At The Hindu Lit For Life, the expansive, layered book The Tamils: The Portrait Of A Community authored by Nirmala Lakshman, Chairperson, The Hindu Group, will come alive onstage in the form of a theatrical reading, edited and directed by Prasanna Ramaswamy.
Speaking about the process of adapting a non-fiction text to stage, Prasanna says the greatest challenge for her was to edit a massive and dense non fiction text without sacrificing the essence. “The text itself offered markers like religion and the arts. I held on to that known territory, eschewing purely political history. I further divided them into different registers of what is direct speech to the audience, what is shared dialogue and what are the reflections by actors as readers. Besides exploring the poems referred to in the book, I have brought in more in music and some with movement too,” she explains.
Prasanna Ramaswamy
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KARUNAKARAN M
Prasanna says that the book traces the history of the Tamils through arts of different disciplines, all of which are of great interest to her.
“The Tamils have very evocative descriptions like those on the Kailasanatha temple, or the Jain paintings of Sithannavasal and many more, which bring alive the aesthetic experience and the artistic nuances to me as if I am revisiting them. The most striking experience for me was the revelation of what a great multi religious and multi cultural history which we the Tamils are part of,” says Prasanna.
She says a passage on how a Jain Thirthankara’s address is to all living beings alike, moved her immensely. “Though I have visited these Jain locations, only when I read these lines, I realised the importance of the elevated, open air location of the granite beds which are the dwelling of the Jain monks,” she details.
One of paintings discovered at the rock-cut Jain bed in Sithannavasal. The first resembles the mouth of the second represents a lotus.
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Special Arrangement
“As I kept layering the performance with poems and hymns, whether it be the early Paripadal or bhakti poetry or Rev Beschi writing about Jerusalem or Sufi saint Gunangudi Mastan, the book made me aware of the continuum of certain idioms in the language, Tamil,” she says. The renowned theatre practitioner and documentary filmmaker lauds how the book does not compromise on the density of content, and says that it is remarkable as to how the book manages to find a balance of communicating heavy history yet allowing a pleasurable reading.
Choreographer and performer Anita Ratnam, Brahadeeshwar C. Chandilya, Nandhini Subbulakshmi, Revathy Kumar, Sarvesh Sridhar, Tehzeeb Katari and the book’s author Nirmala Lakshman will take the stage for this dramatised reading edited and directed by Prasanna.
“Anita has a very dynamic presence on stage and her versatility to adapt to different genres of work is amazing. She has played a Kunti,a Hecuba, a refugee, a dancer, and many different characters in my productions so brilliantly essaying each one. She is a natural choice,” she says.
Speaking about the other artistes, Prasanna says that Sarvesh Sridhar, a brilliant stage actor who has played the lead role in some of her very important productions, works intensely and delivers stunningly. “His internalisation of a text and expression of it is a joy to work with. You just need to build a grid and punctuate it and he will take over to throw colors and the form will emerge. Tehzeeb’s lovely voice, clean lines of movement, impeccable diction add such richness to the reading. It has been a pleasant experience to work with Brahadeesh as well, she says.
Nirmala Lakshman
Revathy, with whom she shares a dense history of collaboration, is someone who rises to the challenge and delivers brilliantly, whether setting the hymns or literary text to music, or dancing to them, she says. “Considering that working on carnatic music for theatre has to be unstructured against a concert, and singing and moving simultaneously is another challenge with breath; both of which Revathy rises to phenomenally. Nandhini Subbulakshmi, another brilliant dancer I had the pleasure of working with, comes in to present a brief section of an iconic varnam, “ she says.
Prasanna further says that it is a privilege to have the author, Nirmala Lakshman, joining them as one of the readers.” In the very first edition of The Hindu Lit for Life, she read out an excerpt of Vikram Seth’s Rivered Earth so brilliantly, unsentimental and yet so moving. I have been asking her to read for me and it happens now, with this production,” she says.
The Tamils by Nirmala Lakshman: A Theatrical Reading will take place at Sir Mutha Concert Hall at 5pm on January 17 at The Hindu Lit for Life
Published – January 14, 2026 03:17 pm IST
