Art In The Park is just like the blind dates that take place in theatres, where you don’t know the film that you are going to watch till you enter the hall. In this new event, conducted by the art community Open Sky, you will be paired up with a complete stranger to come up with a collaborative performance, and the best part is that you will be blindfolded all through the process! You might be a poet, but your partner could be a guitarist, now it is up to you two to come up with some performance which puts both your talents to use.
Art In The Park is the brainchild of Gayathri Krishnaraj, the organiser of Open Sky, and her colleague Prem Sylvester. “The main idea behind the event is to bring two blindfolded people together and let them talk about themselves and their arts. The blindfolding is to get rid of the bias and preconceived notion about people. So, I came up with the theme and Prem improvised by suggesting that the participants also come up with a performance on the spot.”
This is the second edition of the event, the first one happened a few weeks ago, and Gayathri reminiscences about some sweet incidents at the first event. “Everyone in our community remembers this one pair from the event who have become a real couple and are dating now. They didn’t know each other before the event and they were blindfolded when they first spoke to each other. So, everyone still makes fun of them even now,” Gayathri laughs.
The event also transcends age differences. A participant, Karthik Sridhar, deputy manager of a corporate company, who is also into theatre, says, “I was partnered up with a 16-year-old girl. We spoke about ‘living in the moment’. Then there was another duo sitting next to us, they also joined in. One of the two was a sexagenarian. He is a foreigner who settled in India 20 years ago, and shared with us his experience of travel. We are all friends now.”
Though Open Sky takes place across the country, and even in Pakistan and in Australia, Art In The Park only happens in Chennai. Gayathri beams, “This is the birthplace for many bands. People came in as individual performers and now they are part of some bands because of this community. That’s exactly what we are trying to make.”
