Kirtana Kumar

Actor and film-maker Kirtana Kumar has a Master's Degree in European Classics and American Literature. She trained and performed for six years as an actor with The Asian-American Theatre Project at The Los Angeles Theatre Centre (LATC). To support her performance she has variously trained in Suzuki Theatre & Butoh, Thang-ta, Kalari payattu, Carnatic vocals and choral singing. She is currently studying bharathnatayam with Shraddha Kumar, senior student of Padma Subramaniam.

She is a trustee of Women Artists' Group, runs the year long Theatre Lab for children and is the proprietor of Little Jasmine Films, Bangalore. Her dream is a rural Artist’s Retreat & Training Centre that she is developing outside Bangalore.

 

Performance and Outreach:

She has performed and worked in most states in India as well as in the UK and United States. Recent performances include Savitri in In the Hour of God, and Claire in Genet’s The Maids in Ranga Shankara and Rangayana (Bahu Roopi 2004), Karma Café with Common Ground in London & Manchester, Dario Fo’s Orgasmo Adulto in Bangalore, Bombay and Pune.

 

As a working actor, Kirtana has tried to expand the scope of theatre beyond performance alone. Thus she facilitates theatre projects on gender and sexuality for the non-governmental sector. In fact this was the genesis for the play My Children who should be running thru Vast Open Spaces… which was subsequently turned into a documentary film. In 2005-‘06 she was National Theatre Consultant with an international NGO, and worked on Magnet Theatre in four states with key populations such as sex-workers, truckers, injecting drug users and Men having sex with Men (MSM).

 

She is also involved in theatre pedagogy and trains others in theatre skills. She runs the year long Theatre Lab specifically for children. She has been a facilitator for the Royal National Theatre Asian Youth Project – Project Nadia and traveled with them to Ninasam, Heggodu. In September 2001 she was commissioned by Common Ground Sign Dance Theatre Company, Liverpool to write and direct a new piece for them. This resulted in a work titled Karma Cafe. The play premiered in Manchester. She also facilitated the Common Ground performance and workshop tour of India in 2002. She made an experimental film called Once Upon a Warm September on the Common Ground tour of South Canara.

  

She directed Picasso’s Four Little Girls as a platform performance at the Ranga Shankara Festival 2004 and has developed a solo performance titled Unruly Women involving monologues of women in Shakeseare that she regularly performs. In October ‘06, she directed and performed in Shakuntala, a variation on the epic using text, Kalaripayattu and live music. This was performed in Oxford House (London) and Trestle Theatre (St.Alban’s). She developed a theatre training module based on abhinaya, and using the skills of konokol, kalari and text as a framework. This was used in Trestle Theatre for a 3 week residency facilitated by Little Jasmine.

 Over the years she has performed lead roles in the following plays:

· Agnes of God          

· Cats

· Cactus Flower

· Relatively Speaking

· Lakhs in Black

· Jacques and his Brother

· Woyzeck

· Whose Line is it anyway?

· Medea

· Spine

· Skeleton Dance

· Wide Screen Version of the World

· My Children who should be running thru Vast, Open Spaces...

· The Odd Couple

· Orgasmo Adulto Escapes from the Zoo

· Gati

· Bhagawadajukam

· The Tempest

· In the Hour of God

· The Maids

· Shakuntala etc

Her films include:-

Devarakadu

My Children who should be running thru Vast, Open Spaces…

Guhya

Chandri

Once Upon a Warm September

Namma Cinema Talkies

The Simputer Project

Sound of Silence

The Simputer Story II

Evolving Acropolis etc

 

 

Contact us at:

 

E-mail: kumar.kirtana@gmail.com

 

konarak_reddy@yahoo.co.in