Interview with writer and performer Anu Vaidyanathan

Could you first introduce yourself to the reader?

I am south Indian, presently marooned in Europe. I am an engineer by training and an elite athlete in a past life. I wrote a memoir that was longlisted at a film festival for adaptation, received two offers from major Bollywood studios and decided I could do better as an independent artist. I picked up filmmaking through my second pregnancy but the pandemic ended any aspiration of actually filming. This forced incarceration made me attend clown school and pick up stand up comedy. The rest, as they say, is history.

How would you describe Menagerie?

Menagerie is an attempt to process a very traumatic incident in my life, amongst other inequities I face daily as an immigrant mom who can spell. It is about the list of things you carry past your mortal life. It is about reaching into the past when remaining present seems impossible. It is about finding a way to remain present if only as a lifeboat towards impacting the lives of our children. All in all, Menagerie is a menagerie of specific notes to self in the two and a half years of my biggest mental health crisis.

What is your favourite part of your show?

My favourite part is the discovery of a new language to express things we already know when we have lost the words we know. Trauma changes you permanently. That is all you need to accept. Discovering a new language helps establish that new person though. Funny how that goes.

If your show had a theme song, what would it be and why?

My show’s theme song would be a Tamil song titled Karpoora Bommai Ondru, it talks about the ephemeral lives we lead. One part ballad and one part cautionary tale. I feel that the themes of itinerance, migration and impermanence are now permanently embedded in the human psyche. It is the norm, not the exception anymore. I think Tamil is far richer in its expression compared to English so, this song would have to be it. Forced to choose an English song, I’d pick Runaway Train.

Are there any particular themes or messages you hope the audience takes away from your performance?

I am a particularly message-agnostic writer. I write from a place of great silence, so I never think about what messages I am trying to get through. If anyone in the audience sees some part of their own life’s experiences reflected, I would consider myself very rich indeed.

How has your experience at past Fringes influenced or changed your approach to this year's performance?

Going by American University terminology, I am in my junior year as a performer and I’ve spent close to four and a half years as a filmmaker, two of those years in the pandemic. What I have learned from my previous two outings is that as an artist, I am a vessel – for ideas, thoughts, reactions, attitudes, extrapolations

What is your favourite thing to do in Edinburgh when you're not performing? How do you relax and look after your mental health?

I really enjoy being horizontal when not performing. Be it in the green room, the meadows, in my matchbox-sized room. I try to relax by walking a lot, running when I can and reminding myself to keep things in perspective. It takes several months of work to get to the Fringe so every day is a treasure. I don’t discount the bad days, I have just learned to take them in my stride better.

What is one piece of advice you’d give to someone thinking about taking a show up to Edinburgh?

To keep things in perspective and play from a position of gratitude, love and kindness. I ran into a diverse artist last year who was unbothered by the number of reviewers coming in, or even audiences. She was very militant about her warmup and her cool down. This was in stark contrast to the rest of the green room. When I quizzed her about it, she said that hers was a small show and that it was her year’s work so, her goal was to put the work first and all else later. I thought that was brilliant advice.

What is one thing you would change about the Edinburgh Festival Fringe?

I’d like to see it not be an obvious money-grab from a rental perspective. I would also love the Fringe society to support international acts – if anything, it costs us even more to be here.

Can you describe your creative process and how you develop your ideas into a full-fledged performance?

My creative process works around my family. It is whatever I can fit in. That being said, I have had an opportunity to refine my process in the last six years that I’ve been making films or writing stand up or theatre or books. I tend to identify my biggest burning goal and then if things fall off due to time-constraints or physical fatigue or mental fatigue, I just let them slide. I have become increasingly aware of the gilded prisons we all live in, with the help of smartphones, technology and constant comparison to unachievable standards. The most important bit I’ve discovered is that the job is to write, to devise, to re-write. I took the road of several previews in my debut year for standup comedy. But, that doesn’t really add up or scale. Now, having written two hours that went well at the Fringe, I use all the stage time I get during the tours.

What is your favourite thing about performing for a live audience?

Peter Brook talks about the circle that is a performance. I don’t think I have one favourite thing about performing to live audiences. I performed in the small European country of Luxembourg on a Thursday night in March. In a theatre that was 45 minutes away from the main city limits. We had more than seventy people in the audience, who laughed at different points because my shows are entirely from my own lived experience. My life has taken me to many countries, cities and in my bowl are lessons from so many cultures. That night was a huge boost to my reasons ‘why’. When you get to perform where you have almost no audiences that have ever seen you perform and they keep you on stage longer than you planned to be on, and stay back to talk to you afterwards, these are my greatest paydays.

Who are some of your artistic influences, and how have they shaped your work?

I grew up reading a lot of literature. I come from a family of freedom fighters who fought with the pen, and their ideas and their ideals. My paternal grandfather gave me Shakespeare alongside Suprabhatam. Both my grandmom’s gave me song, spirituality and self-reliance. My maternal grandfather built machines with no formal training, so he taught me that formal training has its limits. My own parents always believed in everything I did and my husband continues to put up with my brain-farts. I think of the arts as a very lonely, difficult place to dwell. Such support is invaluable for longevity and these people are my biggest artistic influences because they protect my core. Jim Harrison, a prolific writer, said something to the effect of being an artist does not give one permission to be a wretch. So, I always gravitate towards kindness.

In terms of work, I am drawn to those that have an engineering ethic. What I mean by that is, no one is born a genius. There were always first drafts. But I admire people whose output is consistent, surprising and unafraid to play with the form or access their voice in new and interesting ways. I went through my teenage years on the Beat Generation, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Bharathiyaar and the films of K Balachander. When I wrote my memoir, I drew equally from Jon Krakauer’s ‘Into thin air’ and Ann Patchett’s ‘Truth and Beauty’. In standup, I am of the belief that it is about ideas and I love the work of the early Tamil greats, S Ve Sekar (in performance), Cho Ramaswamy (in theatre) and so many Tamil film directors (in satirical films). For my debut theatre piece, I took a lot of inspiration from Simon Stephens’ Seawall which he wrote for the stage on which it was performed. I thought that was a very powerful idea for a fringe show, where almost nothing is going to go as planned. I also read the early works of Tennessee Williams, the one-act plays of David Ives and some treasures from previous editions of the now discontinued VAULT Festival.

When and where can people see your show?

I am doing two shows at the Gilded Balloon, Patter house (the penny) – My debut standup hour from 2022, BC:AD – Before Children, After Diapers at 15:40 and my debut theatre hour, Menagerie at 17:00.

And where can people find you online?