Curtains of Change

Of late, winds of change have been blowing through the contemporary theatre scene of Kerala. A new crop of young directors, all in their 30s, has led to the rise of a fresh sensibility. This “new-generation” theatre-makers, who include Deepan Sivaraman, Sankar Venkateswaran, M G Jyothish and Martin John C, have produced plays with strong visual vocabulary, physicality, technical perfection and daring proportions that have stunned theatre audiences in Kerala.

Deepan Sivaraman’s Spinal Cord (2009), which won seven Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META) in 2010, and Peer Gynt (2011), Sankar Venkateswaran’s Quick Death (2008), Sahyante Makan’s An Elephant Project and Water Station (2011), and M G Jyothish’s Sagara Kanyaka – Lady from the Sea (2011), were celebrated for their powerful imagery and use of techno­logy, including innovative light-and-sound design and video projections. Martin John’s After the Silence (2011), though a much smaller and more compact production, went on to win four national awards at the META this year. John’s innovative project that incorporates a bus as a performance space has just been launched with the support of the India Foundation for Arts.