INFO
| Name | Premiere Season of Tea |
| Year | 2018 |
| Playwright | Ahilan Karunaharan அகிலன் கருணாகரன் |
| Start Date | 9 March 2018 |
| End Date | 18 March 2018 |
| Organiser / Venue | Q Theatre |
| Director(s) | Ahilan Karunaharan அகிலன் கருணாகரன் |
| Producer(s) | Auckland Arts Festival |
| Key Cast | Rashmi Pilapitiya Kalyani Nagarajan Rina Patel Saraid de Silva Mustaq Missouri Mayen Mehta Mel Odedra Raai Badeeu Ravikanth Gurunathan Anjula Prakash |
| Creative Team | Producer: Sums Selvarajan Advisor: Sara Brodie Set Designer: Tiffany Singh Set & Prop Designer: Bhavesh Bhutadia Lighting Designer: Bosco Shaw Composer: Karnan Saba Sound Designer: Matt Eller Costume Designer: Padma Akula Choreographer: Bhuvana Venkat Rehearsal Assistant: Sananda Chattergee Dramaturg: Hone Kouka |
| Artform | Theatre |
| City | Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland |
ABOUT
Co-produced by Auckland Arts Festival and the Oryza Foundation in association with Agaram Productions, Tea held its world premiere as a play in March 2018. Written and directed by Ahilan Karunaharan, the show was developed with the assistance of Auckland Theatre Company and support from festival patrons.
Taking influence from the ancient and beloved beverage, the epic family saga speaks to the love, resistance and struggles across class, gender and generations of workers on a tea estate in Sri Lanka. Writer and director Ahi Karunaharan writes in the programme notes that returning to Sri Lanka after being away from his motherland for 25 years had left him with a strong desire to explore the country’s past and present in creative form. He describes the play as:
a plea to reclaim the forgotten history of the tea workers and of Sri Lanka. The erosion of their legacy and memory is a product of the violent rupture enforced by the presence of the coloniser, disabling the country’s capacity for regeneration. There is not just one story to tell, a story with a beginning and an end, a story that picks up from where the past left off…At the heart of Tea is the struggle of the spirit against oppression – of class, gender and race where the stirrings for independence begin.
The play was presented at Q Theatre Loft for Auckland Arts Festival in 2018 and had a reading presentation the year prior. The 20 characters are played by a ten-person ensemble, with all South Asian actors playing multiple roles and ages of characters. At the time of the world premiere, Sri Lanka had declared and entered into a State of Emergency, the first since the civil war era.
In his own artistic notes (not intended for public consumption), Karunaharan describes being inspired by the artistic vision of Robert LaPage, and the magical realism of Salman Rushdie and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His aim in presenting the work was to create stage work on a large scale, a show “full of theatrical splendour and enchantment”. Through Tea, his direction methodology was to flex various creative devices and employ a range of styles to artistically present history – “a fluid mosaic incorporating elements of opera, Carnatic music, miniature puppetry, traditional Sri Lankan Dance, rituals and ceremonies, naturalistic drama and highly stylized physical theatre.”
Reviewers generally praised the show, particularly the performances of the actors, heartfelt direction and overall stage design. Reviewers Nathan Joe and Dione Joseph especially noted the set crafted by Tiffany Singh – “alternately delicate and bold, her rich palette of colours complementing Padma Akula's beautiful costume choices.” Joseph similarly praises the composers and choreographers for adding depth and nuance to an already rich narrative, and states that the play “Tea is the stuff of unfulfilled dreams, revolution and reclamation.”
Length: 1 hour, 40 minutes (no interval)
