Throwback Thursday #6 | Watch 'Once There was a Lake' online | A Presentation by Chanakya Vyas

In the last session, under the series Throwback Thursdays with IFA, we hosted a conversation with Chanakya Vyas, a playwright, performance maker and educator. The session was moderated by John Xaviers, Programme Officer, Arts Practice, IFA.

Chanakya Vyas received a grant from IFA, under the Project 560 programme for a Year-long Curated Series of Artistic Engagements in Bangalore.

As part of the project, Chanakya developed a series of theatrical games to examine and reimagine the issues related to the urban commons in Bangalore, with a specific focus on lakes.

Watch the recording to hear more about the making of this project and a mock-up of the game. In the session, Chanakya Vyas was joined by Vivek Madan and Darshana Dave. Tune in to hear them read out the stories that were developed as part of the project. 

In these theatrical games, the players/audiences are invited to make choices around problems associated with city spaces for the public. The invitation to the audience/players would be to protect, revive and transform a common space in the city - the lake! These artistic engagements through storytelling also borrow from elements of participatory art.  Chanakya has been using the mechanics of card games and board games to aggregate a repertoire of signs and symbols that are familiar to the players. Subsequent to the impositions of the lockdowns, Chanakya and his team has been planning to start a podcast channel and develop a fictional audio drama inspired from the myths, folktales and stories surrounding the lakes in the city, to mobilise the possibilities of audio as an artistic medium, and has plans to explore the options of the game to be played online.

(All Throwback Thursdays with IFA are available on our YouTube Channel. Click here to watch other sessions of the series.)