: The 70th birth anniversary celebrations of dramatist Vayala Vasudevan Pillai began here on Monday. Speaking at the celebrations, writer John Paul said the cinema could not give the visual experience that drama did.
“An actor’s true expression is on the stage and not on screen,” he added. Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi vice-president T.M. Abraham said that theatre had historically been verbal than visual.
Writer I. Shanmughadas presided. Pramod Payyanur and P.N. Prakash also spoke.
The drama, Irulil Aliyunna Sandhya , was staged after the meeting. A seminar will be held on Tuesday. K. Jayakumar, Vice-Chancellor of the Thunchathu Ezhuthachan Malayalam University and former Chief Secretary, will address a remembrance meeting on Wedneday. The plays, Vikatan and Iruttinte Atmavu , will be staged after the meeting.
A titan of the alternative stage, Prof. Vasudevan Pillai worked with G. Sankara Pillai, Ayyappa Panicker, C.N. Sreekantan Nair, and P.K. Venukuttan Nair to evolve a new spatial concept in Malayalam theatre.
After a doctorate in theatre from an Indian university, he did a postgraduate diploma in modern theatre from the University of Rome in 1981 and received training in Japanese theatre at the Meiji University in Tokyo in 1996.
He trained under G. Sankara Pillai in Kerala, Ferrucio Marrotti, and Jerzy Grotowski in Rome, and Richard Schechener in New York. Prof. Vasudevan Pillai had specialised on the works of Irish playwright J.M. Synge.
He carried forward a movement nurtured by G. Sankara Pillai through Natakakalari workshops and later classes at the School of Drama and Fine Arts at Aranattukara here. As Director of the School of Drama and Fine Arts from 1992 to 2005, and Chairman of the University of Kerala’s Board of Studies in Performing and Visual Arts, he developed a modern framework for performing arts education.
He directed over 40 plays, including those of Bhasa, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Tagore.
