As they sit comfortably around a café table, exchanging notes and laughing together, it is easy to imagine the night that they speak about, when they had a frustrating conversation over dinner. All of them are artistes who have been engaged in one or another form of theatre for several years in Thiruvananthapuram. That night, about a month and a half ago, when they vented out their frustrations over not having enough venues to perform or even practise their pieces, an idea struck them. They could do this on their own – create stages for their performances. Surprising themselves, they have managed to put together a three-day dance and theatre fest, naming it FOKIT tongue-in-cheek. The event will happen at The Art Infinite in Akkulam, from March 10 to 12, between 5 and 10 pm.
“No, FOKIT has no full form,” says Anoop Mohandas, actor, singer, and one of the organisers. Aravind TM, another artist and organiser, adds: “The name comes from the sheer frustration of us artistes not getting a stage. Forget the venue, even a rehearsal space with light and sound is hardly available.”
The group of six artistes had initially thought of a fest just to create venues for them to perform, but soon roped in other artistes they heard were going through the same crisis – having ready-to-perform pieces and no place to stage it. Devaki Rajendran, Prajith K Prasad, Sibi Sudarshan, and Laia Campama are the other organisers.
“Outside Kerala, there is a lot more scope, with studios, performance spaces, and collectives being formed – take Bengaluru or Chennai or cities like Mumbai and Delhi, which have been that way for years. But there is hardly any such movement in Kerala. There is no space for artistes to even come and watch each other’s work. My piece will just be there, with no one to show it to. It is the same story for dancers. The practice here is to rush to youth festivals or to perform at temple festivals where there is poor quality light and sound. The problem is that people are satisfied with what they are getting, but they have to know it can be better,” Devaki says.
Pappisorai, a play devised by a couple in Palakkad
The artistes are certain that if a few such festivals are created and repeated, there will be an audience dedicated to theatre arts. “Take big festivals like the International Theatre Festival of Kerala (ITFOK) or the Biennale. ITFOK has been around for 13 years and has created an audience for itself. The Biennale has only had five editions and there is a dedicated following. We used to have such festivals for theatre – a fest by PRD and another by the Abhinaya Theatre group, but most of these have stopped. It is important to keep having these events so that artistes can continue to interact with the audience,” Aravind says.
Younger people are not very exposed to theatre and few take the effort to go and watch a performance, says Anoop. Devaki is sure that once they attend a performance, they will be entertained.
“Maybe a hundred plays are created in a year, but after two or three festivals there is no place to stage them. So many such plays have been stalled after a few performances,” Anoop says.
FOKIT, they hope, will be a fresh start to change the situation. In three days, there will be nine performances, of theatre and dance, and fillers in between each show. Most of the performances are interdisciplinary, with one form merged into another.
(A)maya, performed by Laia and Aravind
Laia and Aravind, who have completed a course in physical theatre from Spain, are presenting a play called (A)maya. “The play is about two travellers and how they deal with the baggage of their past. It will be physical theatre, in which your body is used as a tool of expression, combined with object theatre,” Laia says.
Anoop mentions another theatre performance called Pappisorai, which is an expression in the Irula language, spoken by the Irula tribe of Attappadi. The play is devised and performed by a couple who are also self-taught puppeteers.
In another performance called Me and My Trash, artiste Preethi Bharadwaj uses dance compositions, music, poetry, and object theatre to talk about the physical and mental trash people carry. “She breaks a lot of barriers in classical dance form, and tries to take elements of contemporary ideologies and include it in her performance,” Devaki says.
Me and My Trash
She also talks about Manasikara, in which Devika Sajeevan, a young dancer from Kannur, uses techniques of Bharatanatyam to talk about the contemporary conditioning of women.
All the organisers are also performers and will be seen in various shows at the festival. Anoop will perform in Pets of Anarchy, an adaptation of Frank Pavloff’s work Brown Morning and in Avishkaram, a play adapted from Vaclav Havel’s Audience. Devaki and Prajith will perform in Banerjee Babu, by Space of Act in association with KissaGo. The other performances are Udal by Dileep Chilanka and Otta by Thudippu Dance Foundation.
The venue, Art Infinite, belongs to Sibi, a classical dancer who trained at Kalakshetra. Prajith, the sixth organiser, complete a course in Singapore.
The event has been made possible because of the unexpected generous contributions that came from crowdfunding and the sponsors who came into the picture. After the organisers knocked on several doors, Kerala State Lotteries unexpectedly turned title sponsor for the event. There are other sponsors too, and the rest of the funding will come from ticketing. This, the organisers hope, will more than cover the event and the payment to the performers coming from near and far.