Check out the Artist session on Tuesday at ITFoK | Photo credit: KK NAJEEB
The third day of the International Theater Festival of Kerala (ITFoK) definitely moved beyond performance to reflection as the ‘Meet the Artist’ session at FAOS opened up insightful conversations with the theater people behind three impressive productions. These intimate dialogues offered a rare glimpse into how contemporary theater grapples with some of the most pressing anxieties of our time.
The discussion on Mallpractice and the Show, directed by Atul Pethe, focused on the politics of surveillance imposed on women’s bodies. Pethe revealed that the game was born out of two real events: the circulation of morphed images of dancer Gautami on social media, and the deeply personal moment when his daughter discovered a hidden camera in a rehearsal room.
“These experiences forced us to confront how women are constantly being watched and controlled,” he said. The creative team chose a dance-theatre form without dialogue, believing that silence and movement can express trauma more powerfully than words. Performer Rujuta Soman described the production as a dream project and recalled her mentor Rohini’s belief that “the body is the instrument and dance is the medium”. Lighting designer Pradeep Vaidya and music collaborator Umesh Warbhuwan spoke about how light and sound function not as embellishments but as narrative forces in their own right.
Directed by Raji Krishnan, Under the Mangosteen Tree brought Vaikom Mohammad Basheer closer not through mimicry, but through a deep dive into his humanistic worldview. “We didn’t research Basheer – we lived in his world,” the director noted. Rehearsals conducted in an old motorcycle garage along with time spent in Kozhikode and Beypore shaped the sensibility and structure of the game. One of the most significant creative decisions was the casting of a young girl, Aparna, in the role of the child Basheer – a move that disrupted conventional stage representations. The discussion reflected on the need to remove outdated theatrical idioms while preserving Basheer’s enduring compassion and universality.
The conversation on The Nether shifted focus to the troubling ethical terrain of the digital future. Host Amit Parameswaran framed the play as a confrontation between imagination and fear. Director Mohit Takalkar warned that technology is no longer just influencing behavior but actively redefining what it means to be human. Actors Neil Bhoopalam and Vivek Madan talked about negotiating the fragile line between physical presence and digital identity, while set designers Sarthak Narula and Saras Kumar explained how AI-generated visuals were used to evoke the seductive dangers of virtual worlds.
Together, these sessions reaffirmed ITFoK’s role as a vital space where theater does more than entertain – it interrogates the world it mirrors and challenges audiences to think as deeply as they feel.
Check out the Artist session on Tuesday at ITFoK
Published – 27 Jan 2026 21:00 IST
