Photo by Dahlia Katz
The Fish Eyes Trilogy
by Anita Majumdar
Three coming-of-age solo shows that follow the lives of teenage girls who attend the same high school and process their real-life dilemmas through dance, while exploring the heartaches of youth and the meaning of heritage.
Boys With Cars follows Naz, also a classically trained Indian dancer, who dreams of getting out of small town Port Moody to attend the University of British Columbia. But when Buddy causes a stir over Naz at school, Naz’s university plans begin to crumble quickly.
Let Me Borrow That Top centres on Candice, a girl who appropriates Meena’s Indian dance skills and bullies Naz after a nasty rumour spreads through the halls of their high school. But like her two enemies, Candice shares a passion for Indian dancing, and has just been accepted to the Conventry School of Bhangra. Will she leave behind the comforts of home to pursue her dreams?
Fish Eyes is the story of Meena, a classically trained Indian dancer who, despite being obsessed with Bollywood movies and her dance career, just wants to be like the rest of her high-school friends. When she develops a massive crush on Buddy, the popular boy at school, Meena contemplates turning down an incredible opportunity to pursue him, even if he barely notices her.
Cast & Creative
Anita Majumdar
Performer / Playwright
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Anita is an acting graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada and holds a Bachelor of Arts at the University of British Columbia in Theatre, English and South Asian Languages. She’s studied dance and choreographed contemporary hybrids of Kathak, Odissi and Bharatanatyam for over two decades.
As an actor, she won the Best Actress award at the Festival of First Films in Singapore for her first feature film Murder Unveiled and has since performed in leading roles around the world, from Toronto's Theatre Passe Muraille to Stratford to the Pasadena Playhouse, to the Museum Theatre in Chennai, India.
As playwright, Anita was awarded Canada’s Governor General's Protégé Prize in playwriting where she was mentored by the late John Murrell and was one of 50 artists invited to celebrate the Canada Council for the Arts 50th Anniversary. She’s been a writer with the Tarragon Theatre’s Playwright’s Unit, Cahoots Theatre’s Hot House Writer's Unit, playwright-in-residence with Nightswimming and has been invited to the Banff Playwright's Lab on multiple occasions. Her most produced/toured work of over 15 years, The Fish Eyes Trilogy, is published with graphic illustrations by Playwrights Canada Press. A complete audio performance of The Fish Eyes Trilogy can be heard on the 1st season of CBC Radio's PlayME podcast.
She was the 2017 recipient of Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Performance for her play Boys with Cars (Nightswimming /Young People’s Theatre) and also completed her Master of Arts in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University that same year.
Most recently seen in Factory Theatre's Year of the Rat directed by newly appointed National Arts Centre artistic director Nina Lee Aquino, Anita is currently working on A Girl Has No Gym, with Nightswimming.
During the pandemic, Anita reignited her visual arts practice and has since signed with Rogue Labs, a new NFT platform/agency based in California.