Border, for many people, is just a physical reality. For them, it is just a wall or a mesh of convoluted wires suspended from iron bars with the intention of delineating national boundaries and keeping illegal migrants from crossing to the other side of the divide. But what if the border is not just a physical reality? What if it has intangible dimensions such as psychological, emotional, spiritual, historical and metaphysical expressions? Also, are border stories peculiar to a particular group of people, a given religion, or a specific continent? Or is it a human problem, and thus demands a concerted global intervention? In a recent play, Root Map, I join some theater colleagues from Cornell University and Jadavpur University, India in interrogating and elucidating the aforementioned issues.
Originally put together over skype in an investigative dialogue between academics and theater artists both at Cornell and Jadavpur, this play testifies to the potency of digital technology not only in collapsing physical boundaries, but also in addressing one of the defining challenges of our time. Staged in India in January, 2017 both at Jadavpur University and Gyan Manch, this play is slated to be performed in the US at Cornell on the 2nd of March, 2017 and in El Passo on the 4th. The Root Map team include Debra Castillo as stage manager, Debasish Sen Sharma, Debaroti Chakraborty, Elaigwu Ameh, Carolina Osorio Gill, Rosalie Purvis, and Alejandra Rodriguez as actors and Gorky Mukherjee and Chayan Chakraborty, as music composers.