Keeping up with Jake in August

You plant something and it’s amazing where it ends up. I’m in Singapore looking at trees growing beside a pond full of huge carp — inside Changi Airport!

I’ve got a few hours to kill before my flight home, so I thought I’d use the opportunity to gather my thoughts about an extraordinary few days before they disappear in a blur of inflight entertainment over the South Pacific.

We were invited here to perform Guru of Chai at the inaugural Nadagamic International Tamil Theatre Festival. For the uninitiated, Tamil Nadu is a state in the south of India. Singapore, meanwhile, is home to five Tamil theatre companies. Who knew?

The Artistic Curator of the Festival, Subramanian Ganesh (everyone calls him Ganesh), had seen Guru in Singapore years ago. Even though there isn’t a chickpea of Tamil language in the piece, he thought it might tickle his audience.

Ganesh tells me he can count on his fingers the number of Tamil actors who are full-time professionals here. Most have day jobs. Rehearsals have to fit around work and family and can therefore go on for months. There’s a real grassroots feeling of people making theatre simply because they love it.

And they loved Guru. The season sold out, and conversations with students, theatre practitioners and punters continued long after the final curtain. One young man reached out to me because he’s going to do a dissertation on Krishnan’s Dairy, including performing a ten-minute excerpt for his A levels. He’s never seen the play. Judging by the look of him, I wrote it at least a decade before he was born.

You plant something and it’s amazing where it ends up.

 

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