“We stopped counting when we reached 500,” says director Roysten Abel when asked how many times The Manganiyar Seduction has been staged since its premiere in 2006. The show, which lies at the intersection of a Rajasthani folk music concert and a theatrical performance, has been presented in over 20 countries—from the US to the UK, France and Germany to Saudi Arabia and Australia—and won rave reviews everywhere. In 2010, The New York Times called the 70-minute production “rapturous”, “jaw-dropping” and “compelling”.
This week, the production will be staged at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre’s Grand Theatre on Saturday, May 31.
Perhaps Abel puts it best when he describes his conception simply as “a soul-felt audio-visual spectacle”. What we see on the stage is as arresting as what we hear from it. Seated in four rows, across 33 boxes, are 37 singers and instrumentalists on a gridded structure that’s 22 feet high and 36 feet wide. Each box is covered with a red velvet curtain and framed by vanity room-style lightbulbs that are opened and illuminated as and when it’s the musician’s turn to take the mic, as instructed by their khartal-wielding conductor.
This unique design, which weighs around 2,500 kgs and takes between six to eight hours to set up, was inspired both by Jaipur’s Hawa Mahal and Amsterdam’s red-light district. But the ‘seduction’ in the production’s title relates more to how the Manganiyars, folk musicians from Jaisalmer, Balmer and Jodhpur, captivate their audiences. Amit Gurbaxani chats with Abel about what it took to bring this spectacle together.
