‘JUST’ stories
JUST stories, was a talk by Lawrence Liang also featured into the calendar of events at the Theatre Jam. Lawrence puns on the word ‘Just’ to tell stories in quest for Justice in the contemporary context. Lawrence, didn’t deliver a lecture on storyteller, he took all of us on a roll of stories… from sailors to lovers to Arabian nights to Sea of stories to Partition, War, Death and hope. Lawrence used Walter Benjamin’s The Storyteller extensively to track the journey of the storyteller in modern and contemporary times using death and justice as central themes for reflection. He went on to critique Benjamin’s obsession with memory, since forgetting is a part of remembering. In this context he uses Toni Morrison’s Beloved to suggest that history is beyond the official narrative, a haunting claim that the dead have on the living, whose responsibility it is not only to remember but to protect the dead from being misappropriated. And the dead return as ghosts. Lawrence took us back to remember ghost stories we read of children and reason why the ghosts come back after their death.
“Stories don’t always need to be heard, they also need to be told,” and the forum was opened for discussion. The rule of the game was that if anyone had to say anything, they had to share a story. And there was a rush of stories that people shared, some personal and fiction triggered by Lawrence. It felt like everyone was remembering and thinking of some story they had heard, read and experienced as they left the room. Maraa hopes to create more such forums for story-telling.
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Lawrence’s talk can be heard on:
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