"It is not just one thing that unites us," said the panellists Sabitha Satchi, Ari Sitas and Sumangala Damodaran at a hearty session on Poetry and Theatre.
Theatre, music poetry is what sparked the interaction rather than discussion on the second day of the Kerala Literature Festival at the session on Poetry and Theatre. Sabitha Satchi kickstarted the session by asking Arisitas on his journey from theatre to music and its theory. He narrated his journey from a social situation in the seventies in South Africa. The apartheid movement, the labour movement and trade unionism also influenced his voyage through
Continuing the discussion, Sabitha commented that Ari's works are closely related to tonality and soundscape and she asked how he connects music with poetry, to which he replied that with music, words had started finding him and that fuelled his poetry.
Sumangala Damodaran joined the conversation, mentioning about IPTA, the Indian People’s Theatre Association. She said that the organisation emerged with the objectives to imagine a new India, to address the question of nationalism and define nation as a whole.
It was followed by indicating the similarities between post-independent India and the South Africa in the seventies. When asked about creative sociology, he added that exploration of reality and answering questions about the kind of stories to be told in sociology, led him to become a creative sociology writer.
They said that they were unified by incidents like emergence of Modi government in India, the Marikana incident in South Africa in which minors were shot dead by the state and the rise of right wing politics all over the world, which made them unite for a reason and resist it through art. Sumangla opined that their project, Insurrections was similar to the Kochi Muziris biennale, where artists came together, and sang which was the resistance they created for their cause without any language barrier.
The session was followed with the recitations of a poem from Project Insurrection. The poem Lallabhai which was co-written by Vivek Narayan, Sabitha and Ari was recited. It was followed by Sabitha's recitation of the poem 13th Insurrection of Earthworms written on the occasion of Adivasi strikes for land and mother Earth in India. Sumangala continued the recitation, with the poem The Storming. The session ended with the recitation of poem Insurrection of the Flowers and concluded with an interaction with the audience.