<p class="bodytext">Vanapuri Vaathukaaran’, a title that roughly translates to ‘the duck herder of the forest city’, is a new theatre production by the Bengaluru-based Adavi Arts Foundation. Premiering on Saturday, the performance follows a Vaathukaaran (duck herder) who undertakes one final task: delivering the last letters of people shaped and silenced by war, migration, caste, protest and loss.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The Tamil play draws from the memories of its director, Naren, who grew up knowing the Vaathukaaran, a clown-like figure in traditional Tamil theatre and the keeper of a community’s intangible knowledge. When Naren left his village and eventually returned, the figure he had grown up with was simply gone. “I couldn’t find him anymore. That absence stayed with me,” Naren recalls.</p>.Theatre with a conscience.<p class="bodytext">The Vaathukaaran’s disappearance, whether through migration, globalisation or caste-based erasure, is what the play investigates. The production also engages with a history of representation in Indian theatre, questioning who has historically been permitted to embody power on stage, and who has been relegated to its margins. </p>.<p class="bodytext">Naren says the play was rehearsed in a small house in Attibele, sometimes on the road outside, with the whole collective cooking, cleaning and rehearsing. </p>.<p class="bodytext"><span class="italic">On May 16, 7 pm, at Shoonya, Lal Bagh Main Road. Call 90801 17469.</span></p>
<p class="bodytext">Vanapuri Vaathukaaran’, a title that roughly translates to ‘the duck herder of the forest city’, is a new theatre production by the Bengaluru-based Adavi Arts Foundation. Premiering on Saturday, the performance follows a Vaathukaaran (duck herder) who undertakes one final task: delivering the last letters of people shaped and silenced by war, migration, caste, protest and loss.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The Tamil play draws from the memories of its director, Naren, who grew up knowing the Vaathukaaran, a clown-like figure in traditional Tamil theatre and the keeper of a community’s intangible knowledge. When Naren left his village and eventually returned, the figure he had grown up with was simply gone. “I couldn’t find him anymore. That absence stayed with me,” Naren recalls.</p>.Theatre with a conscience.<p class="bodytext">The Vaathukaaran’s disappearance, whether through migration, globalisation or caste-based erasure, is what the play investigates. The production also engages with a history of representation in Indian theatre, questioning who has historically been permitted to embody power on stage, and who has been relegated to its margins. </p>.<p class="bodytext">Naren says the play was rehearsed in a small house in Attibele, sometimes on the road outside, with the whole collective cooking, cleaning and rehearsing. </p>.<p class="bodytext"><span class="italic">On May 16, 7 pm, at Shoonya, Lal Bagh Main Road. Call 90801 17469.</span></p>