KOCHI: “Everything begins and ends with the body, doesn’t it? We don’t possess only one body, but several bodies and several identities - there is our dramatic body, our erotic body and our political body.
All great masters of theatre have focused on the body in their own ways,” says Arka Mukhopadhyay, performer, director and poet who explores the possibilities of the human body through physical theatre.
The artist who was in Kozhikode for a performance was busy with solo shows in Spain, Greece, Croatia, Singapore and Delhi last year.
He is mainly involved with ‘The Arshinagar Project’ which is a trans-disciplinary performance research collective working at the intersection of performance, education, anthropology and ecology. Arka’s tryst with theatre began at the age of 23.
Over the course of his fourteen-year career, he has been active in diverse fields such as theatre, performance art, poetry and performance poetry.
He has given workshops and master-classes for professional performers and amateurs, educators and conducted workshops at various institutions of higher learning including Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Jamia Milia Islamia University and Dr Ambedkar University, School of Drama in Thrissur.
Arka has also been trained in the traditional Kerala martial art, Kalaripayattu, for eight years. Now, he is practicing Koodiyattam and researching the Mappila art forms including Kolkali and Mappila song. Through this, he intends to foster community art forms, working across traditions and contemporary life and between various cultures.
He is engaged in researching a performance language that delves into ancient mystical performance traditions but is at the same time reflective of contemporary truths.
Arka’s physical theatres vary in its themes. It could be politically charged as the terrorist attacks or poetical as the text of Tagore’s ‘Daakghar’ and on Baul singing and bodily praxis. It could also be extracted from the novels including Fragments and Impressions of Hamlet.