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The Octagon
Ghadeer Alkhenaizi and Sara Musaifer
Our story began with a conversation between two friends, Ghadeer and Sara, walking back to the university library after a quick dinner in Dinkytown on a cold evening in December 2017. Fueled by the crisp air that filled our lungs, our feet rushed through crowded pavements and across busy streets, making their way through a fog of breath exhaled by warm bodies and buildings. Soon enough, our minds wandered away in denial, escaping the painful one mile walk under the cloak of another harsh Minneapolitan winter. Naturally, we both started thinking of home: Bahrain, or should we say: Bahrains?
Silence | CHUP
agitatejournal
La Règle Des Trois Unités
Beaudelaine PierreVellai Mozhi
Marappachi Theatre, A. Mangai, A. Revathi, and Tamilarasi Anandavalli
We live in a time when conflict and destruction are no longer the exception but the norm. It often feels like a dark cloud is looming over us. However, those of us who have chosen to live with the purpose of changing the world to the best of our ability always see a silver lining to these clouds. Here we feature a performance of A. Revathi’s Vellai Mozhi directed by A. Mangai as well as a bilingual (Tamil/English) panel discussion on the role of art in queer activism. We also include written comments from Mangai and Revathi on how art, theatre, and Vellai Mozhi have presented issues of sexuality in Tamil Nadu.
Not Everything that Shines is Gold
Ericka A. Lara Ovares and Juliana Vélez
Collaborative writing isn’t easy. In the fall of 2017, Juliana and I (Ericka) took a class on ‘Ways of Knowing: Approaches to Knowledge and Truth in Development Studies and Social Justice’ that encouraged us to write together. Even though our fields are very different, we discovered we had a love for nature and our homelands in common. We took the opportunity to write on what threatens the vitality of our countries’ environments, and to write in a way that also reflects our people’s struggles to maintain sovereignty over their lands.
Performing Chup: Resonance Across Borders
agitatejournal
Inventing a Bahujan Grammar: In Memory of Abhay Xaxa
Vishal Jamkar
अपनी ज़मीन तलाशती नई जड़ें
Jacinta Kerketta and Richa Nagar
Basic Demographic Questions
Suzanne Chew
Kaatru
Tamilarasi Anandavalli, A. Mangai, Marappachi Theatre
On June 7, 2020, a show rehearsed completely through Zoom was presented by Tamilarasi, a theatre student at the National School of Drama and a member of Marappachi. A video of this performance is shown below. The performance features a 20th Century poem by Bharathiyar (a modern poet in Tamil) titled Kaatru (Wind).
चुप्पी की बोली: एक मंथन
agitatejournal
chuppī kī bolī: ek manthan प्रस्तुति: ऋचा नागर interwoven by richa nagar from collective reflections of parakh theatre group & chup’s audiences in mumbai roman transliteration by gwendolyn kirk & richa nagar चुप्पी की बोली chuppī kī bolī मैं इस नाटक के पल-पल से जुड़ गयी, सिर्फ़ एक इंसान होने के नाते, क्योंकि…
जसिन्ता को पढ़ने पर …
Vishal Jamkar and Richa Nagar
The essay in Hindi emerged organically over the course of several months as we jointly engaged with Jacinta Kerketta’s submission to AGITATE!. It continued to find inspiration from her ideas and poetry as it grew from our verbal discussions into Vishal’s diary, and then into a co-authored reflection and essay. To try to convey in English all of the contents of what has evolved in the preceding pages seems far too mechanical to us. Therefore, we offer here a summary of our engagement with Jacinta, chiefly for those readers who do not read Hindi.
Collective Anti-Disciplinarity: Feeling Promiscuous, Positioning Narrative, and Making Home
Siddharth Bharath, SeungGyeong Ji, Naimah Petigny, and Sandra Rellier
Caste, Race, and Indigeneity Collective: How does one navigate the uneven terrains of scholarly recognition within academic work? What happens when no matter how loud you speak, certain bodies and the collectives they signify are not engaged, entirely dismissed or ignored within the academy, or within dominant intellectual and political institutions more generally?
“In the dark times, will there also be singing?”
Ponni Arasu, Marappachi TheatrePlaying With Silence: Fawad Khan Speaks with Richa Nagar and Abdul Aijaz
agitatejournal
Fawad Khan, Richa Nagar & Abdul Aijaz Aijaz & Richa: Fawad, we would like to begin by asking about your general vision of literature. How does theatre—and especially, the medium of play/ khel/ naatak/ drama—give life to that vision? What do you want to play with in your plays? Fawad: I think of all…
Autopsy and State Violence: Implications in the Death Investigation of George Floyd
Deondre Smiles
This essay examines the circumstances surrounding the death investigation of George Floyd, tying it into larger discussions surrounding the role of law enforcement and state structures in death investigations and autopsies. Drawing upon indigenous studies research, the piece looks at the undue influence upon coroners and medical examiners in cases of death by police brutality that do not put law enforcement in legal jeopardy.
Silent Scream
Katayoun Amjadi
أبصار
Ahmed K. Ali
The Labor of Political Theatre as Embodied Politics: A Conversation
Richa Nagar, Anna Selmeczi
What follows is a letter exchange between Anna and Richa. Richa’s book, Hungry Translations: Relearning the World Through Radical Vulnerability, underwent significant revisions during the course of this letter exchange. In addition to mediating on the labor of political theater and embodied politics, this exchange underscores the making of conversations and relationships as continuously unfolding journeys that cannot be contained by fixed words on the page.
The Thermal Body Signature of a Second Class Citizen, Choking on His Own Saliva
Pedram Badari
Carrying Silences Across Borders: Tarun Kumar Speaks with Abdul Aijaz and Richa Nagar
agitatejournal
TORRE DE MARFIM
Sarah Almeida, Matheus Caetano, Raquel Chaves, and Josinelma Rolande
The Perils and Possibilities of Creative Economy: A Conversation
Dia Da Costa, Richa Nagar, and Sarah Saddler
This conversation, built around themes and questions discussed in Dia Da Costa’s book Politicizing Creative Economy: Activism and a Hunger Called Theatre (University of Illinois Press, 2016), analyzes the terrain of the “creative economy” and explores its ethical implications for national belonging, epistemic justice, and academic knowledge production through the politics of academic journeying. Exploring the possibilities, limits, and risks of the creative economy across multiple personal trajectories and political realms, we offer perspectives on the creative economy as a landscape where colonial histories of violence, academic privilege and positionality, and possibilities for progressive politics become especially visible and critical.
Healthy Living
Jordan StarckTelling Dis/Appearing Tales (Script and Performance)
Stories, Bodies, Movements' Class, Spring 2017
I am not your data
Abhay Xaxa, with a translation by Antonádia BorgesSites of Contestation, Letters Between Friends
Keavy McFadden and Julie Santella
What follows is a series of letters between the two of us – Julie and Keavy, two friends and agitators – that meditate on how we, as graduate students, step into the academic world inevitably carrying prior knowledges with us and must continually agonize about how to do justice to and with them in academic life. As we write to each other, we also write to you, in the hope that these reflections might help to remind you of the prior knowledges you also carry.
