Report: Bag Dancing by Butai

Class, shame, mental health and connection are explored in the Mike Kenny play that’s been performed in major metros across the country

Imelda is a “bag lady” – a derogatory term used for homeless people in her city. Neville works in a shelter that where she hopes to rest for a night. Their unlikely if rather prickly friendship is what playwright Mike Kenny’s Bag Dancing depicts as song, dance and stories pouring out of bags as unseemly objects. Produced by Butai, a theatre group from Bengaluru, the play has been making the rounds of theatres across the country.

Surabhi Herur and Shrunga BV in Bag Dancing. (Sharath K)

Surabhi Herur brings to life the play’s central character, Imelda, who embodies the life stories of a woman hit but not broken by war. Imelda is trying to heal from loss through all that she carries around in bags stuffed to overflowing. Shrunga BV plays Neville, who, we learn, has his own reasons for seeking healing – reasons he ignores till he meets the irksome Imelda.

I watched Bag Dancing at Sabha, one of the city’s newish cultural spaces located in an area marked heavily by its colonial past. Earlier called Cavalry Road – Kamaraj Road, where Sabha stands, is near the “bazaar” aka Commercial Street, where British soldiers shopped on weekends (records state roads were cordoned off for them) during the days when Bangalore served as one of the largest British Cantonments in south India.

It’s famously known that Winston Churchill, when working as an impoverished, young lieutenant in the colonial cavalry between 1896 and 1899, bought his shoes and cigars on Commercial Street. City lore has it that things were so tight that he even pawned a wristwatch in this area. Churchill as Prime Minister of Britain, between 1940 and 1945, is credited with playing a key role in the defeat of the Nazis, which led to the end of the Second World War – the war that’s a dark hole in the centre of Imelda’s heart, in this play.

The intersections between the world of the play and the world it was played in landed sharply at Sabha even more so because children and adolescents from the locality had been invited to watch the play. It seemed like most of them were attending a theatre performance for the first time, and the buzz of their excitement was like an additional soundtrack for the play. Mike Kenny, the British playwright whose works target exactly such age groups to raise questions on war, displacement and mental health – would have approved.

I was fascinated by the thematic overlap between another Mike Kenny play – Boy with a Suitcase and Bag Dancing, especially because the same actor played key roles in both. Shrunga played Naz, a 12-year-old war refugee in Boy with a Suitcase produced by Ranga Shankara, Bangalore and Schnawwl National Theatre, Manheim. It was performed across the world between 2010 and 2019.

Surabhi Herur as Imelda in Bag Dancing (Sharath K)

Shrunga points out, however, that Boy with a Suitcase was written after Bag Dancing and has a “linear story progression whereas Bag Dancing is cyclical in nature, making it more complex.” He adds that while Boy with a Suitcase opened up his world, “metaphorically and literally,” Bag Dancing made him “go inward” and reflect on his world. “Every time I play Neville, it reminds me how easy it seems to just bottle things up and how difficult it is to not do that.” Shrunga calls Mike Kenny a “master of writing complex ideas” whose works “speak at a very human level of the dreams and aspirations of people of different ages, set against the backdrop of global issues like immigration, homelessness and lack of awareness of mental health.”

Surabhi agrees that the play’s script depicts the characters’ voice and persona clearly. “I kept going back to the text and the references it made. Imelda is Romani. Her tendency to be on the move, tell stories, dance and sing are probably a reflection of what she has lost,” she says adding that she could relate to the character’s personal history. “It is history that is repeating itself as we speak, all around us. And yet, this play is a story of love, of unlikely friendship, of survival, resilience and hope,” she adds. Describing her as a “flawed, messy, wild old woman,” Surabhi says that Imelda and her bags seem to “find home in the friendship with Neville” and adds that her “ability to stay in difficult conversations long enough for both parties to walk away wiser” is truly inspiring. “Playing her has been liberating in many ways,” says Surabhi.

Director Ujwala Rao says the play feels “relevant, even urgent” not just because it speaks of “the human instinct to survive” but also because it focuses on “two working-class people who are not usually allowed to narrate their own lives.” She drew a lot from Imelda whose bags, Ujwala felt, contained “memory” and things that had “travelled with her” through difficult times. “So, the design became less about set and more about excavation” of stories hidden in ordinary objects, she says.

In the shoes, she saw echoes of the photographs of holocaust victims that later informed public outrage and grief over the genocide directed at a single community during the Second World War. “Shoes suggest the body that once inhabited them. You start imagining a whole life. Who were they? Where did they walk? What kind of work did they do?” says Ujwala. The costume design by Mangala N and the sound design by Sandeep Manjunath were also rooted in clues embedded in the text.

The play has been well received in 20 odd shows performed in different parts of the country. “The reception has been very moving. With children and young adults, the responses are incredibly direct and honest. They respond to Neville’s story about shame, especially the class-based experiences he speaks about. And they have so many questions about Imelda and what happened to her during the war” Ujwala says. “Many people said they felt deeply connected to Imelda and the stories she carries with her,” said Prajwal, co-founder of Butai. Neville’s gentleness too really touched the audience. His softness and quiet presence create a beautiful balance on stage. People have especially responded to the connection between Imelda and Neville, their tenderness, small moments, and emotional bond feel very real and relatable.” The play has so far been performed in Bangalore, Mysore, Pune, Mumbai, and Delhi.

Charumathi Supraja is a writer, poet and journalist based in Bengaluru.