CENTRE STAGE
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
Pensive Cat, in association with CinemaClub, presents Elephant Song, an original drama written and directed by Kush Shah, running June 10–14 at Native Earth Performing Arts, Toronto.
Following a sold-out premiere at the 2024 Toronto Fringe Festival, Elephant Song returns in a radically reimagined form: larger, strange and more ambitious than before.
An existentialist musical-drama, Elephant Song follows “B,” a government employee working in Mumbai’s death benefits department, whose life begins to fracture as he begins to see visions of a White Elephant
Blending poetic, prose-driven writing with satirical humour and heightened drama, the work interrogates the rise of sectarian sentiment and structural corruption in contemporary India.
TMU Acting graduate Arjun Kalra (Concord Floral, The Tragedie of Romeo & Juliet), reprises his role as B from the 2024 production. The performance is supported by a live ensemble of Indian classical musicians and dancers, expanding the piece into a hybrid form of theatre, music, and movement.With its fusion of text, rhythm, and embodied performance, Elephant Song aims to be an immersive theatrical experience with a little something for everyone.
Kush Shah is a theatre maker and film artiste based in Toronto and Bombay. His work is situated at the intersections of the personal and the political. His plays (Elephant Song, Gaumukhi) have premiered at the Toronto Fringe festival to sold out runs. He is also the co-founder of CinemaClub, a Toronto based artistic collective focused on creation and exhibition of BIPOC and 2SLGBTQIA+ led work with an emphasis on global narratives in the Canadian context. Kush is an alumnus of the BFA film production program at York University in Toronto, and is a current fellowship candidate in the Masters of Fine Arts in film. The Karmarkars, a feature film he has co-written with Indian theatremaker Gerish Khemani (Darya Sagar, Yugant) has acquired distribution support from Enlighten Media (Pranav Ashar), and is set to go into production this year. He was recently awarded the Canada Graduate scholarship (Masters) by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council to develop his feature film I am Divided up into so many parts, there is nothing left in my share.
Cast: Arjun Kalra, Suma Suresh, Chirag Motwani, Harsh Prajapati.
Live musicians: Utsav Alok, Kabir Agarwal, Dhruv Sodha, Natesh Persaud.
Stage managers: Charlotte Theraud, Devansh Shah
When and where
June 10–14 at Native Earth Performing Arts, Toronto.
June 10: 7:30pm, June 11: 7:30 pm, June 12: 7:30 pm, June 13: 1:30 pm and 7:30 pm, June 14: 1:30 pm.
Tickets available here.