Do You Know This Song?

Mallika Taneja (IN) in coproductie met Frascati Producties
Tue 17 Oct ’23 and Wed 18 Oct ’23
Do you Know This Song?, is a search for voice, song, space and beauty.
Tue 17 Oct ’23
and
Wed 18 Oct ’23

With dolls and a harmonium, Mallika digs through her past and finds back her voice.

Do you Know This Song? (coproduction Frascati Producties) is the second part of a trilogy about grief and mourning. Mallika Taneja dives deep into the past, searching for a voice that was lost many years ago.  
  
At one end lies the dark space of broken dreams, at the other, the slippery slope of happiness… in between is a tale about a voice that once was beautiful, unforgettable… and now forgotten. 

"This voice was a voice of the stage, of this world. A voice that was close to me... one that I loved very much.. and perhaps... still love?"

She wades through long forgotten stories to unearth a life that vanished. Whose voice remained ingrained in memory of those who heard it... but the song – disappeared. These songs have now been collected from the found fragments of forgetting, straining memories... and placed on stage. Revisited. Reimagined. Restrung. 
  
With her harmonium, a microphone, and some toys and objects from her childhood, the performer returns, as an adult, to look for the person she lost, a singer and her songs. Who was she? Where did she go, and most importantly, why did she get lost? The performer ventures into the land of not- forgetting; as she moves between searching, singing, and telling a tale of grief, Mallika Taneja invites people to join in. 

  • 60 min.
  • in Hindi and English with surtitles in English
  • Workshop To walk into the song of grief oct 27, 2023
  • On 17 oct part of the We Are Public programme

Credits

performance, design, direction Mallika Taneja dramaturgy & doll design Hansa Thapliyal light design scenography Sangeet Shrivastava music guide Bindhumalini N sound Chayan Adhikari text collaborator Rajesh Nirmal production and doll makers Aman Mohammadi, Drishti Chawl
co-production WEB network (La Maison de la danse CDCN Uzès Gard Occitanie, WPZimmer, Beursschouwburg, Black Box Teater, Tanzquartier Wien, Frascati Productions, LES SUBS - Lyon, Points communs - Nouvelle Scène nationale de Cergy-Pontoise / Val d’Oise), Kaserne Basel, Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Nationaltheater Mannheim

         

Workshop To walk into the song of grief

Mallika Taneja x Frascati x Laguna Collective - Mallika Taneja 

Additionally to Mallika Taneja’s performance, Do you know this Song?, Frascati invites Taneja and Laguna Collective to host a workshop centering around themes of grief, mourning, silence and song. Combining Taneja’s artistic practice and Laguna Collective’s psychosocial background, we welcome you to a theoretical, artistic and physical dialogue.

This evening is a part of Frascati's program line De (on)vertelde stad in which we seek collaboration with institutions outside of the theatre, to delve deeper into (un)told stories of the city. 

Tickets cost 0 EUROS, but must be ordered in advance from the site. Click here to reserve your seat.

Press

"Do you know this song? (is) een bijzonder gelaagde ode aan alle vrouwenstemmen die niet hebben geklonken, en alles wat daarmee verloren is gegaan." Theaterkrant over Do you know this song?

About Mallika Taneja

Mallika Taneja lives and works out of New Delhi, India. Through performances, installations and curatorial work, she explores questions of gender, solidarity, pleasure, rest and remembering. She is particularly interested in exploring political possibilities of  performative ensembles and the role songs have to play in leaving and gathering traces of people, places and things. Some of her works and collaborative spaces include Be Careful, Allegedly, Rest of the Struggle, Zanana ka Zamana and Women Walk at Midnight and Sex Chat Room. She won the ZKB Acknowledgment Prize for Be Careful in 2015 and the ZKB Patronage Prize for Allegedly in 2021. Currently, she is touring her new solo production Do You Know this Song? that traces the journey of searching for a lost voice.