“Experience the strong emotion in silence. It can convey as much as movement or mime,” says Sankar Venkateswaran, theatre-maker and director. These words resonate in the quiet evening in Attappady hills. We are at his space — Sahyande Theatre — perched on a hilltop, with a river flowing below, to witness IM TOD-In My Time of Dying, Sankar’s latest work.
During the rehearsal of Sankar Venkateswaran’s latest work In My Time of Dying at Sahyande Theatre.
The play, a collaboration with German theatre-maker Leon Pfannenmüller, facilitated by Goethe- Institut through a co-production fund, has already run 20 shows in Europe and three shows in India. From diary entries and postcards to a steel rod that was part of a leg, the play fiddles with fiction but is based on lived experience. German dramaturg Maria Rossler helped them structure the text. Sankar believes finding words in theatre is the most difficult, especially after the explosion of the visual media. “I am trying to go to the deepest point of what text means, what words mean today in theatre and how do you find words that can be convincing, through real life, yet embracing the fictional world of theatre.”
Shaped like a Japanese fan, taking inspiration from Noh Theatre, a form in which Sankar is trained in and informs some of his work as well, Sahyande Theatre also aspires to be the first carbon neutral theatre in the world. The design of the building ensures you don’t need to switch on lights during the day, the green roof makes fans or AC irrelevant. “And, we have our own source of water, which will see us through eight months in a year, and then for the next four months we have to pump up water from a well, which is 100 metres below. Coming years, we are hoping to transform the entire power lighting requirements of the theatre, using a combination of a solar and windmill,” says Sankar. Kavita Srinivasan, an MIT trained architect and theatre-maker, weaved in multiple ideas of life, work and Nature to create this space, featuring a studio theatre, amphitheatre above and five rooms to stay.
The idea to start his space began while he and his Japanese partner Satoko were working from Delhi and later from Thrissur on Sankar’s early work, Sahyande Makan - The Elephant Project, a much-acclaimed production like his other works including Ohta Shogo’s Water Station (2011), 101 Lullabies (2012) and Henrik Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken. The space in Kerala would get overbooked for some government programme. And, they would have to cancel their rehearsal, and not receive any compensation, creating trouble for the outstation artistes. “Being a committed theatre artiste, I need a certain concentration, the kind of work that I do is cultural. Many of my artistes come from across the world. We work in a residential kind of set up,” says the Shankar Nag Theatre awardee and Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar recipient. Many of his works have found international stage, and he is also a recipient of International Ibsen Scholarship 2013 (Teater Ibsen, Norway).
Attappadi offered them a piece of land where they could plant their dreams and ideas of theatre. However, once they set up their organisation Theatre Roots and Wings, the interculturality of the place struck them. With the settler community speaking Tamizh and Malayalam, and three of the indigenous communities speaking diverse languages, this small patch of land was so multicultural. “All of it seemed to be the most fertile space to further my cultural practice, which was at that time connected to Japan, Germany and Singapore,” recalls Sankar.
Interculturality in his vision springs from his training in multicultural art forms from Intercultural Theatre Institute (ITI). “ITI taught me how to work with artistes with whom you have nothing in common. But if you have the will, you can still create work and make it meaningful.”
Sankar has been working with the local singers in Attappadi to revive Madurai Veeran Koothu, a folk performance. But he firmly believes his work with them is not for the market. “They sing to make their day enjoyable, and the labour more pleasurable. The meaning of art and life connection is different to people here; it is not to commodify or consume”.
KOCHI, Kerala, 18/08/2022: For Frontline : Theatre director Sankar Venkateswaran during an interaction with The Hindu Frontline in Attapady. Photo : Thulasi Kakkat/The Hindu | Photo Credit: THULASI KAKKAT
The resilience shown by theatre-makers like him has kept alive our collective faith during the pandemic which was a horror because there was nowhere to seek support to sustain spaces. But it also turned Satoko and Sankar into beekeepers. “We learnt beekeeping through YouTube tutorials. We produced honey. Hopefully, in the coming years this would become a resource which could independently run this theatre space. Bee brings in the honey, the honey brings in the money and money runs the theatre. It also contributes to the ecology.”
One still vividly recalls his strong absence from online digital theatre experimentation that caught a lot of currency then. “Even at that time, I did have very strong reservations and questions about the online explosion. I put one of my pieces online, but as soon as the pandemic was over, we ran away from that the digital medium. People were so eager to meet. Performance in itself is a human tendency. It is human to gather and tell stories, talk and socialise.” Sahyande Theatre, which today invites practitioners from across the world to travel to a quaint hilltop in a forest in Kerala to make theatre, stands testimony to this.
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