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‘Manam Theatre Festival 2024’: Bringing the performing arts community closer
Summary
The second edition of the Manam Theatre Festival, taking place in Hyderabad in November and December, is an inclusive celebration of the performing arts
For director Sharanya Ramprakash, the covid pandemic was a time for introspection. After the second wave got over in 2021, she began to recalibrate the idea of what it meant to be an artist again following a period of isolation. Together with artist Surabhi Vasisht, she began to delve deeper into the “marginalised narratives around female actors" in Kannada theatre. “It was a combination of my present journey as an artist in Karnataka in search of women who came before me," says Ramprakash. This research led to a series called Company of Nayakis, which looked at the lives of women who had lit up the stage in Karnataka in the past.
“I was searching for myself, in some sense—who I was as an artist. There was a sense of adventure in looking for something and finding it in bits and parts. This research put me back in practice again," she says. In 2023, Ramprakash conceptualised an experimental play, Project Darling, based on these interviews, at Nirdigantha—an incubator for theatre arts by actor-director Prakash Raj located in K Shettihalli village, Srirangapatna.
This ever-evolving play, which traces the legacy of cult character Khanavali Chenni, is now part of the second edition of the Manam Theatre Festival. The month-long event, presented by The We_Us Collective—an Almond House Foundation initiative—is set to take place in Hyderabad between 15 November and 15 December, across multiple venues such as Saptaparni, Rangbhoomi Spaces, Glendale Academy, and others.
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Diverse forms of storytelling
Themed around the idea of ‘together we belong’, the festival features performances in multiple languages, fringe events, panel discussions and theatre workshops. There are some threads that spill over from the past edition—myths and legends continue to offer an alternate lens to look at gender and sexuality, and the focus on notions of identity continues. Urmila, by the Puducherry-based Adishakti Theatre, is set in Ayodhya, and centred around a woman who is still looked at as a supporting character in the Ramayana. As Urmila receives the command from Lakshmana to sleep through the 14 years of exile, the play questions ideas of agency, consent and the price that women have paid for the obedience expected from them and extracted over time.
Then there is Rodrigo Calderon from Australia, known for a unique style of physical theatre, who is bringing He for the first time to India. This solo act looks at memory and familial bonds as the protagonist returns to his childhood home in a post-civil war El Salvador. Also worth a watch is the reprised version of The Gentlemen’s Club by Patchworks Ensemble, Mumbai, directed by Sheena Khalid and Puja Sarup. The production, which has been touring the country extensively, creates a vivid picture of Mumbai’s underground club scene and the city’s drag kings. “Drag culture has changed so much since we first performed. We wanted to take some time and think about how these characters had evolved and what they were thinking," Khalid had mentioned in an earlier interview to Mint.
For Harika Vedula, founder-director, Manam Theatre Festival, and founder, The We_Us Collective, the journey from the first to the second edition has been one of learning. “The core messaging, this year, is about bringing the community together. The theme of inclusivity and diversity continues, as we look at how subjects of gender and identity are being treated in different formats by theatre practitioners. A significant change this year is that all the works being showcased are original." This approach reflects the kind of changes that have taken place in the world of theatre post the pandemic, with directors and playwrights imagining smaller, more intimate settings, to showcase their work. “People started bringing their voices out after staying in isolation. What you say, how you say it and who you say it to starts to matter. Conversations have become more evolved than just saying, ‘please come and perform’. Original voices have now become more prominent," says Vedula.
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All the companies that are coming in to perform are also conducting workshops on the form and language of theatre. The idea is to bring people to the forefront and showcase how they create, and what their journey has been like. The festival starts with a community day this year; the event, ‘Welcome Home’, is about creating a sense of bonhomie within the cultural community through conversations, music and dance performances, and food.
Some production companies such as Adishakti Theatre are returning to the festival for a second time. For Vedula, the act of curation becomes exciting due to the quality of work that is being produced by such practitioners on a regular basis. “How can we approach an idea from a different angle? There can’t be a one-sided conversation around it. So you have Rodrigo ’s piece, which offers such a unique and personal take on identity. His act builds on that in a very engaging way," she says. “Adishakti is back because they have such a fresh approach towards gender dynamics in Urmila."
In such a scenario, Ramprakash’s Project Darling too becomes significant, not just for highlighting lives of women who might have slipped through gaps in history but also for a new way of telling those stories. “Reality is often so much grander than fiction. All these women led such incredible and inspiring lives and then they just disappeared. And in a way, society does not want them to come back—it sees them as a liability to their notions of respectability," elaborates Ramprakash. As she interviewed many of these actors, she realised that each woman’s life was akin to a banyan tree, and she had to “bonsai it" to represent the story.
Making for an inclusive space
The Stree Natak Mandali had a group of women performing as men between the 1960s-80s. Women would play drunkards, chain smokers, who would blow rings of smoke on stage. “They could do this as they were performing as men. It was such an interesting subversion—the actors were women, people watching them knew they were women, and yet they had to dress up as men," says Ramprakash.
In the course of her research, she realised that only sketchy details were available for some of the actors and she was left to construct gaps in history. Project Darling is based on those gaps, with the actors and director putting their lives, histories and fiction into reimagining those blank spaces. “And we reimagine them audaciously, not as victims but celebratory figures, who have changed the course of our lives," she says.
For Vedula, this year, the vision is to transcend barriers of language, age and gender. To achieve this, Manam Theatre Festival has collaborated with the Hyderabad Children’s Theatre Festival for workshops and plays for young minds. Mumbai-based Gillo Repertory Theatre, led by Shaili Sathyu, is part of a panel on ways of working with children using drama tools and building a network of ‘teaching artists’ in the country. Two plays by the company, The Ghost of the Mountains and the whimsical Mister Jeejeebhoy and the Birds, will also be performed.
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It is interesting to find children’s plays being showcased within a broader theatre festival, as opposed to having a capsule event or a mini-festival being held for them separately. “Generally festivals for an adult audience don’t look at us twice. Prithvi Theatre’s main annual festival for adults had a small children’s section a few years ago, but not any more. You don’t have much shared viewing between family members and children. Schools take them for plays separately," says Sathyu. “However, this being a family-oriented festival, parents can experience a performance with their child and this holds much value." The idea is to look at a performance as a play, and not a “children’s play".
One of the performances, The Ghost of the Mountains, based on a story by Sujatha Padmanabhan, is set in Ang, a small village in Ladakh, where the residents wake up one morning to find an unusual visitor in their midst. For Sathyu, the challenge was to connect the remote locales of Ladakh with children from Mumbai, where it was first performed after the pandemic. “For another research project, we had conducted interviews with the indigenous communities of Aarey Colony, who spoke about leopards in their neighbourhood," she says. While adapting Padmanabhan’s story, she wondered if the play could allow the kids to view the environmental problems of Ladakh through the local lens. So, the play ended up being a combination of the book with the interviews with residents of Aarey Colony.
Sathyu added another character—a young girl, who goes from Mumbai to Ladakh on an exchange programme, and meets a boy there. They end up discussing the ecologies that they hail from and the leopards that inhabit both. The issues emerge from the children’s conversations. “We adults have a saviour’s complex, we feel the need to explain everything to children. Once you shed this approach, and realise that children are discerning, sensitive and sensible, then you will understand them as an audience. Don’t just spark curiosity but leave things open ended and push them in the direction of asking questions," says Sathyu. “We have also learnt this over the years as a team. Today, the world of children’s literature has become so varied. Once you immerse yourself in it, you will find so many threads to work with."
