The Kuttu
Festival 2005 offered a rare
opportunity to experience a galaxy
of known and unknown theatre genres from
South India in a traditional village
setting.
The Festival began on March 1,
2005 at 8 P.M. and ended on March 6,
2005 at about 7 A.M. Every
Festival night featured five to six
different theatre, dance or puppetry
companies. The venue was the open-air
theatre of the Kattaikkuttu Sangam at
Punjarasantankal Village, near
Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu (India).
The Festival programme
combined an unconventional mixture of
tradition, ritual and contemporeinity.
Purposefully the organizers wanted to
transgress the boundaries that divide
high and low culture, town and village,
local and global, insider and outsider
- albeit if only for the time of the
festival's duration.
Five South Indian states were
represented by important theatre
traditions, which were performed in the
local languages: Kathakali (Kerala),
Yakshagana (Karnataka), Vitinatakam
(Andhra Pradesh), Prahallada Nataka
(Orissa) and Kattaikkuttu (Tamilnadu).
The Festival hosted a choice of other
performance genres from the Southern
region and beyond, including leather
puppetry from Andhra Pradesh, Mangala
Isai and Bharata Natyam from Tamilnadu,
contemporary theatre, dance and puppetry
performances by groups from Pondicherry,
Kerala, and Bangalore and novel
Kattaikkuttu performances by the
students of the Kattaikkuttu Youth
Theatre School from Kanchipuram, in
addition to a number of special
entre-acts.
Why?
-
To
enable rural audiences to enjoy forms
of theatre they would never see
otherwise
-
To
celebrate the power of theatre as
a source of inspiration and
reflexiveness
-
To
stir our senses and stimulate our
thinking about the role of theatre in
society
For
whom?
-
Our
regular village audiences
-
A
select group of theatre lovers
from all over the world
By
whom?
The Festival was organized
by the Kattaikkuttu
Sangam, a grassroots, non-profit
organization that promotes the cultural
and economic rights of professional
Kattaikkuttu performers.
This is the second
time that the Kattaikkuttu Sangam
organized a large-scale theatre
Festival.
A similar event was held in March 2000
(see Festival
2000).
Festival
directors: P. Rajagopal
& Hanne M. de Bruin
Festival
coordinators: Maitri
Gopalakrishna & Julia Terlunen
Contact
us
Tamil
Nadu Kattaikkuttu Kalai Valarchi
Munnetra Sangam
& Kattaikkuttu
Youth Theatre
School
16/31,
Selva Vinayakar Koil Street
Vedasala
Nagar, Sevilimedu Post
Kanchipuram-631502,
India
Telephone:
+91 (0)4112 237517 or
+91 (0)4112 309469
E-Mail:
kattaiku@vsnl.com
Home
page of the Kattaikkuttu Sangam:
www.kattaikkuttu.org
Festival
Sponsors
The
official sponsors of the Kuttu
Festival 2005:
-
HIVOS,
Bangalore
-
Kalai
Manram, The Netherlands
-
Royal
Netherlands Embassy, New Delhi
-
South
Zone Cultural Centre, Thanjavur
-
Professor
John Emigh, US
-
State
Bank of India, Kanchipuram
-
Seematti
Tex & Readymade, Kanchipuram
-
M.
Vedachalanayakar, Kanchipuram
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