PETTEE: Storybox by Deepak Unnikrishnan & Karthika Naïr

The people behind the world premiere of PETTEE discuss its creation.
PETTEE the performance blurs the lines between stage and audience, open air and theater
PETTEE means living, leaving.
PETTEE means real and surreal stories.
PETTEE means move, sing, fly.
In languages that are home to hundreds of millions of people (Malayalam, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi…) the word pettee is so much more: casket, crate, suitcase. But the meaning that almost everyone recognizes instantly is container. Containers we carry. Containers that contain us.
PETTEE could also mean spirit animal, for those with rootlessness and displacement in our blood, with flight in our dreams.
Plotting to make that dream of weightlessness real are writers Deepak Unnikrishnan and Karthika Naïr, composer Sarathy Korwar and his musicians, set and lighting designer Willy Cessa, joined by three choreographers/performers - Wanjiru Kamuyu, Saju Hari, Ali Ben Lotfi Thabet - and illustrator Appupen (George Mathen) and rigger Simon Nyiringabo.
Dancers and fabricated landscape will lead the audience into an immersive world of movement and music and flight, where bodies unbend, lunge, and soar, to unseal and unpack years of youth, where multiple futures, each magical, seemed possible.
Dedicated to Fareed Majari.
Credits
Conceptualised by Deepak Unnikrishnan [as Chabter ١ of his Pédie Project]
Direction, narrative & dramaturgy: Deepak Unnikrishnan & Karthika Naïr
Original score/soundscape: Sarathy Korwar
Choreography & performance: Ali Ben Lotfi Thabet, Saju Hari & Wanjiru Kamuyu
Set and lighting design: Willy Cessa
Illustrations: George Mathen aka Appupen
Musicians: Al MacSween and Tamar Osborn
Rigging conception, rigger, and props-inventor/maker: Simon Nyiringabo
World Premiere on April 18, 2025.
Production credits
Commissioned by The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi
Executive producer: Skye Blue Productions
Co-produced by Al Masshad Research Kitchen, Eastman/ Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and A Filetta
With the support of: Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, Goethe Institut Golf
R&D support: Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London, The Place, London
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