12 | Rehearsal detail 2

Reconstructing the photograph

Shocked by the dehumanizing photographs that Willoughby Wallace Hooper shot of the Great Madras Famine one of his images features in Paarvai. In the play the group of starving people — about to die — are the objects of Quintina’s photography. Here you can see our performers at working trying to recreate this scene.

As the directors we also wondered what famine would sound like, if at all it has a sound. Faced with this challenge P. Sasikumar is trying to use his instrument — the mukavinai — to produce a new soundscape that symbolizes the haunting, horrific effect of the famine.