By Talia Carl­isle

An ode to joy!

For the first time recently I joined a choir, and as we joined togeth­er as strangers to sing, hold­ing our music and rais­ing our voices in har­mony, I could feel such joy and togeth­er­ness lift­ing every­one up, and con­nect­ing us togeth­er while also cre­at­ing a melod­ic story told through the music.

This choir showed me kind­ness and com­munity, and it’s the same feel­ing I feel watch­ing Dirty Work: An Ode to Joy by Indi­an Ink.

Stor­ies about kind­ness and con­nec­tion among strangers and friends, are a well honed recipe of Indi­an Ink founders Jac­ob Rajan and Justin Lewis which have been enchant­ing audi­ences since 1997 with their beloved char­ac­ters in “Krishnan’s Dairy” and many beau­ti­ful fol­low­ing pro­duc­tions.

Their witty and melod­ic theatre works have inspired audi­ences across the coun­try and world with their cul­tur­ally diverse and heart warm­ing comed­ic and dra­mat­ic shows.

Always com­pel­ling and thought pro­vok­ing, and con­vey­ing the beau­ti­ful every­day char­ac­ters we might see or over­look in soci­ety, and the hier­archy and life chal­lenges they must over­come.

Indi­an Ink doesn’t con­form to any pre­dict­able storylines or char­ac­ters and this show is sure to sur­prise audi­ences – and even the cast them­selves, which includes a choir formed by loc­al sing­ers and is dif­fer­ent for each per­form­ance. What an organ­isa­tion­al chal­lenge that they some­how make look like a piece of cake!

These sing­ers have not seen the script or cues before­hand and instead rely on music­al dir­ect­or Josh Clark to lead the parade into music­al ter­rit­ory which blends beau­ti­fully and comed­ic­ally into the rest of the show, as we have come to expect in Indi­an Ink’s works.

It’s no won­der the energy and con­fid­ence builds from the cast and choir through­out the show, as they get to know each oth­er. This fits well with­in the show’s premise of a work­place thrown into an unfa­mil­i­ar situ­ation with only each oth­er to rely on to meet their quest set by an unfa­mil­i­ar boss, played by Justin Rogers, and pushed into motion by cha­ris­mat­ic employ­ee Zara, played by the unstop­pable Tessa Rao.

A wise Rihanna once wrote “It’s all about the work, work, work, work, work.” How well do we really know our col­leagues or bosses? In typ­ic­al heart-steal­ing fash­ion our leads, includ­ing the fas­cin­at­ing clean­er played by Cath­er­ine Yates, give us an insight into the hopes, dreams and stressors in these every­day char­ac­ters, with Jac­ob Rajan’s cha­ris­mat­ic touch felt, des­pite not appear­ing on the stage this time.

Along with new faces and new music, this show leaves out a famil­i­ar part of Indi­an Ink’s icon­ic his­tory, which includes masks and tra­di­tion­al music, but the mix of new and old songs includ­ing Mātangi, Jai Ho!, and Some­thing in the Water give every­one some­thing to love and cor­ral the story along.

After a long day at work, I didn’t expect a show about office life to hit my heart and remind me to open my eyes to the unknown beau­ties of the char­ac­ters in my own world I may have over­looked and am grate­ful for this remind­er.

The show also adds some mean­ing to the cal­en­dar on my desk that I now under­stand: “Work is love made vis­ible.”

If we only see people at work or in their roles, we should be blessed to know them, because we are all one com­munity, one people. He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. You don’t have to be in a beau­ti­ful choir to see that (even though I do recom­mend it!) you can also see that in Indi­an Ink’s Dirty Work: An Ode to Joy.