The Path of Sadhana: A Life Spent in Search of the Ancient Wisdom of Acting. Interview with Gopal Venu
Renu Ramanath*
Gopal Venu, or Venuji as he is endearingly addressed by his disciples in India and abroad, is an internationally reputed performer, performing arts scholar, researcher and master trainer deeply rooted in the classical performing arts traditions of Kerala, India. Hailing from Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the state of Kerala, Venu has acquired a strong background in Kutiyattam, the classical Sanskrit theatre indigenous to Kerala and included among the UNESCO-recognized “Oral and Intangible Heritages of Humanity.” Venu has occupied the world of the performing arts for nearly seven decades, beginning with his initiation into Kathakali, the unique classical dance-drama indigenous to Kerala, at the young age of ten years. Since then, Venu has played a significant role in the rejuvenation of many classical and folk art forms of Kerala including Kutiyattam, Nangiarkoothu, Mudiyettu (Ritual Theatre), Kakkarissi Natakam (Folk Theatre), Tholpavakoothu (Shadow Puppetry) and Pavakathakali (Glove Puppetry).
He has invented a dance notation system for delineating the hand gestures (Mudra-s) of dance and theatre of Kerala, and also works as a visiting Master Teacher at the Intercultural Theatre Institute (ITI), Singapore. Additionally, he served as one of the four directors at the World Theatre Project, conceptualised in the in 90’s by the Swedish theatre professional, Peter Oskarson. Venu, now 80 years old, is still immersed in the production of new performances of Kutiyattam – Mricchakatikam (The Little Clay Cart), a Sanskrit drama from approximately 5th CE, attributed to the ancient playwright Sudraka. For the first time, this text is being adapted into the format of Kutiyattam.
Below are excerpts that I have crafted from a nearly 100-minute interview with Venu recorded at “Kottichetham,” his quaint studio theatre nestled amidst greenery in his unembellished residence in the quiet township of Irinjalakuda, Kerala. His wife, Nirmala Paniker, is a master teacher of Mohiniyattam, the classical dance form of Kerala, and their daughter, Kapila Venu, is an acclaimed Kutiyattam performer. Typical of the masters of Asian classical theatre, Venu gives detailed examples of his explorations into the ancient wisdom which he has acquired during his decades-long career, instead of providing academically tailored, crisp packages of information. In what follows, Venu discusses Navarasa Sadhana, the unique training methodology for actors which he has developed during his decade-long explorations of the performing arts tradition of India.
Renu Ramanath: Let us begin with Navarasa Sadhana. Can you define Navarasa Sadhana, and perhaps explain the practice of Navarasa Sadhana? If you could explain it to an audience who is not familiar with the Indian traditional forms or Indian traditional practices of acting, how would you define Navarasa Sadhana?
Gopal Venu: Navarasa Sadhana could be broadly defined as an actor training methodology drawn from the traditional Indian acting systems as specified in the ancient treatises including Natyasastra. It is an alternate actors training module based on the traditional Indian theatre, and ancient treatises including Natyasastra. Through the systematic and daily practice of the Navarasa-s (The Nine Rasa-s), the actors can reach better levels of emotional expression. It is a training methodology that acts as a bridge between India’s ancient legacy of abhinaya (acting) and the contemporary performers.
The “Nava Rasa-s” or the Nine Emotions / Expressions, form the core of the traditional Indian acting, and “Sadhana” means the systematic, continuous, methodical practice of any discipline with the aim of attaining a certain desired level of knowledge or accomplishment. “Sadhana” is also an important notion in the Indian system of spiritual as well as artistic practices.
This training system is the result of my nearly seven decade-long practice and enquiry into the world of performing art forms that started when I was 11 years old, when I studied Kathakali under some of Kerala’s leading masters. That journey took me across India and abroad, where I explored many traditional and folk-art forms. I finally chose to specialise in Kutiyattam, India’s richest heritage of classical performing art forms, which dates back almost 2000 years.
I was blessed with the opportunity to receive training in Kutiyattam under one of the living legends of the art form during the 80s, Guru Ammannur Madhava Chakyar, who gained international acclaim as he performed all over the world, including the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, 2001, on the occasion of recognizing the art form as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. He was awarded the Scroll of Honour from Koichiro Matsuura, the Director General of UNESCO at the time. I was lucky enough to have been trained under this great master, who was the last among the true masters of this classical art form. It was not an easy process to win the confidence of old Indian or Asian masters like him, who are steeped in tradition and their beliefs.
I was also closely associated with Madhava Chakyar in the management of the Ammannur Chachu Chakyar Smaraka Gurukulam, the training centre established in the name of his uncle, a genuine maestro of Kutiyattam who passed away before I arrived at Irinjalakuda during the late 80s. At that time, the Gurukulam was in a neglected state with very few students or facilities. I managed to secure a steady grant from the Ministry of Culture in New Delhi, and also managed to convince Ammannur Madhava Chakyar to perform in public venues, at first outside Kerala, and later in international venues. Initially he was reluctant to perform publicly as it conflicted with his traditional beliefs, but realising that the times were changing, he broke himself free from the chains of tradition. Soon, he became a well-respected figure in the national and international performing arts circuit.
Please tell us about the World Theatre Project, the international collaboration that you joined during the 90s which led to your exposure to performance arts traditions in many countries.
During the 90s I became associated with the World Theatre Project, a programme headed by Swedish theatre professional, Peter Oskarson, based in Stockholm. I was one of the five directors of the project, along with Ma Ke, master of Beijing Opera, Manuela Soeiro, theatre director from Mozambique, known as the Mother of Mozambican theatre, Henning Mankell (eminent writer, playwright) and Peter Oskarson. Many eminent theatre makers and scholars from various countries were also part of this project, which oftentimes seemed like a roundtable of theatre artists. Regular gatherings were held in different parts of the world, including Kerala, Mozambique and Sweden.
Our first assignment was to find out whether there were any written documents on theatre available from the ancient times, in any of the cultures in the world. The exploration naturally started with Europe, and we thus identified Aristotle’s Poetics, which was around 50 to 60 pages in length. Additionally, we found Chirologia (Chirologia: The Natural Language of the Hand) and Chironomia (Chironomia: The Art of Manual Rhetoric and Public Address), texts supposedly dating back to 16th century England which more or less addressed the art of oratory or public speech. After that, we explored China with the help of Ma Ke. However, we could not find any written manuscript related to theatre from China, although there were documents related to martial arts. On the other hand, when we focused on Japan, we found
the 14th century treatise Kadensho: The Book of Transmission of the Flower authored by the Noh master, Zeami Motokiyo. As the first known treatise on theatre in Japan, it is a wonderful text of 150 pages. During our visit to Japan, a local theatre community arranged a Noh performance and reading of this text for us as part of the World Theatre Project.
After all these explorations, I finally realised that Natyasastra, the ancient Indian treatise dated between 200 BCE and 200 CE, is the most comprehensive, detailed and ancient treatise on theatre in the world, with its 6,000 poetic verses divided into 36 chapters which describe performing art forms. However, Natyasastra was not the only text that India generated; subsequent centuries saw a plethora of secondary literature emanating from Natyasastra, including commentaries and interpretations that were authored by scholars from different parts of the country. People say that Natyasastra is not practical, yet no other culture in the world has produced such a treasure. For me as well as for others in the World Theatre project, this was a major eye opener. From that point onward, I started looking into the ancient treasures available in India.
Still, with all this rich legacy of theoretical knowledge, there was no practical acting methodology based on the Indian traditions?
No, and furthermore, there was no serious work being done in that direction either. Even the National School of Drama, the premier institute of theatre in the country established in 1959, focused on Western theatrical practices. One of the major reasons for the practitioners of modern theatre shunning the ancient treatises might have been the intertwining of “casteist” practices within the existing classical performing art traditions. However, Natyasastra is like a treasure trove that remains hugely unexplored.
Interestingly, I had started thinking about finding an indigenous methodology of theatre training way back in the 1970s. In 1971, I attended a theatre workshop led by B.V. Karanth, the stalwart theatre maker, film director, playwright and dramatist, at Kala Parishad, that is to say, Kala Academy, the Government body for performing art forms under the Department of Culture, State of Madhya Pradesh, in Bhopal. Kapila Vatsyayan (1928 – 2020), the great matriarch of India’s cultural research, was invited to give a lecture at that workshop which explored how Sanskrit plays were enacted in ancient times. She had done extensive study on “Arthadyotanika,” an interpretation of the ancient Sanskrit play, Abhijñānaśākuntalam by Kālidāsa, The great scholar Ananda Coomaraswamy, in his Foreword to The Mirror of Gesture, being the Abhinaya Darpana of Nandikeswara, the translation of the seminal work into English, had mentioned “Arthadyotanika.” At that workshop, Kapila Vatsyayan also presented a small portion from Shakuntala which depicted King Dushyanta’s hunting scene, based on the suggestions in the treatise; she herself performed as the deer, and she invited me to perform as the charioteer.
That was an eye-opening experience for me: it made me realise that dance and theatre were very different in India. However, all the references to Natyasastra at that time were made in the context of dance, that too, Bharathanatyam. But, with that workshop, I started to realise that Natyasastra had more to do with theatre.
After returning to Kerala, I resumed my work with other art forms until I happened to encounter Kutiyattam in Thrissur during the 80s. Soon afterwards, I moved to Irinajalakuda, the hometown of Ammannur Madhava Chakyar, and started to work on Kutiyattam. I was working at the time as a faculty member in the newly organized School of Drama in Thrissur, but soon I quit that job to dedicate myself completely to the pursuit of Kutiyattam. Soon, through our combined efforts, the Ammannur Gurukulam rose to prominence, and Ammannur Madhava Chakyar became a national and international celebrity and was showered with the country’s highest honours.
It was during one of my sessions with Madhava Chakyar that he first mentioned an informal school of acting that existed in a royal family near Irinjalakuda. The Kodungallur Kovilakam (Royal House of Kodungallur) was a local royal household who were known for their scholarly pursuits. I discovered that a member of that family, Kodungallur Bhagavathar Kunjunni Thampuran, had offered a special training to Madhava Chakyar which had helped him fine-tune his acting prowess. I also discovered that he had been exploring the influence of breath on ‘Abhinaya’ or expressive acting, which was the result of his personal explorations.
So, when did these explorations materialise into a solid training methodology?
The major part of this process happened because of the Intercultural Theatre Institute, ITI, formerly known as TTRP or Theatre Training and Research Programme, the independent theatre training institute in Singapore that was founded by Tirunilan Sasitharan, theatre educator, and the late Kun Pao Kun, Singaporean playwright, director and arts activist. The Institute focuses on training students in four major Asian classical performing art forms, which are Beijing Opera, from China, Wayang Wong, also known as Wayang Orang, from Indonesia, Noh, from Japan, and Kutiyattam, from India. Though their initial choice was Bharathanatyam, the TTRP soon shifted to Kutiyattam.
In 2005, when the Institute was known as TTRP, Sasitharan approached me with a request to introduce basic elements of Kutiyattam to their students. Afterwards, in 2007, Kutiyattam-based acting training modules were also introduced in the National School of Drama in New Delhi. By 2010, I had arrived at the idea of introducing the enacting of Navarasa-s (The Nine Rasa-s / Expression) through breath control to the students. Slowly, I started to develop the training system, drawing upon the tenets of Natyasastra and combining it with breath control techniques inspired by my training under Guru Ammannur Madhava Chakyar.
Navarasa Sadhana is not part of the traditional training of Kutiyattam. It draws upon the basic tenets of Kutiyattam training, along with the concepts from the Natyasastra, such as the Vyabhichari Bhava-‘s,” which are transitory emotions.
The formula, or Rasa-Sutra, given in Natyasastra, is produced by a combination of Vibhava (determinants), Anubhava (consequents) and Vyabhichari (transitory states), and explains the importance of creating the aesthetic pleasure through various components of acting. Navarasa Sadhana is the result of my efforts to create an alternate teaching and training methodology by drawing from the rich and ancient Indian traditions of theatre which are formulated in texts such as Natyasastra. However, more in depth research is needed to further its evolution, including research into the various techniques that were used in Kutiyattam. Although I will turn 80 next month, I am still hoping to carry this work forward to completion.
Please share with us a few words about your new projects.
I am presently directing a new production of Kutiyattam based on the ancient Sanskrit text called Mricchakatikam (The Little Clay Cart), attributed to Sudraka, the ancient playwright who lived most likely in the 5th CE. Though Mricchakatika has been widely adopted into theatre format in India by many modern-day masters, it has never been performed in the format of Kutiyattam. It is a challenge, since the play does not belong to the traditional repertoire of Kutiyattam. The ten-act play needs to be edited and compiled into a one- or two-hour long performance in the structure of Kutiyattam but without sacrificing its essence. We also need to prepare its performance text, called Attaprakaram, the basis of a Kutiyattam performance. The new production will premier in Bangalore in July 2025.
*Renu Ramanath is an independent journalist and columnist focussing on theatre and performing arts based in Kerala, India. She has been associated in co-ordinating major theatre festivals of Kerala, including the International Theatre Festival of Kerala (ITFoK) organized by the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi and the National Theatre Festival organized by the Department of Information & Public Relations, Govt. of Kerala. At present she is the Executive Committee member of Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi and Director Board Member of Kerala Cultural Activists Welfare Fund Board. She is also a member of the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC).
Copyright © 2025 Renu Ramanath
Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, #31, June 2025
e-ISSN: 2409-7411
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