On the Tea Road


by STEVE MACQUEEN, Artistic Director


Jacob Rajan brings you into his theatrical world from the moment he steps onstage, offering up a faux-motivational speech that is both hilarious and barbed. You are no longer in your own space; you are in his world. And the journey you take over the next 90 minutes as he weaves his labyrinthine story—at turns exhilarating, hilarious, and wrenching—is a powerful one.


Rajan is also a founding member of Indian Ink Theatre Company, which brings Guru of Chai to FlynnSpace for a three-show run April 8-10. I had the pleasure of seeing the show in New York and was amazed at how deftly and effortlessly Rajan and company transformed the rather drab theater space into, well, whatever they wanted it to be at a given moment.


The title character is a tea seller at the incredibly busy rail station in Bangalore, India. Rajan based his character on a man he met in Bali, “A squat little man with astonishing grace and fluidity; always smiling, always laughing, a weakness for beer and cockfighting.” Early on, he meets a group of sisters, who are watched over by a friendly policeman and occasionally threatened by a local crime lord. The show lives at the intersection of romantic thriller and character study, with the Guru as its mesmerizing but highly unreliable narrator.


Though the staging is modest—just the suggestion of a tea-cart and some fabric—the show’s sweep is epic, spanning decades and numerous settings, including a cockfight. All the characters that pop in and out of this teeming work are played by Rajan. This is bravura acting on a number of levels: logistically, he manages to act out scenes with multiple characters while always keeping clear which one is talking; physically, he creates characters with small gestures so that even before a character speaks, the audience frequently knows who it is. He’s aided by a simple but clever lighting design that creates different spaces and moods.


Rajan does all the talking, but he’s not the only person onstage: David Ward, who composed the score, accompanies


Rajan as a wordless chorus, often nodding in assent or staring in puzzlement, but always accompanying the show musically on a banjo that sounds just like a sitar.


Guru of Chai FLYNNSPACE


Tuesday-Thursday, April 8-10 at 7:30 pm


The Malaysian-born son of South Indian parents who moved to New Zealand when he was four, Rajan formed Indian Ink in 1996 with actor Justin Lewis, prompted by their shared love of physical theater and, specifically, masks. (His only mask in Guru is an attention-grabbing set of false teeth.) The troupe has met great acclaim in New Zealand and Australia with its works The Pickle King, Krishnan’s Diary, and The Dentist’s Chair. The American tour of Guru of Chai marks a rare foray to the US.


As Theatre Review puts it, “Jacob Rajan fills the stage with a bewildering number of characters, with the use of very few props and even fewer costume adjustments. His posture changes with each of his characters; each is different and identifiable. His storytelling is like a series of doors opening into ever more fascinating spaces.”


March, April, May MARQUEE | 7


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