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Vanessa Yung

THE KITCHEN
	Can & Abel Theatres
 
If multisensory show The Kitchen, which Indian director Roysten Abel is bringing to Hong Kong as part of the New Vision Arts Festival, were a dish, it would linger on the palate.
Inspired by his visit to poet and mystic Jalaluddin Rumi's tomb in Konya, Turkey, the hypnotic show is a metaphorical expression of life through cooking. It follows a couple making paal payasam — a traditional rice pudding — and offering it to the audience at the end of the show.
Placed behind the cooking action are 12 mizhavu players, perched on an edifice designed to resemble the shape of a traditional copper drum from Kerala, his home town.
"It's one of those instruments that haunt you," says the Delhi-based director. "It attracts you to it. I like the sound of it, and most importantly it looks like a vessel.

"The body is the vessel to carry the soul. It's how we manage to cook our soul within the body — it's what human life is all about. Cooking is a metaphor for life. Everybody is in the journey, or cauldron. We all get cooked at some point, maybe in one lifetime, maybe in many lifetimes," says Abel. "Getting cooked means going through different experiences in life, and these help you evolve to become a better person. In life, the basic cooking happens through relationships, so in The Kitchen I have the husband and wife cooking.
"There's also the actual cooking of the rice pudding, and all the drummers in a larger cosmic vessel. That's where the cosmic cooking happens."
Abel says that he chose a husband-and-wife relationship because it is the most challenging one for him: "Husbands and wives must grow together, but they always have differences. All partners will have these differences — it's not as if changing partners is a solution."
Persistence and patience are keys to success in everything, regardless of what social role or job you have, Abel says. That is why he does not seem to be troubled by the time his productions take to ferment.

"The most difficult thing about theatre is realising an idea. A performance is a living thing, you have to wait for it to take its own form. It grows, and you have to respect it and adapt to it. That's the interesting and challenging part as well," says Abel.
"For me, the fun part of theatre is creating it, the making of it. The process of seeing the whole thing coming to life, and then communing with the audience is very exciting.
"The Kitchen is still growing. In Hong Kong it'll be a version that no one has seen before. The audience may have different interpretations, but what is universal is that they all have some sense of elevation during the show. Most viewers talk about its meditative quality," says Abel.

Sha Tin Town Hall Auditorium, 1 Yuen Wo Road, Sha Tin, October 24 and 25, 8pm. HK$130-HK$300 Urbtix. Tel: 2370 1044
 


Arts preview: The Kitchen uses cooking as a metaphor for life

Tastemaker: Roysten Abel.

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48 Hours

If multisensory show The Kitchen, which Indian director Roysten Abel is bringing to Hong Kong as part of the New Vision Arts Festival, were a dish, it would linger on the palate.
