THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: After death, the ruthless king Ravana’s soul rises from the corpse. The atma is filled with the affection for his daughter Seetha. A portion carved from ‘Kambaramayanam’ takes a look at Ravana on a different perspective which was shaped into a poem ‘Ravana Puthri’ by Vayalar Rama Varma. In the poem, Lord Rama’s wife Seetha is portrayed as the daughter of Ravana and Vedavathi. Satheesh G Nair, a final year M A Malayalam student at University College is making a solo act of the verse in the form of a ‘Cholkazhcha’ that will be performed at Vyloppilli Samskrithi Bhavan on Monday.
Through Ravana, other characters are evoked symbolically. Vedavathi, Seetha and Indrajith appear on stage in the 15-minute performance.
Satheesh, a 23-year-old from Venjaramoodu says, “unlike monoact, where a single performer switches from one character to the other in quick succession, here, through a particular character, many characters get unveiled.” For the performance, he plays a recorded narration and in accordance with that, acts on stage. The first performance of the cholkazhcha was made by him at the recently-concluded CPM State conference in the city. Before that, Satheesh had also made a live ‘cholkazhcha’ on Kadammanitta’s ‘thiranjeduppu’ and another one based on the legendary character Karna. For the role of Karna, he had adapted portions from literary works like ‘Karnabharam’ by Bhasa and ‘Ini Njan Urangatte’ by P K Balakrishnan.
From a very young age, Satheesh was interested in the world of arts and often made satirical mimicry and mono act. While studying in the plus two classes he started taking arts more seriously and began to concentrate on performance than entertainment. “I was able to meet theatre persons and academicians through the workshops I attended. It gave me an altogether different view on acting,” he says.
The interaction with Vayala Vasudevan Pillai, Kavalam Narayana Panicker and Raja Warrier were inspiring. He also drew inspiration from actors like Mohanlal, Murali and Mukesh who have proved their acting prowess on stage too.
Instead of acting, he also takes performance classes. In the latest edition of Kerala University Youth Festival, the team from the Swathi Thirual College of Music in the city that was trained by him bagged first prize for skit.
Other than studies, he is the convenor of the campus theatre of University College and remains engaged in activities related to theatre. On prodding him further, Satheesh opens up about his big dream. “It is the appearance on silver screen of course. And I would like to do character roles, like actor Murali.” To zero in his attention fully on acting, Satheesh is aiming to do MPhil in performing arts after completing post graduation in Malayalam.