There’s nothing quite as universal in Indian culture as a wedding. The team behind the literary collective Mahogany Journal are bringing the tensions and tidings of the ritual to Kalaa Utsavam 2026 through a dramatic reading called A Very Mahogany Wedding.
“We returned to our zine Manifest to find common threads across the pieces we’d published. The wedding emerged as a recurrent theme, which excited us because who doesn’t love a good wedding story?,” said Mahogany co-founders and show directors Prasanthi Ram and Jaryl George Solomon.
Ms Prasanthi, 34 and Mr Jaryl, 38 have been friends since their undergraduate studies at the National University of Singapore.
Ms Prasanthi currently works as an academic writing lecturer at Nanyang Technological University, aside from being a Singapore Literary Prize wining fiction writer herself. Mr Jaryl works as a curriculum designer for an enrichment centre and is pursuing his masters in Creative Writing at LASALLE College Of The Arts.
They founded Mahogany Journal in 2020 as an online literary space for local South Asians, or as they refer to them, “+65 South Asians”.
“We wanted to create a safe space where South Asian writers could tell stories without having to overexplain themselves, particularly their cultures. We came up with the idea of the +65 South Asian as an inclusive label: in particular, the +65 was meant as an invitation to South Asian writers born or based in Singapore,” said the co-founders.
Since then, the group has hosted several literary workshops and even self-published a physical zine called Manifest earlier this year, which is where the source material of the dramatic reading comes from.
While they have done readings in past events, this will be the group’s first dramatised reading, incorporating theatre elements and different pieces into one cohesive script.
The cast consists of contributors from the journal, bringing some of their own literary works off the page through their characters.
A Very Mahogany Wedding was commissioned by Esplanade and will play on Nov 21 at 7.30pm in the Esplanade Annex Studio. Tickets can be purchased on SISTIC.
