|
Transition, Gender, Spectatorship
The central theme of the International Theatre Festival of Kerala (ITFOK) that took place between January 27-February 4 this year was Transition. Accompanying themes were about Gender and Spectatorship. The festival had an eclectic approach, influenced by its Artistic Director Deepan Sivaraman, who was keen to look at new and different ways in which performances are being created in India and abroad. Deepan Sivaraman and his fellow contemporaries from Kerala like Sankar Venkateswarn, MG Jyotish, Martin John and Abhilash Pillai (who has curated the earlier ITFOK editions) have been toying with space, sound, lights and scenography to find new and different semiotics to stage plays in their local idiom. This is a new breed of theatre creators influenced by different theatre traditions from the East and the West with a firm eye inwards that illuminates their local and regional contexts.
In Deepan Sivaraman's words, 'ITFOK 2014 was meant to be a curtain-raiser to 21st century world theatre where the strict boundaries of theatre and visual art are slowly fading.' And, might I add between theatre and dance too. We know of contemporary dance as a category unto itself but it can combine theatre and the other arts in startling ways. Since decades, contemporary dancers have been using theatre techniques but our theatre is only waking up to the possibilities that this genre offers.
Deepan Sivaraman and his team also oversaw a colloquium in which significant issues were discussed pertaining to gender, theatre in Kerala, curatorial practice: its concerns and possibilities, contemporary theatre in India and the making of Anuradha Kapur's VIRASAT (based on Mahesh Elkunchwar's WADA trilogy). Susie Tharu in the opening session on gender brought insightful views to a subject that has recently captured our nation's imagination albeit in a lopsided and one dimensional way. We have a lot of angst regarding the way our women are treated but little analysis. Tharu's paper was a reminder that we have serious inroads to make, especially in our times today, if we want to have a meaningful discussion on women in India and on gender, which would be inclusive of the plurality of issues that women in our country face across regions, caste, class and ethnicities.
Abhilash Pillai presented a thoughtful paper on being a curator and the things that an international festival like ITFOK could achieve if it could sort out its issues. He also had a point about festivals like these taking on the onus of being environmentally responsible. The section on avant garde art practices and the issues facing contemporary theatre in India, with the proposal for Manifestoes for theatre in India by Anuradha Kapur and Jane Collins (a theatre director and professor from Wimbledon in the UK) grappled with the question and needs of contemporary theatre in India. This is a complex debate that would actually render manifestoes meaningless as there is no monolith such as one Indian theatre.
There were other discussions too by a number of international and local speakers. Discussions on theatre in India would however do well to internalise and be sensitive to the sheer plurality of theatre in this country because only then can there be hope of any effective discourse. One size just won't fit all and nor will it be possible to sustain visions of culture without the involvement of the concerned stakeholders. Some of the participants like Professor MV Narayanan (who organised the colloquium along with Jane Collins and Anuradha Kapur) spoke about this. Colloquium presentations included a performance by Maya Krishna Rao. Her solo piece WALK emerged in the wake of Jyoti Pandey's rape in Delhi.
The festival also hosted a symposium by the Indian national section of theatre critics in collaboration with the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC). The IATC symposium, the first in India, was made possible because of Deepan Sivaraman's efforts. He saw the merit in bringing together established theatre critics as necessary parties to the larger discussion of contemporary theatre and the issues concerning theatre today. The invited critics from India, the US, Poland, Romania and Sweden presented papers on topics such as contemporary theatre practice with reference to select productions, theatre criticism in the digital age, and theatre and theatre criticism in Kerala today.
|
