The Be Careful Lab | New Delhi

We invite artists from the city to join a four-day lab to play with questions around the city, gender, and performance.

The lab will be led by theatre artist Mallika Taneja and will take forward questions arising out of different parts of her practice, specifically ‘Thoda Dhyaan Se’ and the practice of ‘Women Walk at Midnight’.

What happens when different bodies stand on stage and the streets?
How does it shift the gaze? The performers gaze at the audience and the audiences gaze at the performer? The cities gaze at us and our gaze is on the city?

How do we layer for the stage and the street? How do these locations also disrobe us?

What shifts when the identity of the body changes - how do race, gender, orientation, disability, caste, class, religion, nationality, and location define and redefine the words - Thoda Dhyaan Se?

Can we move beyond simply underlining differences of identity within feminist performative practice and find moments of intersection and solidarity?

The Lab will open up a deeper, and hopefully tougher, dialogue about themes such as safety, solidarity, victim blaming, risk and how this shifts and transforms as bodies occupying different identities begin to deal with these questions, and ask more. We will look to find answers collectively and think deeper about feminist performative practice in Delhi.