Jacob Rajan in Guru of Chai Photo: supplied
Indian Ink Theatre Company has built up a remarkable reputation for developing and touring original work over 27 years.
Founded by Justin Lewis and Jacob Rajan, more than half a million people have seen their original delightful and often philosophical shows. They now tour them not just around this country, but to territories like Australia, Asia and North America. Rajan has quipped previously that they're the "most successful international theatre company you’ve never heard of.”
But they are beloved: jacob Rajan for his remarkable empathetic play writing and performances, inhabiting a multitude of characters from an Indian experience of the world.
He phones in to Culture 101 from Darwin where he’s currently trying out a new version of their acclaimed play Paradise or the Impermanence of Ice Cream, ahead of a run at Ōtautahi Christchurch’s Court Theatre from the 19th to the 28th of September. Playing seven characters, it weaves the afterlife and Bollywood disco into the real life mystery of Mumbai’s vanishing vultures.
Jacob Rajan in Guru of Chai Photo: John McDermott
Rajan is also concurrently touring Indian Ink’s show Guru of Chai with performances at Upsurge arts festival in Kerikeri and Nelson Arts Festival in early September. This time inhabiting some 17 characters, in the play a poor chai-wallah “has his life changed forever when a young girl is abandoned at a busy railway station and brings the place to a standstill with the beauty of her singing.”
On Culture 101 Rajan gives bouquets to other theatre artists: The Savage Coloniser Show by Tusiata Avia directed by Anapela Polata’ivao, Kōpū by Tuakoi Ohia, directed by Amber Curreen and Helios by Wright and Granger.
On the television he’s been watching Australian comedy - Colin from Accounts - and shouts out to his Indian roots by picking out the Natraj Dance School, directed by Prabha Ravi, and playing a song from Bollywood classic Namak Halaal called, ‘Jawani Jan-E-Man’.
