Two literary classics will be reincarnated with South Asian motifs and music in an experimental stage adaptation that merges Western and South Asian cultures, and incorporates live music and contemporary dance.
Based on the short stories ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ and ‘Cat in the Rain’ by Ernest Hemingway, Jag and The American will be featured at The Cultch on Aug. 5 and 6.
“The South Asian elements of the show occurred organically, from the early change of Hemingway’s past-less character from Jig to Jag – a young South Asian woman fleeing impending persecution in India – to the idea of having Jag play the jazz classic song ‘Strange Fruit’ on the sitar,” said Fred Ribkoff, an English instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) who co-authored the play with John Rowell, a graduating English student at KPU, and fellow KPU English instructor Paul Tyndall.
Ribkoff is producing Jag and The American, and he and Rowell are co-directing the play.
The project is presented by Plastic Theatre Company, a newly formed theatre collective created by Ribkoff, Rowell and Tyndall with the mandate to stage original works and produce original stage adaptations of literary classics.
The lead character Jag will be played by Sawkshi Sharma, a local Indo-Canadian actress in her first year at KPU. The play will also feature the Indo-Canadian music talents of sitar player Anju Bedi, and singer, composer, and Bollywood dance instructor Jahnavi Singh. The merging of cultures will be reinforced by the haunting contemporary dance choreography of Amber Kingsley, a former KPU student whose work will bring together three Surrey dancers: Surrey high school student Jayde Reuser, KPU student Anushruti Thakur and Elmer Flores, who will begin his university studies at KPU this fall.
Jordan Reuser, another former KPU student and a local Surrey actor, has come to embody the play’s volatile character of The American.
This production of classic literary and musical material emerges out of the creative cross-pollination bred in the context of KPU’s IDEA 1400: Explorations in Expressive Arts through Drama and Theatre, a course developed and taught by Ribkoff.
For more information about the play, visit thecultch.com.
