Cafe Dissensus Everyday

The Blog of Cafe Dissensus Magazine – we DISSENT

Posts from the ‘Art’ category

Jana-Sanskriti: Theatre of the Oppressed

By Amartya Banerjee
Jana-Sanskriti, has been working in these areas since the mid-1980s and through its untiring efforts, it has been able to instill a sense of belonging, a sense of responsibility amongst the people. This responsibility refers to the belief that things and situations will not change if one gives up hope. It will change only when they themselves unite in their efforts and harness the collective energy for constructive work.

Family Matters: Telling True Stories

By Lopa Banerjee
During a trip back home, a visit to an old pond/creek in the old neighborhood where I had stayed as a child triggered memories in an unexpected way. The pond brought back memories of one of the first, formative experiences of rain in my childhood. While roaming by the pond on a rainy day, some snippets of my grandfather’s death came to me in a flash, and I remembered the downpour that had occurred then, the rainy holiday I was enjoying in my mother’s maternal home, and how that day brought about my first brush with death.

Haan, Main Savitribai Phule

By Mary Ann Chacko
Sushama Deshpande has been performing this play for over 25 years. Hence, there have been occasions when someone who had first seen the play in her adolescence was now the mother of an adolescent herself. Once in a village a lady came and told her that she had decided to educate her daughter despite all obstacles after watching the play.

Natasha Raheja’s ‘Cast in India’ (2014)

By Mosarrap H. Khan
Natasha’s film works on two different registers: first, it reveals to us the extensive labor infrastructure and social life behind the everyday objects that we encounter in the built environment of the city, thereby highlighting our own alienation in modern life; second, it exposes the hazardous working conditions that are masked by the shiny surfaces of our great metropolises.

Flying Birds of India

By Joyce Yarrow
Many of the films made by the Flying Birds documented the lives of working artists or were made during field trips throughout the city or holiday celebrations. When, after the screening, a young man presented me with an embroidered portrait of Tagore, I made no attempt to hide my tears of gratitude. Being with the Flying Birds had changed me in ways I knew I had yet to acknowledge.

Just imagine you are Hank the 8th: Put yourself in King Henry VIII’s shoes

By Achyut Dutt
Maids-in-waiting are nubile young girls from noble families who are ostensibly employed on an honorary basis by the queen to keep her company and help her get dressed and all. However, their actual job profile and key performance criteria are to get laid by the King whenever he wishes. In this, Anne Boleyn excels and you’re soon infatuated. She has there massive baobabs you love getting lost in, don’t you now, you horny bastard.

We write, therefore we think…and imagine: The School for Children Writers

By Ursula Estrada
The games that enable children to learn new writing tools are sometimes carried out with the help of props. Puppet theaters have been used to collectively create a play through a performance. At other times, a little plastic mouse has triggered a game in which children create their own version of Mouse City: they first draw a map of it and write a set of directions to find a hidden treasure, which other students will later follow, moving the mouse through the map.

Maria Pena: Landscapes Left Behind

By Mary Ann Chacko
As she sifted through the photos she took in Kerala, it occurred to her that the Lungi or sarong, a traditional garment worn, predominantly by men, around their waist and the Newspaper, best capture the culture of Kerala. In this painting, she took newspapers and blended it with the painting. One news item features Kerala’s campaign against the pesticide, Endosulfan.