Witness a unique version of English poet William Blake's work in Mumbai

The turn of the 18th Century seems light years away from the world of today Yet like poetry often is William Blake feels prescient to singer Susheela Raman ldquoAs soon as you read him you realise that he was a visionary who believes in the importance of art and imaginationrdquo she writes in reply to our questions On Thursday Raman will step on stage at The Prithvi Theatre alongside actor Naseeruddin Shah and composer Sam Mills to bring Blakersquos verses alive to a contemporary audienceJulie Christie reads from Enionrsquos Lament at the London performance Pics CourtesySusheela Raman on YouTubeA Golden String began in 2018 when Raman and Mills set Blakersquos poem A Sick Rose to music In the following years they have added verses poems and compositions as they travelled to Paris London Jaipur Agra and Pondicherry before eventually arriving in Mumbai Throughout this tour poets writers and actors mdash Julie Christie William Dalrymple Jeet Thayil and Khalid Abdalla among a few of them mdash have joined themWhy BlakeThe Ancient of Days by William Blake right William Blake by Thomas Phillips Pics CourtesyWikimedia CommonsThe Londonbased Raman quotes the poet in reply ldquoI must create a system or be enslaved by another manrsquos system I will not reason and compare my business is to createrdquo She adds ldquoBlake treats human imagination as sacred otherwise there is a whole machinery both outside and even inside us which will crush our sense of self and make it conformist automated and disassociated We can see that today with digital technology and identity politics invading our brains It all feels devoid of personality yet we are drawn to participaterdquoMystic connectionsFrom left Jeet Thayil Susheela Raman and Sam Mills perform in Pondicherry Pic CourtesysusheelaramanofficialTheatremaker Mahmood Farooqui who has worked on the translations for Shahrsquos performance also observes ldquoThey Blakersquos works are elliptical mystical and deeply infused with Biblical references Fortunately much of Urdu and Persian poetry follows a similar strainrdquo Another key collaborator composer Sam Mills is a PhD of Anthropology in Sufism Raman compares Blake to the saint Kabir mdash uncanny and mischievous A visual artformNaseeruddin ShahThe performance itself goes beyond music as it brings to the stage the prints and engravings by Blake in the form of visual projections Goabased videographer and editor Hina Saiyada worked with curator Stephen Ellcock and designer Sam Sharples on these visual additionsSam MillsEach performance is also a new iteration in musical interpretation and language Raman signs off by reminding us ldquoBlake was a kind of outlier to the Romantic tradition which was about people reacting to industrialisation and the reasoning that came with it That might seem like a distant historic thing but in todayrsquos consumer culture we are still living in the Romantic era where we have to think about our own uniqueness and personal choicesrdquoAn engraving by the poet on his book Songs of Innocence c 1789From April 9 to 12 8 pmAT Prithvi Theatre 20 Juhu Church Road JuhuLOG ON TO inbookmyshowcomCOST Rs 1005Poetic voices to the foreldquoWhen Sam Mills and I had written the songs we liked the idea of presenting them with spoken interludes from William Blakersquos work and with visuals taken from his art which is as extraordinary as his writing So we have performed French versions in our shows in Paris and London Every version has its own resonancesThis time Mahmood Farooqui has given us some Hindustani translation to be read by Naseeruddin Shah For these shows we are deeply honoured to work with Naseeruddin Shah who is such a brilliant actor We will all witness how he connects with Blakersquos energyrdquo reveals RamanBlakersquos songsApart from being a poet a painter and an engraver William Blake was also a musician ldquoBlake sung his own poetry and apparently he had a good voice But nobody kept a record of what he sang He was born and lived in London so he must have heard songs that were sung in the streets and in salons he attended I imagine he was concerned with getting his words across so the melodies would have been simple and directrdquo Susheela Raman tells us