Bollywood Wedding returns with its marriage of dance and wit

The interactive, site-specific musical made its debut in 2009 to critical acclaim (this paper named it the best outdoor interactive theatre event of 2009), but its six shows sold out in just a few hours. Four years later, the production and 11 of its 12 cast members are back at the Italian Gardens at the PNE, this time for 14 shows beginning next Thursday (July 18).

For Gurpreet Sian and Raakhi Sinha, founders of South Asian Arts and Bollywood Wedding?s writers and producers, this is the little show that could. Over iced teas on a sweltering-hot Sunday afternoon in southeast Vancouver, Sian laughs at the huge obstacles Bollywood Wedding has faced.

?People always ask us when we?re going to do it again and we?re like, ?We?re trying, we?re trying!? ? Sian says with a smile.

Each iteration of Bollywood Wedding has bumped up against challenges, usually financial. South Asian Arts operates as a nonprofit, so it relies on funding. The company lucked out on both occasions, but this time the money didn?t come through until the last minute, which sent Sian scrambling.

?Literally, I?ve had to book all of our actors, staff, venue, tech crew, everything that needs to happen in the show, within the last three to four weeks?whereas normally that would have been done in January or early February,? Sian says with a laugh. ?It?s a huge benefit that we?ve done this show before, but it?s been very tough. I?ve had a lot of sleepless nights.?

Not that he?s a stranger to hard work or ambitious undertakings. For Sian, Bollywood Wedding is the culmination of a lifetime of love. From a young age, Sian says, he gravitated to the culture of his South Asian heritage, though it was scarce where he lived in Clearwater, B.C. The town?s small South Asian community cultivated a scene, listening to music, speaking Punjabi, and hosting weekend dance parties at various houses.

When Sian was eight or 10, the man who sang the prayers and hymns at the Sikh temple came looking for a percussionist to play the dhol or tabla.

?He showed up at our house and he tried to teach my dad how to play, but my dad doesn?t have a musical bone in his body,? Sian says, laughing. ?He goes to my dad, ?Forget you. You. Come here.? So I tried it and I guess it sounded good to him, so he started teaching me a little bit more every day. I ended up being the guy performing with him at the Sikh temple once a month.?

When he moved to Vancouver following high school, he balanced his love of music with education, earning a computer-science diploma at Langara while studying dhol technique and exploring a new love: bhangra dance. At SFU, where he earned a degree in math, he tried out for the bhangra team and met Sinha, unintentionally setting the stage, so to speak, for Bollywood Wedding.

?The first two years we danced on that team, we were, honestly, reception whores, for lack of a better word,? Sian says with a chuckle. ?We danced at so many weddings in those first two summers, it wasn?t even funny. We were at every single banquet hall you could imagine, multiple times. The bartenders knew us, the wait staff knew us. We met some real characters during those first two summers of dancing like maniacs. Plus, we?ve had our own family weddings. Everyone has that relative who?s crazy, a little bit strange or oddball, so we basically took all of those experiences and put them into our show.?

From the outset, Sian and Sinha?s ambitions skewed big. After dancing competitively on a team, the pair registered a business, South Asian Arts, that started out as a kids? summer camp focusing on education and the arts. After the summer, they decided to keep the space, teach classes, and create and present arts programming.

?We wanted to show everybody, not just South Asians, hey, this is what happens at an Indian wedding,? Sian says. ?There are a number of celebrations and ceremonies leading up to the wedding, during the wedding, and after the wedding. It?s a week or two-week affair sometimes, so we wanted to wrap that up in 90 minutes and present it as a show.?

Sian admits that the show has fun with stereotypes and cultural misconceptions?arranged marriages, love marriages, sex, divorce, interracial couples?but they?re not interested in being offensive or controversial.

?It gets old fast,? Sian says. ?Even a guy like Russell Peters, for example, his first couple shows or videos were very stereotypical, but they were hilarious. I died laughing. But I think you run out of that at a certain point. You can?t do that forever. You won?t be able to survive for very long, just sticking to stereotypes. There has to be substance to what you do.?

Sian plans to leverage that combination of humour, substance, and culture into a sustainable future for South Asian Arts. His timing couldn?t be better, as evidenced by the near absence of visible minorities at the Jessies on June 24, be it in the audience or on-stage as award recipients.

?The goal is to get into a more professional-theatre-type schedule and maybe be nominated for the Jessies one day,? Sian says. ?There are a number of talented South Asian actors in Vancouver, male and female, young and old, who have done great work in other projects. A lot of those projects are not South Asian?themed projects, which is nobody?s fault. Somebody just needs to create that content so these actors can be involved in that.?

Beyond Bollywood Wedding has a nice ring to it.

Source: http://www.straight.com/arts/399011/bollywood-wedding-returns-its-marriage-dance-and-wit

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