Prior to the commencement of Koogu, a recently staged solo act, by theatre artiste Anish Victor, at David Hall in Fort Kochi the audience is requested “if they don't mind” to stand up, close their eyes and concentrate for two minutes on their breath. On the inhale-exhale movement, on the little dance that goes on within each body.
The ‘kurumi’, a drum that accompanies folk forms in Tamil Nadu is the only object in the intimate stark space as the handful of onlookers waits in suspense with the build-up.
The narrative as it unfolds is not obviously profound. There is no dramatic rhetoric, no highfalutin script, no applause seeking dialogues but simple storytelling mixed with rustic music, nostalgic songs and riveting dance movements. And yet the apparent simple is but deep. Anish employs an amazing tool where the ostensibly light narrative is underlined by deep, insightful comments and even at times terrible truths. The serious is delivered lightly and that is Anish’s signature style displayed exemplarily in the 75th performance of Koogu, which has travelled across the country.
Koogu that means shout or call in Kannada has Anish narrating memorable parts of his growing years, of his feeling of “non-rootedness” and a quest to know the responses to his expression. Taking personal incidents into public domain he sees each person as a warrior fighting for a cause. “The idea is to place the personal in the centre. I am responding to things inside me, the personal is political for me,” he says adding that it is the myth of the ordinary man that the performance addresses. His sense of belonging is not rooted to a place or location but it wraps the universe. “I am completely confused about where I come from, who I am; I use this non rootedness; it informs my work,” he says.
The works and ideology of noted South African playwright Athol Fugard is his inspiration.
Theatre to Anish means many things but its compensatory dimension is what he revels in. “Things that I cannot do in real life I can do in theatre space,” he says speaking of acting as a liberating experience. He came on to stage “by default” after having been a stage-hand and a lights designer before taking to theatre full time.
Koogu has been staged in unconventional spaces, like in a forest at the ‘Under The Sal Tree’ fest in Assam. There Anish began by praying to the trees, because “one cannot be bigger than nature,” he says. Each space offers him a challenge as movement, used dexterously in the performance, demands continual readjustment.
The concept of Koogu took shape after Anish met itinerant French dancer Michel Casanovas, a practitioner of Felden Krais method, which is about awareness through movement. The two began conversations about their work which led them to a common position of resistance against existing social and political conditions. “We moved to a sense of being a warrior.” In 2012 these conversations were packaged as Koogu. “The performance is a little off-beat,” says Anish and that it was new territory for him when it took shape. With 75 successful shows that includes staging it in Nairobi, Anish says that its format though set has the scope to evolve. There are plans to perform a non-textual show and watch its response. The show was produced by Sandbox Collective.
(Koogu will be performed at Café Papaya on November 7 at 8 p.m .; workshops by dancer Michel Casanovas will be held at The Floor on November 7 and 8 between 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.)
