Scarab Tale

Presented by CRS & Dharma Road
Written and Performed by Sita Mani
Directed by Virkram Kapadia
Developed with Fay Simpson
Mirror in Process by Sarita Chowdhury

Fridays & Saturdays
June 8-9, 15-16, 2007 at 8 PM
Tickets $15 if purchased in advance
$20 at the door

In the darkly poetic SCARAB TALE, Dharma founding artist Sita Mani brings physical theatre panache to a multi-cultural, one-woman voyage of truth and wrings wisdom, tears and laughter from the detritus of her journey. Directed by Indian TV star and acclaimed Indian director/playwright Vikram Kapadia, SCARAB TALE explores the questions: What if you traveled your story truthfully, without leaving out little bits that don't "fit"? What if you allowed every step to carry its weight, and you tasted every moment? What kind of journey would you have then? The work has been built through an exploration of the stories to be found in the body. It is movement theatre. Interwoven in its structure is the symbol of the mythic Scarab, or “dung Beetle.”

Dharma Road at CRS is proud to be a particpating presenting organization in the First National Asian American Theater Festival. More than 25 companies all over the United States are involved in the Festival, highlighting the rich diversity and depth of Asian American theater in this country.

ABOUT WRITER/PERFORMER SITA MANI
Sita Mani has been a performance artist for twenty years, working in The United States and India. After a musical theater career in India, Sita moved to NY. She has been a Dharma Artist since Dharma Road’s inception. “Scarab Tale” is her second original work. Her first, “Bracken And Sunflowers,” has been seen in NYC at The Interboro Repertory Theater, One Arm Red, the Evolving Arts Theatre and Riverside Church. As a dancer, Sita appeared in Off-Broadway’s “Little Clay Cart” at the Ohio Theater and has worked with European Dance Theater Company Sanza Nemo Collective (AD: Guido Tuveri/Jean Hugues Miredin), Impact Theater (AD: Fay Simpson), Kathak Ensemble (AD: Janaki Patrik) and a number of choreographers from South America, Europe, India and the US. Sita is also a trained and practicing body-worker.

ABOUT DIRECTOR VIKRAM KAPADIA
Vikram Kapadia’s 25-year-long involvement with Mumbai’s Theater scene makes him a seasoned director, actor and writer. He founded his own theatre company, Masque, in 1987. Under its banner, he has directed numerous plays including The Dining Room; Dance and the Railroad; an innovative Mumbai street side version of Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. Committed to working with Indian playwrights, he has directed Girish Karnad's Tughlaq, Makarand Deshpande’s Musk Maiden and Shafaat Khan’s It Happens Only In India. As a playwright Vikram has Written two monologues, ”On the Road” and “The Party.” His first play, “Black with ‘Equal,’” a satirical black comedy, has been published by the Sahitya Akademi, and continues to draw audiences. Vikram plays the lead in “K Street Pali Hill,” a prime-time soap. He has just finished shooting for Nari Hira’s “Bhram” and is currently writing the screenplay for a YashRaj Production television series.

Scarab Trivia
Scarabs or “dung Beetles” feast on freshly laid fecal matter, otherwise known as dung. With geometric artistry they fashion freshly laid dung into huge circular or pear shaped structures with their legs and mouth parts. They then stand on their front feet and with their back legs push the ball of dung into an
undersgound nest.The female then lays a single egg into the top of each ball of dung and covers the nest with more dundg or soil. Dung beetles have the ability to roll balls of dung that weigh up to 50 times their own weight. Without this natural septic machine, the earth would be piled high with manure. Not only do they help clean the earth,but the ground is also fertilised by the scarabs burying the dung.

Mythically Revered:
In the taoist tradition,a dung beetle called ”Aksak” was supposed to have made the first woman and man on earth from clay. A Taoist text quotes”The scarab rolls its pellet, and life is born in it as an effect of nondispersed work and spiritual concentration. Now if even in manure an embryo can develope and cast his “terrestrial” skins,why should the dwelling of celestial hearts not be able to generate a body too, if we put our spirit on it?” The Egyptians immortalised the scarab as sacred. They believed that the scarab beetle represented their sun god Ra. Ra was the God who rolled the sun across the sky and buried it each night.Dung beetles symbolised immotality. The scarab’s persistence in rolling the dung ball and its re-emergence from the the ground, coming back out as if resurrected or reborn, made the scarab a symbol of spontaneous generation, new life, and resurrection.

In South America Indian Tribes also viewed the scarab beetle as a religious symbol. Revolving the the ball of dung was thought to represent the rotation of the earth, rotated by the celestial scarab.