In February, this year I had written about a fundraising appeal by the Puducherry-based Indianostrum Théâtre, to support groundwork for an upcoming residency in Paris with one of France’s foremost theatre directors, Ariane Mnouchkine, and her Théâtre du Soleil (literally, Theatre of the Sun), known for its vibrant, politically charged, contemporary works. The campaign on an online crowdsourcing platform raised only a modest amount, but the tour cost itself had been previously pledged by their hosts and certain well-wishers.
Last month, the troupe, which includes nine actors and a musician, finally embarked on its Parisian adventure and arrived at the famed La Cartoucherie, a former munitions factory that is now home to cutting-edge theatre. For Indianostrum’s artistic director, Koumarane Valavane, it was a homecoming, because he had cut his teeth as a theatre-maker under the tutelage of the illustrious Mnouchkine herself at this very venue, before shifting base to India from France in 2005. Speaking to La Croix , a French daily, Valavane said, “Paradoxically, it was during my years at the Théâtre du Soleil that I discovered the theatre of my own country, India. I owe Ariane everything.” Significantly, the tour marks ten years of his theatre outfit.
Creative synergy
Mnouchkine’s own Indian sojourn last year, facilitated in part by Valavane, boasted of a much larger contingent of 80 people (musicians, actors, technicians). Using elements of the rich Tamil traditional theatre, Theru Koothu, that they explored in India, Mnouchkine’s team was able to mount Une chambre En Inde ( A Room in India ), an exuberant production that opened in Paris in December, last year. Of course, her association with India, an “infinitely nourishing land”, goes back decades. A creative exchange in terms of their respective theatre practices is an important part of the residency for Indianostrum, who are also travelling with their signature productions. For over 10 days in April, the residency was flagged off at La Cartoucherie by the inaugural performance, Kunti Karna , a tragedy inspired by the Mahabharata through the texts of Rabindranath Tagore and Jean-Claude Carrière. Reviewers have certainly been kind. According to critic and blogger Véronique Hotte, it was “an intense indoor show of strength, muscular tension and wisdom.”In Toute La Culture , Simon Gerard writes, “With Kunti Karna , one can imagine how much the contemporary Indian theatre, without falling into the dusty pit of anthropology, draws its force and uniqueness from the ancestral foundations on which it rests.”
Indianostrum’s works are characterised by a full-bodied physicality drawn from traditional martial art forms like kalaripayattu, a quality not lost on viewers in France. Hotte describes how a rigid pillar of wood gives the artiste (Vasanth Selvam) an opportunity to hoist himself up, using only arms and hands. “Karna, saved from the waters, returns to it with regularity: as the actor hurls himself into a shallow basin of water. Immersed in its depths, he reappears, breathless, to lift himself out of the water and devote himself to a rigorous and arduous regime: beautiful, flawless stances, each time,” she writes, with a sense of clear wonderment. “The stretched bodies of the actors reveal a supernatural beauty, whether in equilibrium along hanging streamers of fabric or on top of wooden poles,” says Gerard, commenting on aspects of the production likely influenced by mallakhamb, the still popular ancient form of Indian gymnastics.
Intense act
La Croix ’s coverage of the tour highlights the contributions of Kalieaswari Srinivasan, a member of the Indianostrum troupe. Srinivasan was the lead in Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan , that won the coveted Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. She played Yalini, a Sri Lankan refugee who flees the war to Europe by masquerading as a family unit with two other refugees that she has only just met. Srinivasan met Yalini’s contradictions and aspirations head-on, and delivered a stoic turn with a simmering intensity.
Dheepan was screened at the 2015 edition of the Mumbai Film Festival, but is hardly seen as an Indian film. So while Srinivasan was the toast of the international festival circuit that year, she remains relatively unknown in her own country. This, La Croix attributes to her dark complexion, “At best she can hope to play maids in mainstream movies,” certainly a simplistic take on the workings of the foreign film industry that, is also not without truth. Civil strife in Sri Lanka forms the backdrop of Indianostrum’s second production at La Cartoucherie, Land of Ashes , part of a trilogy of plays, which started its run on May 5.
Editor’s note: quotes have been paraphrased from French
