An afternoon of varieTea, musicaliTea and frivoliTea

Combining outrageous humour, beautiful music and quirky poetry, Oz Asia’s AFTERNOON AbsurdiTea will take audiences on an incredible experience of that wonderfully addictive beverage, says Anne Norman aka Camellia Cha, in an interview with SHIVANGI AMBANI-GANDHI, sharing her journey of tea discovery

Shivangi Ambani-Gandhi: What exactly is a Tea Performance? And what can the audience expect from AFTERNOON AbsurdiTea?

Camellia Cha: In AbsurdiTea, rather than focusing on making tea, we tell the story of tea and its journey through various countries and cultures, using poetry, narrative and music from the countries where tea is grown and consumed. I have written a poem which challenges those of us who mindlessly partake of tea, to think about where it comes from and who plucked it. Just what is the story behind tea, and how did it get into my teacup? In one poem, rhythmically delivered lyrics will be supported by the Indian rhythms of Jay Dabgar and Josh Bennett.

SAG: Will you share a snippet of the kind of humour and quirky poetry that will be a part of this show?

CC: You think tea is British, well, of course you’re right, it’s true. Iraqis and Sri Lankans think that too.

And if you’re Yank, it’s what you drank, then you sank it, now you thank it for your country’s liber-TEA teabag sucker sucker TEA! But the Chinese had it first, Japanese then got the thirst, and the Portuguese prayed on their knees till Chinese coffers burst...

SAG: You have previously collaborated with a tap dancer and cabaret performers..

CC: Yes. And with a cellist, and a recorder player, and a calligrapher, and a shamisen player with Japanese dancer... It has been an interesting learning curve and transition for me to ‘perform’ my book, Curiosi-tea. It is one thing to spend years researching and travelling and writing, and another to memorize parts of what you have written and deliver it with music or other art forms. Because we have such talented musicians on stage in the OzAsia presentation, I will keep my talking to a minimum in order to make time for the music to unfold. And I want to jam with the musicians on my shakuhachi where possible. Until tea took over my life, performing shakuhachi (bamboo flute) has been my primary occupation, and it still is my forte, although things are shifting a little.

SAG: Tell us about your book, Curiosi-tea. CC: Curiosi-tea is a flippantly presented, but thoroughly researched, book on tea: tea’s history, health properties, and cultural associations. It makes use of the strange quirk of the English language, where over 2,000 English words end with the sound tea, such as CuriosiTY, serendipiTY etc. I had initially not envisaged a serious or scholarly book, but rather a bit of fun with puns and cartoon-like illustrations. So of course, the first chapter just had to be “Antiqui-tea” and the last “Infini-tea”, and then I thought I would fill it out with frivoli-tea... And having the naugh-tea, cheeky mind I have, I had to include chapters on promiscui-tea and sexualitea as well as topics which didn’t feel like they should really be in a tea book at all, such as radioactivi-tea and insani-tea. However, the more I researched and read, the more I was confronted by the dark side of tea, not just the froth and bubble of a whisked matcha, or the spice of a masala chai. It was when I began to read books like Roy Moxham’s Tea: Addiction, Exploitation and Empire, that the chapter entitled Inhumani-tea and Mortali-tea resulted. I tried to avoid including this darker material for quite a while, but the more I read I realised I couldn’t ignore it. The clincher came when I read an article in The Times of India on March 1, 2007 entitled “Tea estate closure results in 100 deaths”. The nature of my book became more weighty from then on.

SAG: Which is your favourite Indian tea?

CC: I was very impressed with the organic teas of the Makaibari tea estate in Darjeeling. I came home with samples of their Silver Tips Imperial white tea and their green and oolong teas. However, when I want a kick that is more filling than a cleansing and subtle white or green tea, I sometimes make myself a milky masala chai using ‘black’ Assam tea in a saucepan on the stove at home.

SAG: You recently spent 5 weeks in India visiting tea plantations…. CC: I confess it was my first trip to India. As India came to the international tea trade late in the history of tea, I hadn’t written as much about the country in my book, as I had about China and her eastern neighbours. The historical significance of India and China in relation to Britain’s tea drinking habit is enormous. I began my trip to Assam to see where the British began their tea plantations, but first I went to Kolkata and met up with Ali Zaman, a wonderful fellow who gave me leads to his colleagues in the tea industry in Calcutta and Assam. I met the Tea Board of India, visited the tea auction rooms and the secretary general of the Indian Tea Association. I then travelled to the Experimental Station of the Tocklai Tea Research Association in Jorhat. Their motto is: SustainabiliTEA through research. Now that’s my kind of spelling!

The scientists at Tocklai are brilliant and their state-of-the-art facility is the best tea research one I have ever encountered. They had trans-genetic engineers and biotechnicians analysing DNA and making super clones of tea. Impressive work! They were also looking at finding natural ways to avoid the use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers.

I visited the Kaziranga National park, then Dibrugarh and on to the Hollonghabi Tea estates. These have an enormous burden of responsibility to look after a large number of workers and their families, and I began to get an inkling of the planters’ side of the story, and the headaches they face in managing their charges.

I also met members of the original tea tribes of upper Assam near the border with Burma and drank green tea in a bamboo stilt house with a bright fellow of the Singpho tribe who makes organic tea commercially. He was a powerhouse of knowledge on the tea history of his tribe and has helped anthropologists from around the world with their research.

One day I hope to return to upper Assam and Arunachal Pradesh with Rajan to explore the Chinese border region, and see what we can find in the way of evidence of a branch of the ancient Tea and Horse road that the Chinese scholars write about.

In Darjeeling I met several knowledgeable and helpful men who have worked in the tea industry all their lives. I visited numerous temples; improvising music with the male ‘wives of Shiva’ in a Bhakti monastery on the island of Majuli; wandered around the blindingly white and glorious Taj Mahal. I had adventures on trains, planes, rickshaws, an elephant and overly crowded ‘taxis’; I even fitted in a leisurely day on a river boat in Kerala... It would take a book to tell you all my adventures! I love India and can’t wait to return.

AFTERNOON absurdiTEA was part of the Oz Asia Festival in Adelaide. For more about Camellia Cha and Anne Norman visit camelliacha.com or www.annenorman.com