Mistaken… Annie Besant in India E-Book

Rukhsana Ahmad

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 99

Beschreibung

Explores the incredible story of Annie Besant’s relationship with India and the boy who went on to become one of India’s greatest teachers and thinkers – Krishnamurti.

1916: India is simmering with discontent against the Raj. Enter English proto-feminist Annie Besant, notorious at home for the match-girls’ strike, political, charismatic. In India she finds a new family and a new cause.

Gandhi hails her as the leader of the Congress Party after she courts imprisonment for promoting Indian Home Rule. She admires him – but can rulers ever befriend the ruled?

Can Annie’s great love affair with India last? … or is she mistaken in her beliefs, politics and adoptions?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rukhsana Ahmad‘s stage plays include: Song For Sanctuary, The Gate-Keeper’s Wife, Black Shalwar, River On Fire (shortlist Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2002), The Man Who Refused to be God, Last Chance and Partners in Crime.

Radio plays and adaptations include: Song for a Sanctuary (CRE award, runner-up), An Urnful of Ashes, The Errant Gene, Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman At Point Zero, Jean Rhy’s Wide Sargasso Sea (shortlist CRE and Writers’ Guild Award for best adaptation), R.K Narayan’s The Guide and Nadeem Aslam’s Maps For Lost Lovers.

She also wrote for Westway and helped to create Pyaar Ka Passort for BBC World Service Trust. Her fiction includes a novel; The Hope Chest (Virago) and several short stories have been published internationally. Her translations from Urdu include We Sinful Women, and Altaf Fatima’s novel, The One Who Did Not Ask. Currently she is working on Letting Go, a new play for Pursued by a Bear, and an adaptation for the BBC of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.

Leseprobe

Rukhsana Ahmad

She has consistently written and adapted plays for the stage and BBC Radio, achieving distinction in both. Stage plays include: Song for a Sanctuary, The Gate-Keeper’s Wife, Black Shalwar, River on Fire, (shortlist Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2002) The Man who refused to be God, Last Chance and Partners in Crime. Radio plays and adaptations include: Song for a Sanctuary (CRE award, runner-up), An Urnful of Ashes, The Errant Gene, Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (shortlist CRE Award and Writers’ Guild Award for best adaptation), R. K. Narayan’s The Guide and Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers. She also wrote for Westway and helped to create Pyaar ka Passort for BBC World Service Trust.

Her fiction includes: a novel The Hope Chest (Virago) and several short stories have been published internationally. Her translations from Urdu include: We Sinful Women, and Altaf Fatima’s novel, The One who did not ask. Currently, she is working on Letting Go, a new play for Pursued by a Bear, and an adaptation for the BBC of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.

Rukhsana is also an Advisory Fellow for the Royal Literary Fund and Chair of SALIDAA (South Asian Arts and Literature in the Diaspora Archive).

Also by the author:

‘Song For A Sanctuary’ in the collection Six Plays by Black and Asian Women Writers’

ed. Kadija George

ISBN 978-0-9515877-2-0

£12.99

Available from all good bookshops

presents

Mistaken…

Annie Besant in India

by

Rukhsana Ahmad

First published in the UK in 2007 by Aurora Metro Publications Ltd. 67 Grove Avenue, Twickenham, MIDDLESEX, TW1 [email protected]

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Mistaken… Annie Besant in India: © copyright 2007 Rukhsana Ahmad

Cover photo (of Annie Besant with Gandhi) courtesy of Peter Ruhe / GandhiServe Foundation

Production Peter Fullagar

With thanks to: Aidan Jenkins and Jenny Campbell

Permission for the use of any copyright music mentioned in the text must be agreed in advance with the Performing Rights Society, Live Music Centre: Tel. [phone].

All rights in this play are strictly reserved. Applications for a licence to present performances including professional, amateur, recitation, lecturing, public reading, broadcasting, television and translation into foreign languages should be made before rehearsals begin, to: MBA Literary Agency, 62 Grafton Way, LONDON, W1T 5DW.

In accordance with Section 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the author asserts her moral rights to be identified as the author of the above work.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBNs

978-0-9551566-9-4 (paperback)

978-1-910798-76-8 (ebook)

Contents

Foreword by Dr Vayu Naidu

Production Team

Chronology of Annie Besant

The play: Mistaken

Act I

Act II

Author's Note

More from Aurora Metro

Foreword

Dr Vayu Naidu

Storyteller & Artistic Director, Vayu Naidu Company

Mistaken… Annie Besant in India by Rukhsana Ahmad tells us the story of a woman of epic stature, not solely by information about her from public accounts. This play was born from a genuine interest in Annie Besant who reformed ways of thinking and working for women in factories in England and believed passionately in Home Rule and the renaissance in education that she founded in India. Through the play and the device of storytelling, the writer and director have enabled us to explore the psychological and sociological moments driving Annie Besant, Krishnamurti, and M.K. Gandhi that shaped a dominant arc of the subcontinent’s history. And, it is not in isolation. The enduring relationship between the British and the Subcontinent’s cultures continue to evolve within the diaspora. This play is also a diasporic expression of the impact of that colonial experience as a shared and collective memory. Ahmad, through her documented metaphor of the adoption in this play, subtly unravels the inextricable ties between the coloniser and colonised, not necessarily defined by ethnicity, and the final price of freedom. Chris Banfield has dextrously woven archival material with his inter-cultural methods as director for this production. In commissioning and producing this play, I am privileged in working with a creative team whose origins from Pakistan, Britain, and India pool together in remembering a hero who was airbrushed from history while shaping a legacy that makes for a multidimensional society in the here and the now.

What better occasion to celebrate 60 years of Independence than by stretching theatre conventions and creating new heritages!

Vayu Naidu’s career has covered many fields including teaching, writing and performance, both as a solo artist and with musicians and dancers. In 2001 she founded Vayu Naidu Company, to promote storytelling as theatre, with a signature style combining text, music and dance. Its inaugural production was South, which she wrote and performed together with musician Orphy Robinson and three dancers in a UK national tour directed by Chris Banfield (2003). Other productions include Future Perfect, a collaboration with director/composer Judith Weir; and Nothing but the Salt (2005), written by Vayu and combining live ‘cello with storytelling and video.

Vayu is on the advisory committee of Black Regional Initiative of Theatre at Arts Council England and chairs the Sustained Theatre Archiving group. From 2001 – 2004 she was Arts and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in Creative and Performing Arts at The University of Kent at Canterbury’s Drama Department, and then Lecturer there until June 2006. In 2007 she was awarded a SEEDA Art Plus development award and also an award from Collide as a BME artist, to develop her new work Bhakti and Blues.

Her playwriting work includes: There Comes a Karma, When and Guess Who’s Coming to Christmas? all directed by Vanessa Whitburn, BBC Radio 4 Drama; Playboy of the Asian World, (1999); and Nine Nights, directed by Chris Banfield. Vayu’s books for children are published by Wayland Publishers, Collins UK and Tulika Books in Chennai, India, and her Ramayanan will be published in 2007.

Director’s Note: Chris Banfield

The ephemerality of the live theatre event makes any fixed record of its passing problematic. But a playtext can’t apologise for not being a play – it can’t apologise at all, of course. While a dramatic text is a blueprint for performance, in this case it is also a literary version of a number of performances of this play by Vayu Naidu Company, each nuanced by a particular venue and audience, each refracted through the imagination of an individual spectator – perhaps even your own. The Company’s work has long foregrounded the storyteller and Mistaken… is no exception. The extraordinary later life of Annie Besant is communicated here through narrative and dramatic means in combination and part of the journey from a directorial perspective has involved organising the interplay between these devices. The uniquely collaborative nature of theatre means that the playwright’s full stop is more often than not turned into a semi-colon beyond which directors (but also designers and actors) pile in to impose their own interpretative punctuation on proceedings. In Rukhsana Ahmad I feel very fortunate to have had a writer willing to undergo this process with such openness and generosity. While explorations and developments in rehearsal beyond the deadline for publication of this playtext may have resulted in some minor changes, I must take responsibility if these have compromised, rather than enhanced, the integrity of the text.

Chris began his professional collaboration with Vayu Naidu in 1999 when he directed Nine Nights – Stories from the Ramayana for the Leicester Haymarket Theatre. Since then he has directed more of the Vayu Naidu Company’s acclaimed productions including South, Joining Forces and Nothing but the Salt, all of which have toured nationally. Chris has a close association with India, having returned many times since his first visit. He has directed plays by several Indian theatre practitioners including the Bengali playwright and director Badal Sircar, and playwright, film director and actor Girish Karnad, on both of whose work he has written for Cambridge University Press. Other theatre production work includes: The Greenhouse Effect, ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, Suddenly Last Summer, The Alchemist, La Folle de Chaillot, The Passion, The Crucible, The Lark, An Italian Straw Hat, Kes, You Can’t Take It With You, Animal Farm, Yerma, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Government Inspector, Dancing at Lughnasa.

MISTAKEN… ANNIE BESANT IN INDIA

by Rukhsana Ahmad

Original production in 2007 by Vayu Naidu Company in association with Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Cast

Annie Besant

Rosalind Stockwell

Storyteller

Vayu Naidu

Sidra

Ruby Sahota

Gandhi / Judge Jessel / Man

Rohit Gokani

Narayaniah / Governor / Yogi

Ranjit Krishnamma

Krishnamurti

Narinder Samra

With Henry Besant as the Reverend Besant’s voice All other parts played by the company

Creative team

Chris Banfield

Marsha Roddy

Director

Designer

Mark Dymock

Kate Edwards

Lighting Designer

Production Manager

Sarah Buik

Roshni Savjani

Company Stage Manager

Deputy Stage Manager

Mistaken... Annie Besant in India is commissioned by Vayu Naidu Company

Storyteller and Artistic Director

Dr Vayu Naidu

General Manager

Jenny Campbell

Administrator

Tuhina Ahmed

Education Co-ordinator

Emily Parrish

Patron

Girish Karnad

Board

Associate Artists

Dee Ashworth

Rukhsana Ahmad

Dr Darryll Grantley

Chris Banfield

Kathleen Hamilton

Orphy Robinson

Cathy Hull

Nona Shepphard

Alan Maley OBE

Judith Weir

Shivaji Shiva Sunderam (Chair)

Vayu Naidu Company Limited

Unit LFB2, Lafone House, The Leathermarket,

11-13 Leathermarket Street,

London SE1 3HN

Tel: Tel. [phone]

Website: www.vayunaiducompany.org.uk

Vayu Naidu Company gratefully acknowledges the financial support of Arts Council England.

Vayu Naidu Company Ltd is registered in the UK, company no 4326115 and a registered Charity, no 1116715

A CHRONOLOGY OF ANNIE BESANT’S LIFE

1847

Birth of Annie Wood (London).

1855

Annie’s aunt Ellen Maryat invites her to live with her She gains a decent education and returns home eight years later.

1867

Marries Frank Besant, a clergyman.

1869

Her son Digby is born.

1871

Gives birth to daughter, Mabel.

1873

Annie loses her faith, leaves Frank and takes Mabel with her.

1874

Meets Charlie Bradlaugh, gets involved in the Secular Society.

1877

Annie and Charlie are prosecuted for publishing Dr. Knowlton’s

The Fruits of Philosophy,

a text about contraception.

1879

Frank Besant wins custody of both children.

1885

Joins the Fabian Society and promotes Socialism.

1888

Leads the

Bryant and May

factory girls’ strike.

1889

Meets Madam Blavatsky and converts to Theosophy

1891

Madam Blavatsky dies; Annie becomes Leader of the Theosophical Society in Europe and India.

1893

First visit to India.

1895

Annie publishes her translation of the

Bhagvad Gita.

1898

Establishes first of several schools in India.

1907

Becomes President of the Theosophical Society.

1909

Leadbeater spots Krishnamurti; Annie and Charlie agree that Krishna will be the new World Teacher.

1910

Annie adopts Krishnamurti and Nityananda.

1911

Creates the Order of the Star of the East.

1912

Narayaniah starts court proceedings against Annie.

1913

She starts her political work for India. Both boys receive a settlement that gives them financial independence.

1914

Annie wins guardianship of the boys; launches

The Commonweal

and

New India;

Gandhi returns to India after an absence of 20 years.

1915

Gandhi founds a

satyagraha

ashram in Ahmedabad.

1917

Annie is interned in Ootacamund (Ooty); she is voted President of India’s National Congress.

1919

Rowlatt Acts are passed, Gandhi declares a day of Hartal (strike); Massacre at Amritsar.

1920

Tilak dies. Gandhi launches a national

satyagraha.