Biennale Run-up: Koodiyattam Outreach at Kottayam on Wednesday

Kottayam / November 3, 2025

Kottayam, Nov. 03: Taking forward its Outreach and Pavilion Programs in the run-up to the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025 (KMB-6) beginning next month, a day-long event on the world’s oldest surviving Sanskrit theatre will be hosted in the city on Wednesday.

The Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF), which is organising the 109-day festival from December 12, is set to launch its performing-art segment with a show of Kerala’s 1,800-year-old Koodiyattam and discussions focusing its present-day relevance in a fast-changing socio-political context.

Named ‘Art…Time...Conflict’, the segment, curated by scholar-activist Keli Ramachandran, will feature its inaugural event at Mahatma Gandhi University on November 5, debating the themes of art, time and conflict. Titled ‘Encore’, the day-long programme at the varsity campus in Athirampuzha will explore the various dynamics of culture in relation to power, identity, resistance, practices (spatial and material), emotions and rhetoric, he revealed.

At the Inter University Centre for Studies in Science of Music (IUCSSM) on PD Hills, MG University Vice Chancellor Prof C.T. Aravindakumar will inaugurate the event at 10 a.m. KMB President Bose Krishnamachari will be the Guest of Honour. With IUCSSM Director Prof Jayachandran K. as the chair, other speakers will include MG University Syndicate Member Adv. Reji Zachariah and Dr Biju P.R, who is in charge of the varsity’s College Development Council. Keli Ramachandran will welcome the gathering, while Dr Harikumar S.of the School of Letters will propose thanks.

The forenoon half will feature Kalamandalam Krishnendu and group staging a Nangiarkoothu, which is a solo-female offshoot of Koodiyattam.

The post-lunch session will start at 1.30 pm with a seminar, where two scholars will present papers. Kerala Kalamandalam Vice-Chancellor Dr B. Ananthakrishnan will talk on ‘Art and Caste – A Kalamandalam Story’, while Dr Aju K Narayanan’s topic is ‘Cultural Politics of Arts’.

Subsequently, senior Koodiyattam artists Kalamandalam Sivan Namboothiri, Rama Chakyar, Girija and Shylaja, besides mizhavu percussionist Easwaranunni will be felicitated. They will then participate in a colloquium and present informal performances.

The start of the 1.30 pm session will be with the lighting of the lamp before the images of two late doyens of Koodiyattam: actor Painkulam Rama Chakyar (1905-80) and percussionist P.K. Narayanan Nambiar (1927-2023).

The Kottayam event comes in the 76th year of the Koothu segment of Koodiyattam finding a public stage. That was in 1949 when Rama Chakyar, a native of Painkulam near Shoranur, gave a presentation at a house in Cherupoyka near Kottarakkara in south Travancore. The master went on with his revolutionary efforts to break caste barriers by mentoring artists beyond the small community that practised the art when Kalamandalam invited him as the chief teacher on its introduction of Koodiyattam as a department in 1965.

Also, the institution in Cheruthuruthy appointed Narayanan Nambiar of Lakkidi as the instructor for mizhavu. This generated several students of the mizhavu pot-drum, which is the main percussion instrument of Koodiyattam and Nangiarkoothu. By the turn of the century, in 2000, UNESCO recognized Koodiyattam as one of the masterpieces of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity, affirming its global cultural significance.

At the Kottayam event, Sivan Namboothiri, Rama Chakyar, Girija and Shylaja are of the first batch of Koodiyattam students from Kerala Kalamandalam.

KMB-6 has its artworks curated by Nikhil Chopra with HH Art Spaces, Goa. The show will be on till March 31, 2026. KBF is a 2010-registered non-profit charitable trust.

ENDS