Newspaper Props in 'Satyagraha'

Philip Glass’s opera “Satyagraha,” is not only a historical telling but it's also a visual revelation beyond any conventional performance seen on stage. Newspaper is used throughout the piece as a tool to create movement, symbolism, and larger than life puppets. Overall, attention to detail in the performance has enhanced the story and created ambiance –which was key in engaging the audience.

This videography briefly takes viewers on a behind the scenes journey of the how’s and why’s.

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The New York Times: Opera About a Giant's Life, Complete With Giant Puppets/Daniel J. Wakin/April 11, 2008











The tottering puppets are created from newspaper, fiberglass kite poles, light cotton cloth and lots of latex glue. The sets are made largely of corrugated metal. Wicker baskets and brooms become a crocodile. Chairs held over faces become symbolic barriers.

“We decided we wanted to use very humble materials in the making of the opera,” Mr. Crouch said. “We wanted similarly to take these materials, maybe associated with poverty, and see if we could do a kind of alchemy with that, turn them into something beautiful.”

The dominant medium is newsprint. Coated newspapers paper the stage floor. Balled-up pages represent stones thrown at Gandhi. Text is projected on newspaper sheets held up by actors. News pages are manipulated into a Hindu goddess. Long strips of attached pages ribbon across the stage, representing a printing press. (Maybe the newspaper industry doesn’t have to die after all.) “It’s an ordinary object that, when transformed, becomes magical,” Mr. McDermott said. “Ordinary simple actions, when done with commitment, become something powerful,” he said, a quality of Gandhi’s idea of “satyagraha,” a Sanskrit term that can be translated as “truth-force” and stands for Gandhi’s principle of nonviolent resistance.

More literally the newspaper reflects Indian Opinion, the paper that Gandhi founded as a vital part of the struggle for the rights of Indians taken to South Africa as indentured servants by the British. The focus is on the period from 1893 to 1914, the years Gandhi spent in South Africa. Tolstoy, the poet Tagore and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. each figures in an act representing witnesses from Gandhi’s past, present and future.