Lounge
A non-verbal response to intolerance
Summary
‘IT IS YOU’ by Our Theatre Collective pushes the boundaries of physical theatre
The idea for IT IS YOU came to Vivek Vijayakumaran, artistic director at Our Theatre Collective, in 2022, but the desire to stage this performance was slowly taking shape within him over the years. “I wanted to respond to the religious intolerance emerging in the country, as well as elsewhere in the world. In 2022, I was disturbed by the demolition of Muslim neighbourhoods in Delhi. Sometime after this, I happened to be in Delhi when my father-in-law passed away. I attended a ritual being conducted in the gurudwara, after which the family was allowed to sit inside a room. It was then that I visualised some performative images which resonated with my need to respond to religious intolerance. These images stayed with me."
Vijayakumaran then returned to Bengaluru to complete a previous production, Imagine A Room. “We had an event scheduled to showcase two documentaries on Kalakshetra Manipur, one on Sabitri Heisnam and one on Heisnam Kanhailal, founder-director of Kalakshetra, Manipur. We also had an actor training workshop by Pangambam Tyson Meitei on the Kalakshetra’s actor training pedagogy. Kanhailalji played an instrumental role in guiding me for my play Bhima, and in 2012 I met Tyson in Imphal."
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Vijayakumaran says he has visited Kalakshetra, Manipur, many times and he has a special bond with them. “It was always a dream to have Kalakshetra come to Our Theatre studio."
When Tyson was training his actors for Imagine A Room, Vijayakumaran had an intuitive response to collaborate with him for this performance. “After the training session, I approached him and asked if he would be interested in working on this production together. Tyson is an important person at Kalakshetra, he works as a performance artist and takes care of administrative work and logistics, so it is not easy for him to come from Imphal to Bengaluru. It was difficult for him to find time to come here and work on the performance."
In July 2022, from two people, the performance slowly began to include four to five people. Around this time, Rukmini Iyer, who works on peace building and inter faith practices all over the world, had conducted a series of sessions over six months, ‘Reimagining religion for our Times’. “We attended the sessions, and it gave us some education and rigour. Rukmini then came to Bengaluru, and her essential response was that there is some value in what we are doing. This motivated us."
Vijayakumaran says they knew early on that this would have to be a non-verbal play. “The moment any language is spoken, there is an immediate cultural association with it. We wanted to tell a very human story which is not affected by cultural locations, and we wanted everybody to relate to this piece."
By the end of 2022, eight to nine actors, some of whom were part of his earlier training programmes, had come onboard. “We tried to develop a different narrative to the accompaniment of live music that Tyson is playing, assisted by others."
However, in June 2023, Vijayakumaran says he felt stuck, and that they needed to reimagine the piece. “I didn’t know where to go from there. Additionally, in 2023, the conflict in Manipur began. It was a difficult time for Tyson and two other collaborators from Manipur." Following this, the performance started evolving more. “It started with addressing religious intolerance but after we attended a three-day conference at Fireflies Intercultural Centre in Bengaluru, on climate change and interfaith peace-building, a new connection began to appear. There was a statement put out that ‘there is a crisis in climate because there is a crisis in religion’. This got us thinking deeper about the performance," says Vivek.
In February 2024, theatre personality Prabhat Bhaskaran came to Our Theatre Studio to conduct a workshop, where he shared a tribal song. “The song rekindled things in me, and threw light into a place I wasn’t looking into. I then wrote a completely new, non-verbal script, which had only two performers, Tyson and me. We were at Kirtana Kumar’s Infinite Souls Farm and Artists Retreat in April 2024 for the 20 days of work translating the new script written by me on the floor."
IT IS YOU had an opening at Kalakshetra Manipur to an invited audience. Though there are influences of Koodiyattam and the Kalakshetra style of performance, you won’t be able to exactly pinpoint any of it as the performance is completely original. “Far right or far left, very religious and not religious, every kind of audience will find resonance as the performance is a timeless human story. The performance can be interpreted in various ways—it can be about two people, two voices within one person, a person against the system, two systems against each other."
Tyson says they tried to push the boundaries of physical theatre and work beyond their conditioning as artists. “I have not worked so much with other people outside of Kalakshetra, Manipur, an institution I have been associated with for 17 years. This is the first time I am working outside of Kalakshetra independently."
He adds that the Imphal audience really connected with the play. “And though the performance is not about the conflict in Manipur, the current crisis in the state is related to the geographical crisis there."
IT IS YOU will play at Ranga Shankara, J P Nagar, Bengaluru, on 31 January-1 February. Tickets available on bookmyshow.com and at the venue.
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