A space to make the invisible, visible

For a theatre festival that is truly international to have completed ten frenetic editions in India is certainly nothing to be scoffed at. It is a milestone that has very momentously been arrived at by the International Theatre Festival of Kerala (widely known by its easy-on-the-tongue and faintly risqué acronym, ITFoK) with this year's edition, which got underway on January 20. Since 2008, Thrissur, one of the country’s cultural capitals, has been home to the festival, which acquired its undeniable stature fairly early in its journey — an early edition that focused on plays from South America was especially trailblazing. The cultural capital it has since acquired is not one of gilded prestige (a notion that always smacks of privilege) but rather the word-of-mouth currency that cuts across most distinctions. It is a reputation that does not require a pedestal of any sort and indeed, none is offered by the denizens who populate its venues.

Spotlighting the obscure

As an ITFoK addict (this is my fifth festival), the train to Thrissur, where this piece is being written, is always redolent with memories and impressions. Unlike other festivals in the country that seem to be perennially engaged in the race of gathering ‘big names’ for their picture book rosters, at ITFoK one gets the sense of a enterprise that does not kowtow to hierarchies even if it might respect individual legacies. Instead, with each successive edition, attempts have been made to excavate the rare, the obscure, or the unknown — flitterbugs that rise in the wind come home to roost here. The fiefdoms that thrive elsewhere do not exercise much leverage here, and if there is ever dismissive conversation about the festival it comes from these disregarded quarters.

There have been those occasions when it may have seemed that backroom intrigue might have played a role in certain selections in the past, and it is the job of theatregoers to always be healthily cynical about these things. The festival even makes available appropriate fora for discussion and debate (if not redressal) because not only from Kerala, but from across the world, ITFoK attracts an ‘activated audience’ that possesses a kind of agency rarely seen elsewhere. This is not to give the festival a clean chit on all grounds, of course, but to acknowledge the independent spirit that it has tried to cultivate so assiduously.

Amidst the audiences at Thrissur, we are reminded of a social order that is a level playing field, even if such a thing doesn’t really exist anywhere. The state-owned Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi whirring in the background is seen, by many, as evidence of conspiratorial governmental collusion, and the inveterate memento handing after performances, a symptom of its bureaucracy. Traces of the VIP culture persist. It is to the credit of successive artistic directors that they have played a balancing act between these disparate pillars that have propped up the festival’s edifice, in such a seamlessly effective manner.

Committed audiences

At ITFoK audiences expect a certain transparency when it comes to curating decisions. They will not be herded into marketable productions without reserving the right to walk out en masse or be kept out of sold-out (and overbooked) performances without putting up a fight, all the while adding a soundscape of dissonance to the on-stage proceedings. ITFoK-goers have been known to haggle about the ticket prices (a paltry Rs 30 per show this year, which still belies its ‘free for all’ tag) or the serpentine queues that begin hours before a show, or the absence of catering options. They give off the impression of temperamental outsiders with an appetite for sampling what they might deem to be stageworthy (and it isn’t always that excellence is a criteria). For these theatregoers, at its worst, the festival programmes snooze fests that come equipped with air conditioned halls and the promise of foreign nudity. At its best, though, there is the openness to new ideas and provocative alternatives to their own existences that could, for now, be experienced only vicariously but later seep into their own lives irrevocably. Theatre and the arts are agents of change whose efficacy remains wholly unproved in tangible documented ways. Yet it is something that is quite palpable in the air of the festival, infused with the notion of strange influences that seem familiar enough to feel like ideas worth adopting, if only momentarily.

Each edition of ITFoK showcases the problems of curatorship in an international festival with little access to the world (thanks to our weak currency). The more easily accessible embassy offerings have sometimes proved to be weak spots in otherwise stellar line-ups. This consular presence is always awkward and ITFoK could do well to shut out these ambassadors of soft power and rely on other ways to support international programming (and collectives to this end have sprung up all over the world). Affiliations are always something that we should be wary of in a festival that champions (as has been explicitly stated this year with the theme: Reclaiming the margins) voices of marginalisation. Voices of change. Voices of resistance. Or voices that have often been throttled in the dark. Even if structures and boundaries are everywhere, we come to ITFoK to be reminded of a world without borders.

The International Theatre Festival of Kerala is ongoing until January 29; more details at theatrefestivalkerala.com