Month: September 2011

Samskriti Society of Indian Performing Arts and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts Presents Water Lilies: A Trilogy, a play reading by author Gowri Ramnarayan on Sep 25 2011 at 2:00 pm at The Museum of Fine Arts, Brown Auditorium Theater, 1001 Bissonnet, Houston, Texas 77012. Admission is free.

“The trilogy is a three act play and is an attempt to find out if serenity can be reached in a blasts-ridden world” claims Dr. Ramnarayan. In each play, two strangers, a Man and a Woman, claiming different racial origins, meet by accident in a public space in the U.S. As they share confidences and spill secrets, the casual encounters trigger reflection. Western classical piano anchors the mood in each play, along with images of Monet’s Water Lilies, and the poems of Clark Ashton Smith, Ted Hughes, and a verse from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. The three plays are depicted by the authors imaginative story narration based on the following themes.

FAWN LILIES:  A Park in Columbus, Ohio: A birdwatching dietician from Vijayawada, whose boyfriend decides to give up love for war, meets a gay vagabond with a wry feel for causes.

WATER LILIES: Monet Exhibition, Houston Museum: Dismissing Claude Monet as a painter of pretty flowers, a Texan investment banker becomes curious about a Srilankan woman’s passion for Monet’s lilyscapes.

BLACK LILIES: Washington Dulles Airport: Two days after 9/11, a young school teacher from Tamil Nadu, on her first foreign trip, finds a friend in a Serbo Hungarian novelist on his way to meet his German translator in Frankfurt.

I remember Monet’s lilyscapes. And a poem by Ted Hughes about the water lily, standing still as a painting, despite diabolic onslaughts- from the air, and under water- from within, and without. And the upanishadic command to be restrained, generous and kind.

Dr. Gowri Ramnarayan is a Feature writer (music, cinema, theatre, literature) with the nationwide English daily “The Hindu”. She has translated two Marathi plays of Vijay Tendulkar, and the Tamil short stories of Kalki Krishnamurti. She has authored children’s books and has served as a jury member of Fipresci (an international association of film critics). Her other achievements include vocally accompanying Carnatic musician M.S. Subbulakshmi (1981-97). WATER LILIES is her fourth play; the earlier ones being DARK HORSE (2005), RURAL PHANTASY (2006) and FLAME OF THE FOREST (2007).

Please do come and enjoy this unique experience of Play reading with video clippings of the English play enacted in Chennai, India on Sunday September 25^th 2011- 2-00pm at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Contact Details: Thara Narasimhan Phone : (281) 265-2787.