Taking theatre away from the stage

Every year, the

International Theatre Festival of Kerala

(

ITFOK

), brings something new for the thousands of theatre lovers who throng Thrissur to be part of it.

The festival has always had unconventional themes in the previous years including Afro Asian theatre, Latino Indian theatre, Classics Revisited, Eastern European theatre, Gender and Transition in Spectatorship, Palestininan and West Asian theatre and most recently, Body Politics. The ninth edition of ITFOK which kicked off on the 20th of this month has something even different to offer — taking theatre to venues beyond the conventional ones.
Performances in actual spaces, fields, forests and ponds seek to alter the rules of the game of theatre and the meaning of performance changes when staged in different material spaces, goes the curatorial note of the fest. Thus the focus this time, says co-ordinator Sasi Kumar, is on ‘street performances’, if not street theatre. “The theme of ITFOK 2017 is ‘

Variousness of Variousness

’, how various spaces and forms can be used for theatre. So we have a strong segment of street performances this time.”

Thus one of the plays this time — Pool Play — is held in a swimming pool in the city, while the Chilean performance Sari Rosa (pink sari) involves a carnival on the streets with heavy participation from the locals. Yet another play will be held at the Thekkinkadu Maidanam while the grand finale, Penteselea, will be held in the palace grounds, Thrissur.

The definition of street performance is however fluid, Sasi adds.

The play doesn’t necessarily need to be on the streets, and a variety of forms can come under it. “A play held in a car park, a shopping mall, a boat jetty or a bus stand can all come under street performance. As of now, our streets are not yet ready for actual street theatre. However, many of the works this time are site specific, in that they won’t be meaningful without the setting they are meant to be performed in.”
We speak to some of the prominent voices at the theatre fest
this time.

Inspired by a history of swimming pools
Erin B Mee, Assistant Arts Professor at the New York University and the director of Pool Play, explains why her play is set in a pool. “The impetus for holding a play in a pool struck me while I was reading a history of swimming pools in the United States, which had social and political undertones. Pools in the US were initially built for immigrants who lived in tiny houses with no plumbing, in the 40s and 50s. The immigrants used to use the pool for some exercise and a bath. Pools were originally differentiated on the basis of gender. While Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays were reserved for men, women got only less days – Tuesdays and Thursdays,” she says.

After the gender segregation was done away with, the pools started to be segregated on the basis of race. “White people were nervous about African American men swimming with white women,” she says. Post the Civil Rights Movement, a lot of people moved to the suburbs and built their own private pools, and there were fewer public pools. “My play has lots of scenes of the politics of swimming pools, class and gender. It has dance and music and artistes perform inside the pool. It’s partly about enjoying the swimming pool and also a comment about the privilege of enjoying one.”
The play is essentially site based since the pool is a character in the play, she says.

Re-interpreting the Mahabharata, in the open air
Sreejith Ramanan’s Misty Mountains of Mahabharata, a School of Drama production, is held on bare earth, in the open air, amongst trees and water bodies. “We were sure that we wanted to stage environmental theatre. We created the play in the academic atmosphere of the School of Drama which has 18 acres of land. Not only were there lots of possibilities for the production, it was less expensive for us as we needed no stage and also used environment friendly materials.”

Also, when an actor performs alongside nature, his body undergoes a lot of natural changes, the director adds. “There is an organic quality to a work of environmental theatre. The breeze, the water bodies and the bare earth all bring about sensations in the actors. We wanted to tell the story from such a scenario and so the setting is such a landscape.” Thus the play is set in a forest area.

There is a difference in the way the Mahabharata is re-interpreted as well. “We are going back to the times of the origin of mankind, where the Mahabharata was still in its oral form. We want the audience to erase all conventional ideas they have about the epic first – paintings, serials etc. Characters who never get a chance to speak like Hidumban and Hidumbi get to speak in our play. Also, Krishna doesn’t appear as a saviour, instead, Draupadi herself takes a strong stand, outshining those around her.”

Such festivals will definitely help street theatre, says Kirti Jain, professor at the National School of Drama. “The idea of street theatre has become straightjacketed. It used to be a kind of protest theatre and had a particular form but it did not really develop beyond a point. These kinds of festivals will give an opportunity for people who are practising the art form to interact with each other and also help them learn about what drives theatre in other states.”