City of Gardens

Synopsis

Nostalgia can be defined as a longing for a home that never existed. The city is no exception; its image and geography shifting throughout its history. It emerges as a palimpsest, where traces of earlier lives persist even as they are overwritten by the imperatives of development. 

City of Gardens reimagines Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard in neoliberal Bangalore. The play features Estelle Rozario, returning to her childhood home and confronting the possibility of its loss - a space bound up in grief and memory. 

Asif, the son of the estate’s former gardener-now-developer, returns offering a vision of transformation that would reshape the estate entirely. Their encounter brings into tension competing nostalgias. Surrounding them are voices that bring attention to the economic, ecological, and social changes bearing down on the city.

As the fate of the estate is decided, the play follows the complex relationships between people and places, while analysing linear notions of time.

Jisha Menon is the Robert G. Freeman Professor of International Studies. She serves as the Sakurako and William Fisher Family Director of the Stanford Global Studies Division. She is Professor of Theater and Performance Studies, and Comparative Literature. She is the author of Brutal Beauty: Aesthetics and Aspiration in Urban India (Northwestern UP, 2021) and The Performance of Nationalism: India, Pakistan and the Memory of Partition (Cambridge UP, 2013), and co-editor of Violence Performed: Local Roots and Global Routes of Conflict and Performing the Secular: Religion, Representation, and Politics.

Abhishek Majumdar is a playwright, essayist, scenographer, and director working in India and internationally. His work has been produced and commissioned in leading theaters of the world including Royal Court Theatre London, Prithvi Theatre Mumbai, Ranga Shankara Bangalore, Deutsch Shauspielhaus Hamburg, Ruhrfest Recklinghausen, Théâtre du Soleil Paris, National Theatre London, San Francisco Opera, PEN World Voices, Internacionale Dramaturgie Festival Buenos Aires, San Francisco Opera, and PlayCo New York amongst others.

He is a recipient of multiple awards including the META Award for Best Play and Best Script,  International Theatremakers Award New York,  The Shankar Nag Rangakarmi Award Bangalore, the Toto Funds the Arts Award, Segal Center Award for Civic Engagement in the Arts,  B.V.Karanth Fellowship of Ninasam, Best Director in London Movie Awards, Best Director 8 and Half Film Festival (Rome) Awards, Best Scenographer Sofia International Film Festival amongst others. He works in Theater, Film, and Opera in different languages and cultures. His book of essays, Theater Across Borders is published by Bloomsbury International as part of the Theatermakers series and he has been published, performed, and translated in Hindi, English, French, German, Czech, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Kashmiri, and Spanish. He is the Artistic Director of Nalanda Arts Studio Bangalore and creative producer at New Voices Arts Project based in Bangalore. His plays are published by Bloomsbury International.

Apart from theater, he has published in the areas of mathematics, environmental economics, and chemistry.