raga Series/RDG, 2014), the opera-based play Letter to Juliet (Bellapoque, 2014), site-specific plays for the annual Arts Walk Little India (RDG, 2017-2019) and Pongal (Late-Night Texting 2019, Dastak 2021). Dramatised reads of his plays Malavika and Shakuntala were presented by Theatreworks and Esplanade respectively. He is a member of the writers collective Brown Voices. Hemang played memorable roles like the Bhagavadha in Girish Karnad’s Hayavadhana (Experimental Theatre Company, 2006), Kent in Ho Tzu Nyen’s The Lear Universe (Singapore Arts Festival, 2008), Demetrius in Stageclub’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Godse in Elangovan’s Satyameva Jayate (Agni Koothu, 2009), Bhima in WeCanDoIt’s Trikon (performed in Bangalore, 2011), Patel in Mahesh Dattani’s Tara (RDG, 2015) and Pillay in the site-specific First Storeys (2019). He worked as a dramaturg for Saga Seed’s The Shape of a Bird, RDG’s Adukku Veettu Annasamy, Drama Box’s Chinatown Crossings and Bhaskar Arts’ Marabu 2. Hemang is the festival director of the annual Tamil ten-minute play festival Pathay Nimidam, which brings together Tamil and non-Tamil theatre practitioners.