Koumarane Valavane
| 21 July 2011
There are encounters which will make your day; people who come to a town - Pondicherry in this case - with an idea, shimmering and yet realistic, trying to reconnect society to its roots through art. What a mission!
Koumarane Valavane is an actor. Born in Karikal, he lived in France for twenty years, being a permanent member of the well-known "Théâtre du Soleil" for the last four of them. Ariane Mouchkine's goal to create a theater closer to the public - any kind of public, not only the elitist bourgeois- seemed to have inspired Koumarane Valavane. His return to India in 2007 was motivated by a new project: bringing theater back to the mainstream. This ambitious idea has been presented in 2010 during a festival in July with an interesting choice of play: "Le Cid" by Corneille in Kathakali...With the great support of public institutions, the festival "Kameleon" will be brought back this year from 28th to 31st of July 2011.
We had the great pleasure to meet its promoter for more information and we hope that the event will exceed every expectation.
How did you come up with this festival?
The idea was born four or five years ago. At the beginning, I wanted to organize it in Chennai, where I used to live. But Chennai, is like a dinosaur, impossible to attack...While I wanted to go back to Pondicherry, I started a Tamil Nadu tour, playing "Les Fourberies de Scapin" with the company Indianostrum. Chennai is a town, where theatre has no roots, at least not the modern kind. People want to show that traditional art forms are connected to ancient India, which is not true. Even though, I am not against them, I consider them to be customized folk forms, where every shocking aspect has been cut out as well as every part coming from the lower castes. Only the noble parts are kept, and sold as an Indian tradition. If you go to villages, you will find different and sometimes amazingly free.
I then realized that I had to create an audience like in France where directors literally molded a whole generation for theatre in the 50's and 60's.
Festivals came to life in order to make theater more attractive for the masses while giving them back their culture. That is how Avignon started. If your parents are used to theater, you will be used to it. A young Indian however, will not feel at ease and may not stop to watch a scene on the seaside. He will be out of his comfort zone, thinking this is not his world. Finding a way to make this kind of public feel comfortable around theater is the real goal of this festival. I believe it is one of the major points we have to work on, in Pondicherry and India. My generation missed this train, but we are not the target any more. I want to educate the next generation through school and regular events.
This festival will showcase extremely rare theatrical forms such as the blind troubadour from a small port next to Karikal. Every day, he goes to the seaside and sings the Tamil epic poem Silappathikaram which is one of the heights of Tamil literature. In exchange, people give him fish to survive. We wanted to bring him here and give him a real audience and we realized that he never put a foot out of his village. This art form tends to disappear, despite its infatuation. His lifestyle is extremely interesting, as he sings for a small piece of fish without asking where his art will bring him.
Can you tell us how it started, as you are one of the founding members?
Once I arrived in Chennai, I wanted to found a theater company. I did an internship at the French Alliance. When I met the senior director Muthuswami and told him that I left the "Théâtre du Soleil" in order to found my own in india, he told me that I had to be the craziest person he had ever met and urged me to fly back instantly. He asked me, what all my sacrifices would be worth. I answered immediately, without hesitation :"you create a desert, even though you wanted to build a beautiful garden. You have been digging your whole life and you will die. I will dig and I will die too. So will others after us but all this will someday mount up to a big pile of fertilizer, which will be used to finally build this garden"
Once I left the Af, I have been welcomed by Kalakshetra, the famous Bharatanatyam school. During this time, I met Paul Elouard, who offered us to come to Satsanga with Indianostrum. As the financial situation was quite critical, I took a job at the French school which allowed me to continue with my company.
Who is Indianostrum ?
People I met in Chennai and during our travels in the state of Tamil Nadu. We are currently seven members but I hope that we will be thirty in the future. We write and translate a lot. Right now, I am translating Baudelaire from French to Tamil with the help of the French embassy. We write and adapt all our pieces ourselves such as Scapin. I have been told to retranslate the Tamil version in French as the outcome was in such a Tamil context.
We will be performing two pieces this year in the festival. French Consul Mr. Fournier expressed his wish to support the festival and decided to transform the garden of the consulate into a stage, the time of a performance. We will play the "Fourberies de Scapin" as the opening number of the festival.
What about last year's festival?
It definitely was an important experience with a mostly European public. Even for the grand master of Kathakali, we only had a small audience. At the French Alliance, there was not enough space and at the beach not enough performances. I thought, people would be intrigued and come but they did not. Only theater lovers came and they are mostly European.
This year, we will still use the Maison Colombani, showing pieces which could attract Europeans, the Distillerie there will be modern theatre and the spot at the Gandhi statue will be open for everyone. This year the program is more homogeneous, we have been very demanding as they are 18 performances. The dance part is special as we have two girls dancing ???, a traditional dance form. They just started and contacted me as they wanted to come to Pondicherry. Even though it is a bit out of the frame of the festival, I invited them as I believe that the festival Kameleon has been created for the youth and should therefore be open for the youth. We are still flexible enough, to bend the limits... Who knows maybe ten years from now the director of the Festival will be more severe...
Kameleon Festival's program
More info about Indianostrum