Study Guide Contents
Robert M. Hupp Artistic Director Syracuse Stage
3.) 4.) 5.) 6.) 7.) 8.) 9.) 10.) 11.) 12.) 13.)
Melissa Crespo Associate Artistic Director Syracuse Stage
Education Page Production Page Synopsis Meet the Playwright & Meet the Director History of Yoga What is Athleisure? Gurus? Discussion Questions Elements of Drama Elements of Design References
Jill Anderson Managing Director Syracuse Stage Director of Community Engagement & Education Joann Yarrow (315) 443-1150 Assistant Director of Education Kate Laissle (315) 442-7755 Community Engagement & Education Coordinator Theorri London (315) 443-1150 Group Sales & Student Matinees Tracey White (315) 443-9844 Box Office (315) 443-3275 Research & Text by J.R. Pierce
Syracuse Stage 2
Dear Educators, The best way of learning is learning while you’re having fun. Theatre provides the opportunity for us to connect with more than just our own story, it allows us to find ourselves in other people’s lives and grow beyond our own boundaries. While times are different, we are still excited to share with you new theatrical pieces through live and/or pre-recorded means. We’re the only species on the planet who make stories. It is the stories that we leave behind that define us. Giving students the power to watch stories and create their own is part of our lasting impact on the world.And the stories we choose to hear and learn from now are even more vital. Stories bring us together, even when we must stay apart. Stories are our connection to the world and each other. We invite you and your students to engage with the stories we tell as a starting point for you and them to create their own. Sincerely, Joann Yarrow, Kate Laissle, and Theorri London Community Engagement and Education Team
2021/2022 EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH Syracuse Stage is committed to providing students with rich theatre experiences that explore and examine what it is to be human. Research shows that children who participate in or are exposed to the arts show higher academic achievement, stronger self esteem, and improved ability to plan and work toward a future goal. Many students in our community have their first taste of live theatre through Syracuse Stage’s outreach programs. Last season more than 15,500 students from across New York attended or participated in the Bank of America Children's Tour, artsEmerging, the Young Playwrights Festival, Backstory,Young Adult Council, and/or our Student Matinee Program. We gratefully acknowledge the corporations and foundations who support our commitment to in-depth arts education for our community.
Syracuse Stage 3
SEASON SPONSORS
PRESENTS
MEDIA SPONSOR
BY
Dipika Guha DIRECTED BY
Melissa Crespo SCENIC DESIGN
COSTUME DESIGN
LIGHTING DESIGN
SOUND DESIGN
Ann Byersdorfer
Johanna Pan
JeanetteOi-Suk Yew
Mark Van Hare
PROJECTION DESIGN
DIALECT COACH
D R A M AT U R G
Lisa Renkel
Susan Cameron
Sidikha Ashraf
A S S O C I AT E
PRODUCTION
DIRECTOR
S TA G E M A N A G E R
CASTING
Caitlin Sullivan
Stuart Plymesser
Bass/Valle Casting
Robert Hupp
Jill A. Anderson
Melissa Crespo
Kyle Bass
Artistic Director
Managing Director
AssociateArtistic Director
ResidentPlaywright
CO-PRODUCED WITH
GevaTheatre Center Mark Cuddy
Christopher Mannelli
Artistic Director
Executive Director
Commissioned andfirst produced by South CoastRepertory January19 - February 6, 2022
Syracuse Stage 4
Synopsis Yoga Play follows three upper-level staff members at Jojomon, a yoga apparel company. Joan is the company’s new CEO after its previous CEO landed the company in hot water when he responded to complaints that their yoga pants were see-through by blaming womens’ thighs for stretching out the fabric. Joan proposes to her colleagues Fred and Raj, as well as the company’s founder John, that they should drop a new product line with larger sizes. Though sales start off well, Joan quickly finds the company in another controversy after a BBC investigation into their company discovers that, unbeknownst to Joan and the others, Jojomon’s factory in India was using child labor. Customers feel betrayed and angry, calling the company, which puts value in the idea of “family,” inauthentic.To combat this “authenticity crisis,” Joan tries to find a way to take the company back to its roots: John’s study of yoga. Joan tasks Raj and Fred with finding a guru that the company can make the face and voice of the brand. With none of the yogis in Los Angeles meeting what the trio is looking for and knowing they don’t have time to physically go to India to find someone less “mainstream,” Raj pipes in with a suggestion. Since his (now atheist) parents were born Hindu, they might know a guru the company can reach out to. Luckily they do: Guruji, a guru in India that had been working with Raj’s uncle. However, once Guruji arrives in L.A., Joan, Fred, and Raj are shocked to find out he’s white, a former Santa Monica English teacher who, 20 years prior, had moved to India and spent years meditating. Since the company is obsessing over the optics of their chosen guru, and their press releases advertised that they had “India’s leading authority” on yoga speaking at a press conference in three days, Joan decides to make Raj the face of this effort instead, despite him being from Delaware, not speaking Hindi, and knowing nothing about Hinduism or yoga.The idea is that Guruji would teach Raj just enough for him to get through the press conference. When the day of the press conference rolls around, Raj is incredibly underprepared, so they have him put an earpiece in with the goal of Fred, Joan, and Guruji sneaking him any answers he might need. But when Raj goes live, Guruji has disappeared and Joan and Fred are helpless to give Raj answers to even a simple question like,“What is yoga?” Raj struggles through the interview for a while before eventually taking a breath and saying what he truly believes: that eternal bliss comes from within, not from buying things (much to the horror of his colleagues). Despite both Joan and Fred believing they were going to lose their jobs because of this whole debacle, the company’s share prices actually skyrocket and sales crash their website. Syracuse Stage 5
Meet ThePlaywright . Dipika Guha was born in Calcutta and raised in India, Russia, and the United Kingdom. She is the inaugural recipient of the Shakespeare’s Sister Playwriting Fellowship, a Hodder Fellow at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton, and a Venturous Fellow with the Lark Play Development Center. Her plays include Yoga Play (South Coast Repertory Theatre, SF Playhouse, Gateway Theatre), I Enter the Valley (Theatreworks New Play Festival, Finalist for the Ruby Prize ’15); The Art of Gaman (Theatre 503 London, Berkeley Rep Ground Floor) and Unreliable (Kansas City Rep). She is currently under commission from ACT and Z Space, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Barrington Stage, South Coast Rep, and MTC/Sloan. She’s an alumnus of Ars Nova Playgroup, the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program, Soho Rep W/D Lab, the Women’s Project Lab & the Ma-Yi Writer’s Lab. Dipika received her BA in English Literature from University College London, was a Frank Knox Fellow at Harvard University, and received her MFA in Playwriting at the Yale School of Drama under Paula Vogel. She’s worked as Visiting Artist at the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School, was a Resident Playwright at The Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco, is a Core Writer at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, and a member of the Geffen Playwrights Group where she continues to develop work. For television, Dipika has written on shows in development at AMC including recently “Rainy Day People” for showrunners Chris Cantwell and Chris Rogers and “Sneaky Pete” for Amazon. She is currently writing on “Black Monday” at Showtime.
MeetThe Director Melissa Crespo is a director of new plays, musicals, and opera. Upcoming: world premiere of Selena Maria Sings by Miriam Gonzalez, music by Daniel J. French (Childsplay & Magik Theatre) and Yoga Play by Dipika Guha (Syracuse Stage).As a playwright, her play Egress, co-written with Sarah Saltwick, will receive an NNPN rolling world premiere starting this Fall. Fellowships and residencies include:Time Warner Fellow (WP Theatre), Usual Suspect (NYTW),The Director’s Project (Drama League),Van Lier Directing Fellow (Second Stage Theatre), and the Allen Lee Hughes Directing Fellow (Arena Stage). Melissa received her M.F.A. in directing from The New School for Drama. She is a founding editor of 3Views on Theater and was featured in the 2020 Broadway Women’s Fund “Women to Watch on Broadway”.
Syracuse Stage 6
History of Yoga Yoga is hugely popular within the U.S. Over 40 million yoga studio businesses existed in the U.S. at the end of 2021 (Pandya).Where did yoga come from, and how did it gain the widespread popularity it has today? Yoga has a long history that dates back to the Indus-Sarasvati civilization in Northern India at least 5,000 years ago, with some researchers believing that the practice may be up to 10,000 years old. The uncertainty around its origins can be attributed to yoga’s teaching being handed down verbally from teacher to student and the fact that early writings on yoga were transcribed on fragile palm leaves. Bhagavad-Gîtâ, the most renowned yogic scripture, was composed around 500 BCE. For centuries, yoga was a collection of various ideas, beliefs, and techniques that could conflict and contradict each other. In the second century, Indian sage Patanjali, considered the father of yoga, put together the first systematic presentation of yoga in his Yoga Sutras, a collection of 195 statements that provides a guidebook toward enlightenment that is often called “classical yoga” or “Raja Yoga.” A few centuries later, yoga masters began designing practices like Tantra Yoga, intended to rejuvenate the body and embrace it as the means to achieve enlightenment. This led to Hatha Yoga, what many in the West primarily think of when they think “yoga.” By the 19th and 20th century, yoga masters had begun attracting followers in the West. Swami Vivekananda lectured on yoga and the universality of the world’s regions at the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago. The first Hatha Yoga school opened in 1924 in Mysore, with Swami Sivananda founding the Divine Life Society on the Ganges River 12 years later. Students of the Mysore school would go on to increase the popularity of Hatha Yoga and continue the legacy of the school’s founder, T. Krishnamacharya. Now, yoga practices have spread around the world, with an emphasis on the preservation, maintenance, and promotion of health.
Syracuse Stage 7
What is Athleisure? Athleisure is incredibly popular in the U.S., and many companies including Jojomon (the fictional company in Yoga Play) cater to this style of clothing. What is athleisure, and how did it become so popular? Athleisure, a portmanteau of “athletic” and “leisure,” is a term that dates back to the 1970s, where the term was used to describe clothing designed for those who wanted to appear athletic. Back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, the idea was that the clothing was designed to look like exercise clothing, but not actually primarily serve as clothes to work out in. Prior to that point in history,“sportswear” was tied to the event someone was participating in, like playing tennis. Parisian designers in the early 20th century were known for their sportswear designs, though it was American designers who shifted sportswear’s focus from an emphasis on quality to one on ease and simplicity.Throughout the rise of sportswear and athleisure, many of the most successful and well-known designers were women, including designers Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, Claire McCardell, and Bonnie Cashin.The trend grew, and by the end of the 20th century, fashion had shifted, with sportswear becoming a norm and being worn outside of athletics. These days, designers have access to previously unavailable materials that are both waterproof and breathable while also being fashionable enough to be worn for different occasions in various locations, leading to athleisure’s dual purpose: general use and working out.As a result, designers have started athleisure lines (like Stella McCartney partnering with Adidas to create a women’s sports performance collection) and celebrities have worked with brands to craft their own visions of athleisure (like Rihanna’s collaboration on Fenty Puma), resulting in the industry growing to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Photo by Lulelemon
Alo YogaCampaign
Photo by Athleta
Syracuse Stage 8
Gurus? In Yoga Play, Joan, Raj, and Fred try to recruit a guru to help Jojomon’s image. However, things do not go to plan once they quickly realize that the guru is not who they thought or who he portrayed himself to be.This of course calls into question his authenticity as a guru. In Hinduism, a guru is a “religious or spiritual teacher” who has extensive knowledge that can help lead people to enlightenment (McDermott).The term has been taken and used by many to describe many different spiritual teachers from many different spiritual beliefs. Below are some people who have been referred to or called themselves gurus and who’s authenticity has been questioned by themselves or others. Kumare In a 2011 documentary,“Kūmāré,” filmmaker Vikram Gandhi pretended to be a yoga guru.After a trip to India, he found that the gurus there were no more real than the frauds he had been seeing in America. So, he grew a long beard and pony-tail, learned yoga, and hired a PR person to help market him as a guru.Though all of his teachings, and even his dialect, were fabricated, the followers that he gained not only believed him to be real, but appeared to truly benefit from his teachings.As Roger Ebert said in his 2012 review of the documentary, “‘Kumare’ seems to establish that a guru can be a complete fraud and nevertheless do a certain amount of good, because what matters is not the sincerity of the guru but that of his followers.” A scene from “Kumare.”(Kino Films)
Rajneesh At 21, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had a spiritual awakening.This experience led Rajneesh, who had studied philosophy and learned from teachers of various religious traditions in India, to believe that individual religious experience is central and experiences like his can’t be organized into a single belief system. By the 1970s, Rajneesh had followers at his back and a headquarters in Pune, India, teaching dynamic meditation, intended to allow people to “experience the divine.” In 1981, Rajneesh moved to Antelope, Ore., intending to build a new city in the United States. Over the next few years, his movement came under investigation for multiple felonies, including arson, attempted murder, drug smuggling, and vote fraud. Rajneesh was deported in 1985 after pleading guilty to immigration fraud. Bentinho Massaro
Photo from bentinhomassaro.com
Depending on where you look, you may see Bentinho Massaro’s name accompanied by “millennial guru” or “Instagram guru” due to his rise in popularity on social media, teaching about “self-realization,” “enlightenment,” and an idea of “upgrading civilization.” In many of Massaro’s teachings, he talks about concepts like “third eye power” meditation and the importance of silent meditation. However, after a longtime follower was found dead during a 12-day, 2017 retreat in Sedona,Ariz., people began questioning if he had merely been building a cult-like following that embraced him as a God-like figure. In addition to his spiritual teachings, Massaro has also claimed that 9/11 was an inside job, he has the ability to change the weather, he vibrates at a higher frequency than other humans, and humans and aliens might one day join forces. Syracuse Stage 9
Discussion Questions 1. What are the social, political, and cultural ideas explored in the play? 2. How is personal identity discussed in the play? 3. How can stress be harmful? Is some stress a good thing? 4. What is authenticity? How can a company show authenticity? 5. What growth do you see in the characters throughout the play?
Further Information If you would like to learn more about some of the subjects and ideas explored in Yoga Play, scan the codes below.
Yoga
Athleisure
Gurus
Syracuse Stage 10
elements of drama PLOT
What is the story line? What happened before the play started? What does each character want? What do they do to achieve their goals? What do they stand to gain/lose? THEME
What ideas are wrestled with in the play? What questions does the play pose? Does it present an opinion? CHARACTER
Who are the people in the story? What are their relationships? Why do they do what they do? How does age/status/etc. affect them?
Any piece of theatre comprises multiple art forms. As you explore this production with your students, examine the use of:
WRITING VISUAL ART/DESIGN MUSIC/SOUND DANCE/MOVEMENT
INQUIRY How are each of these art forms used in this production? Why are they used? How do they help to tell the story?
LANGUAGE
What do the characters say? How do they say it? When do they say it? MUSIC
How do music and sound help to tell the story? SPECTACLE
How do the elements come together to create the whole performance?
ACTIVITY At its core, drama is about characters working toward goals and overcoming obstacles.Ask students to use their bodies and voices to create characters who are: very old, very young, very strong, very weak, very tired, very energetic, very cold, very warm. Have their characters interact with others. Give them an objective to fulfill despite environmental obstacles. Later, recap by asking how these obstacles affected their characters and the pursuit of their objectives.
Syracuse Stage 11
elements of design LINE can have length, width, texture, direction and
curve.There are 5 basic varieties: vertical, horizontal, diagonal, zig-zag, and curved.
SHAPE is two-dimensional and encloses space.
It can be geometric (e.g. squares and circles), man-made, or free-form.
FORM is three-dimensional. It encloses space
and fills space. It can be geometric (e.g. cubes and cylinders), man-made, or free-form.
COLOR has three basic properties:
HUE is the name of the color (e.g. red, blue, green), INTENSITY is the strength of the color (bright or dull),VALUE is the range of lightness to darkness.
TEXTURE refers to the “feel” of an
SPACE is defined and determined
object’s surface. It can be smooth, rough, soft, etc.Textures may be ACTUAL (able to be felt) or IMPLIED (suggested visually throughthe artist’s technique).
by shapes and forms. Positive space is enclosed by shapes and forms, while negative space exists around them.
Syracuse Stage 12
References “Athleisure - Alchetron, TheFreeSocial Encyclopedia.”Alchetron.Com,https://www.facebook.com/alchetron, 18 Aug. 2017, https://alchetron.com/Athleisure. “Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.”Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, 7 Dec. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bhagwan-Shree-Rajneesh. Biography.com Editors. “Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Biography.” TheBiography.Com Website, A&E Television Networks, 28 Oct. 2019, https://www.biography.com/religious-figure/bhagwan-shree-rajneesh. Burgin, Timothy. “History of Yoga.”YogaBasics,https://www.yogabasics.com/learn/history-of-yoga/. Accessed 9 Dec. 2021. Carrico, Mara. “A Beginner’sGuide to the History of Yoga| Yogafor Beginners.”Yoga Journal, 29 Aug. 2007,https://www.yogajournal.com/yoga-101/ history-of-yoga/the-roots-of-yoga/. Ebert, Roger. “Kumare Movie Review & Film Summary (2012) | Roger Ebert.” Movie Reviews and Ratingsby Film Critic Roger Ebert | RogerEbert, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/kumare-2012. Accessed 9 Dec. 2021. Pandya,Keshav.“From Ancient to Modern: How Yoga Became Part of American Culture.” TODAY, https://www.today.com/specials/from-ancient-tomodern--how-yoga-became-part-of-american-culture/index.html. Poplin, Carson. “Fashion History Lesson:TheOrigins, and Explosive Growth, of Athleisure - Fashionista.”Fashionista, Fashionista, 13 Jan.2020, https://fashionista.com/2020/01/the-history-of-athleisure. McDermott, Mat. “8 Things You May Want to Know about Gurus .” Hindu American Foundation, 21 Sept.2020,https://www.hinduamerican.org/ blog/8-things-you-may-want-to-know-about-gurus/. Schwartz,Oscar.“My Journeyinto the Dark, Hypnotic World of a Millennial Guru | Religion | TheGuardian.” TheGuardian, TheGuardian, 9 Jan.2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/09/strange-hypnotic-world-millennial-guru-bentinho-massaro-youtube. “The Controversial Guru Who Wants to ‘Upgrade Civilization’ - VICE Video: Documentaries, Films, NewsVideos.” Vice,VICE, 13 Feb.2019, https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/believers-controversial-guru-spiritual-bentinho-massaro-trinfinity/5b5b7625be4077193e48b557. Woods, Alden. “Bentinho Massaro’sSedonaExperiment: An Enlightenment Searchinto a Cult.” TheArizona Republic,TheRepublic | azcentral.com, 9 May 2018,https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-best-reads/2018/05/09/bentinho-massaro-sedona-experiment-how-search-enlightenment-led-digital-cult/487923002/. “Yoga:Its Origin, History and Development.”Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, https://www.mea.gov.in/in-focus-article.htm?25096/Yoga+Its+Origin+History+and+Development. Accessed 9 Dec.2021. Syracuse Stage 13