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.