What survives when a theatre loses its walls?

What happens to hope when a space built over years is handed back in a single day?

Can rehearsal, practice, and a fragile belief in a flying bird keep something alive when the ground disappears?

This essay begins from those questions, and from one performance that refuses to let hope die. 

I watched Requiem for a Theatre (Prelude) on 10th April, and something has stayed with me since then, not as a fixed thought but as a lingering movement that I find myself returning to. I think hope never really dies, and perhaps the moment it does, everything else follows, because hope is what keeps dreams alive, and dreams, in turn, push us into doing what we are meant to do, not always what we love, not always what feels right, but something we cannot step away from, something that does not offer the comfort of choice, because we carry a dream and we carry a song.

And sometimes, that song does not let us sleep, and instead becomes the very thing that keeps us going, that helps us cope, that allows us to continue believing in something as fragile and distant as a fairy tale, until we are able to tell ourselves, before telling the world, that we have a dream, a song to sing. These are not my words, but words from I Have a Dream by ABBA, and yet they have stayed with me for years, returning in moments of doubt, in moments where everything felt like it was collapsing, holding something together within me when there seemed to be very little left to hold on to.

I have seen people who live theatre completely, people for whom theatre is not an activity but a condition of being, where they think theatre, speak theatre, build theatre, and return to it every single day, performing, discussing, failing, rebuilding, and beginning again, until everything in their life folds back into theatre. I have seen journeys that move from nothing to everything and then, in a single moment, return to nothing again, and yet even within that collapse, something does not break.

There is no complaint, no bitterness, no attempt to hold on to what was lost, but only a quiet and persistent urge to perform again. I do not fully understand this feeling, but I recognise it. At the end of everything, it is still the act of performing that keeps them going, the doing of theatre that refuses to end, and somewhere behind all of this there is always a space, a group, a community, an institution, something that holds this together, that shapes this persistence, that teaches us how to return. And maybe this is what stays with me now : 

I Have a Dream, a song to sing

To help me cope, with anything

If you see the wonder, of a fairy tale

You can take the future, even if you fail

I believe in angels Something good in everything I see

I believe in angels When I know the time is right for me

I'll cross the stream, I Have a Dream

What I am beginning to realise now is that this persistence I keep returning to is not accidental, and that it cannot be reduced to passion or love for theatre, nor can it be explained as a matter of individual choice.

It is a condition.

The more I look at spaces like Indianostrum Theatre, the more this becomes visible, because the work here is not organised around isolated productions but around continuity, through training, rehearsal, workshops, and a sustained engagement with practice that refuses to separate life from performance, where theatre is not an event but a way of inhabiting time and space. At the same time, the space itself carries a layered history, because in 1934 it functioned as Pathé Ciné Familial – Salle Jeanne d’Arc, and in 2012 it was reconfigured into INDIANOSTRUM Théâtre under the direction of Koumarane Valavane, eventually becoming a site that hosted a large number of performances and brought together practitioners across geographies (Doorways, 2024). And yet, this way of living and working exists without the kind of structural support that one would assume it deserves.

Indianostrum is presented as a theatre company based in Pondicherry’s colonial quarter, where cultural production is closely tied to the Smart City project. The article says that “IN is characterized by its strong ties with Tamil vernacular culture; its mission is ‘to revive traditional folk theatre of Tamil Nadu’ and ‘save the declining culture and heritage of folk theatre art forms’,” and that “IN’s location in the neighborhood that has the most colonial architecture is meaningful at a moment when the city hopes to capitalize on its built heritage”. It also notes that “The company looks to its popularity and reputation as a hope for keeping the space needed for its work”. In this way, the company’s work is deeply connected with an agenda to support the sustainability of intangible Tamil and other South Indian heritage, and it is possible to argue, therefore, that its activities are entirely relevant to Pondicherry’s place-making efforts (Pillai, Bautès and Boissel-Cormier, 2018).

The interview with Koumarane Valavane, published by L’ethnographie on the MSH Paris Nord site on 24 November 2020, presents Indianostrum as a theatre project shaped by his experience with Théâtre du Soleil and by a broader commitment to intercultural practice, transmission, and training. Valavane describes Indianostrum as “a little Soleil on Indian soil,” and the interview frames the company as “a space of transmission and creation,” while also emphasizing its links to the theatre bridge between the Cartoucherie and Pondicherry. It further shows that the Nomadic Schools associated with this network “provide regular and free training for apprentice actors from all over India,” offer “a unique pedagogical approach,” and contribute to “the revival and valorization of Terukkuttu,” thereby situating Indianostrum within a wider cultural and educational project rather than only a performance venue. Taken together, the interview positions Indianostrum as a site where artistic practice, actor training, and heritage work converge, with Pondicherry functioning as a key point of exchange between French and Indian theatre traditions (Valavane, 2020).

There is recognition, there is circulation, there are collaborations, festivals, and international visibility, and the work travels while the names remain present within larger cultural circuits, and the city, in many ways, carries this presence as part of its cultural identity, but the structure does not hold it in any sustained way. What this produces is a continuous condition of negotiation, where making work cannot be separated from finding ways to continue making it, where rehearsal is always entangled with resource, and where practice is inseparable from survival. These practices frequently operate within conditions of economic instability, where continuity depends not on secure systems but on ongoing effort, adaptation, and the ability to sustain work across uncertain circumstances.

Within such a condition, continuity cannot depend on stable institutional frameworks, and so it begins to depend on something else, on networks, on collaborations, on visibility, and at times on the necessity of directly seeking support in order to sustain the work. Not as an exception, but as a recurring condition. And perhaps this also makes the loss of the space even more difficult to sit with, because after more than a decade of sustained artistic activity, the Indianostrum Theatre and Cultural Center was handed back on 31 August 2024, leaving behind not only the memory of performances but the absence of a space that once held them (Doorways, 2024).

And within this, the idea of theatre begins to shift, because it is no longer only about performance, but about sustaining a practice that has no guaranteed ground, a practice that builds, collapses, and rebuilds, not once, but repeatedly. This is where what I was trying to understand earlier begins to make sense, because that feeling of return, that absence of complaint, that insistence on continuing, is not only emotional but also structural. The system does not fully hold theatre, and so theatre, over time, learns how to hold itself, to continue without the assurance of support, to survive without the certainty of stability. And maybe that is why, even when everything else falls apart, something does not stop, not because it is protected, but because it has learnt how to persist without protection.

What I find myself returning to now is the performance itself, and the ways in which it begins to reveal something that I have perhaps always known but never fully articulated, which is that in theatre, practice is not a supporting element but the condition that makes everything else possible, because rehearsal is not preparation for performance but the work itself, and perhaps the only thing that ultimately survives us in the making of a piece.

It is in this sense that I have always understood Indianostrum Theatre, not merely as a company that produces performances but as a space that invests deeply in the cultivation of skill, in the slow and sustained process of learning, unlearning, and reworking forms, where different vocabularies, especially those drawn from multiple folk traditions and varied genres, are not simply brought together but are absorbed through time and repetition until they begin to exist within the body as practice.

Even though the word requiem, along with the presence of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his final work, a composition often understood as a farewell, and the idea of death or the closing down of a space might suggest something heavy or conclusive, the performance itself refuses to remain within that frame, because what unfolds is full of energy, full of movement, and carried forward by a certain positivity, even while something continues to stay with you, something that unsettles and does not fully resolve.

What becomes most striking in this is the ensemble, not as individual performers but as a collective that has clearly undergone rigorous training, where patience, endurance, and commitment are not performed but embodied, and where the presence of Mozart’s music begins to translate not only as sound but as discipline, as structure, and as a way of organising time, breath, and presence on stage.

This becomes evident from the very opening, because as the choir enters and begins, there is a clarity, a precision, and a collective energy that immediately draws you in, and in that moment I found myself completely convinced, not only of what was unfolding but of the process that must have gone into making it possible, recognising that what I was witnessing was not easily accessible training but something that had been carefully cultivated, and in this case made possible through collaborations such as the one with Maharashtra Cultural Centre, through which such practices can travel and be shared.

And what the performers carry with them, then, is not just participation in a production but a skill, a discipline, and an experience that will remain with them beyond this performance, something that will continue to shape how they return to theatre in the future.

What the performance holds, therefore, is not a simple movement between loss and hope, but a tension that remains active throughout, because even as it celebrates energy and continuity, it carries within it a disturbance, a reminder of fragility, of uncertainty, and of something that cannot be fully restored, and it is precisely this unresolved quality that allows the performance to stay with you long after it has ended.

What begins to settle in after the performance is not only what was seen on stage, but what it takes to make such a space possible in the first place, because running a theatre space, believing in what one is doing, and constantly ensuring that it continues to function, that work keeps happening, that something is always being built, is not simply labour but an ongoing emotional and physical demand that cannot be fully understood unless one has been inside that mechanism of sustaining it.

And perhaps this is not limited only to theatre spaces, because I have been fortunate enough to witness people, stalwarts in their own right, who have spent decades, sometimes forty years or more, building something from nothing, shaping not just a space but a philosophy through their art, investing time, energy, and life into it, only to one day find themselves in a position where they have to leave it all behind, packing what little they can carry and walking away without resistance, without even extracting what might have been owed to them, leaving either with nothing or with everything that cannot be packed, which is the presence they once created.

Because such spaces are never just walls, never just empty halls, but are made meaningful by a certain energy, a certain vision, a certain insistence that gathers people and transforms emptiness into something alive, and the moment that presence shifts, the space itself begins to lose its centre, even if its physical structure continues to remain.

It is from this place that I found myself returning to Da Ra Bendre, and to the question that continues to echo—

ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಹಾರುತಿದೆ ನೋಡಿದಿರಾ?
hakki hārutide nōḍidiraa?
Have you seen the bird fly?

Because the bird in the poem is never fixed, never singular, but constantly becoming, carrying within it contradiction and multiplicity—

ಕರಿನೆರೆ ಬಣ್ಣದ ಪುಚ್ಚಗಳುಂಟು / ಬಿಳಿ-ಹೊಳೆ ಬಣ್ಣದ ಗರಿ-ಗರಿಯುಂಟು
karinere baṇṇada pucchagaḷuṇṭu / biḷi-hoḷe baṇṇada gari-gariyuṇṭu
dark-tailed… white-feathered…

ಕೆನ್ನನ ಹೊನ್ನನ ಬಣ್ಣಬಣ್ಣಗಳ ರೆಕ್ಕೆಗಳೆರಡೂ ಪಕ್ಕದಲುಂಟು
kennana honnana baṇṇa-baṇṇagaḷa rekke-gaḷeradu pakkadaluṇṭu
coloured in red and gold…

and slowly exceeding all boundaries—

ಮುಟ್ಟಿದೆ ದಿಗ್ಮಂಡಲಗಳ ಅಂಚ / ಆಚೆಗೆ ಚಾಚಿದೆ ತನ್ನಯ ಚುಂಚ
muṭṭide digmaṇḍalagaḷa ancha / āchege chāchide tannaya chuncha
touching the edge of all directions… stretching beyond…

until what begins to matter is not whether the bird exists, but whether we continue to believe that it flies.

And this is where the poem and the performance begin to meet most sharply, because towards the end, when one says I saw the bird and hope responds by saying I did not, what unfolds is not simply a difference of perception but a fracture within belief itself, where hope hesitates, resists, and ultimately turns against the bird to the extent that it participates in killing it, as if refusing the burden of continuing to believe in something that cannot be seen.

And yet, what follows is not collapse, because the ensemble comes together around what has been broken and begins, collectively and with great care, to stitch the bird back into being, and in that act of stitching, what is being restored is not merely the bird but the very condition of belief itself, making it possible once again for the bird to fly, not as proof, but as a shared insistence.

It is in this moment that the power of theatre becomes most visible, because nothing has been resolved and nothing has been proven, and yet something has been made possible again, and even hope, which had momentarily refused, begins once more to believe.

The final moments of the performance arrive through an extremely slow, paused, delicate, almost silent, yet deeply forceful blackout, one that does not fade away gently but confronts you, almost like a slap, because what it leaves behind is not emptiness but recognition, that the space is gone, that everything was taken away, and that something which required collective responsibility was not sustained.

And within that recognition lies an unease that is difficult to ignore, because it is not only them but also us who were part of that absence.

Very few performances remain with you in this way, not as memory alone but as something that continues to work within you, and I am certain that this requiem will remain, not only as mourning, but as a deeply hopeful, restless, and necessary insistence that even now, even after everything, the bird continues to fly.

References

Doorways. (2024, September 13). Curtain falls down… Pathé Ciné Familial – Salle Jeanne d’Arc [Video]. Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/UnlockPondicherry/videos/524330580205852/

Indianostrum Theatre. (n.d.). About. Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/indianostrum/about_details

Pillai, S., Bautès, N., & Boissel-Cormier, A. (2018). Theatre in the smart city: The case of Pondicherry.
https://journals.openedition.org/com/8857

Valavane, K. (2020). Interview. L’ethnographie, MSH Paris Nord.
https://revues.mshparisnord.fr/ethnographie/index.php?id=1670

Classic FM. (n.d.). Mozart’s Requiem: Full work guide.
https://www.classicfm.com/composers/mozart/guides/mozart-requiem-full-works-concert-highlight-week/

Spotify. (n.d.). Mozart: Requiem [Album].
https://open.spotify.com/album/09ZGdaL9F1eSqKS8U9sKFt

Lyrics Credit

“I Have a Dream” — ABBA
Songwriters: Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Buddy McCluskey, Mary McCluskey
Source: Musixmatch
© Universal/Union Songs Musikforlag AB

Poem

Original Kannada

(Da Ra Bendre)

ಇರುಳಿರಳಳಿದು ದಿನದಿನ ಬೆಳಗೆ
ಸುತ್ತಮುತ್ತಲೂ ಮೇಲಕೆ ಕೆಳಗೆ
ಗಾವುದ ಗಾವುದ ಗಾವುದ ಮುಂದಕೆ
ಎವೆ ತೆರೆದಿಕ್ಕುವ ಹೊತ್ತಿನ ಒಳಗೆ
ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಹಾರುತಿದೆ ನೋಡಿದಿರಾ?

ಕರಿನೆರೆ ಬಣ್ಣದ ಪುಚ್ಚಗಳುಂಟು
ಬಿಳಿ-ಹೊಳೆ ಬಣ್ಣದ ಗರಿ-ಗರಿಯುಂಟು
ಕೆನ್ನನ ಹೊನ್ನನ ಬಣ್ಣಬಣ್ಣಗಳ
ರೆಕ್ಕೆಗಳೆರಡೂ ಪಕ್ಕದಲುಂಟು
ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಹಾರುತಿದೆ ನೋಡಿದಿರಾ?

ನೀಲಮೇಘಮಂಡಲ-ಸಮ ಬಣ್ಣ !
ಮುಗಿಲಿಗೆ ರೆಕ್ಕೆಗಳೊಡೆದವೊ ಅಣ್ಣಾ !
ಚಿಕ್ಕೆಯ ಮಾಲೆಯ ಸೆಕ್ಕಿಸಿಕೊಂಡು
ಸೂರ್ಯ-ಚಂದ್ರರನು ಮಾಡಿದೆ ಕಣ್ಣಾ
ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಹಾರುತಿದೆ ನೋಡಿದಿರಾ?

ರಾಜ್ಯದ ಸಾಮ್ರಾಜ್ಯದ ತೆನೆ ಒಕ್ಕಿ
ಮಂಡಲ-ಗಿಂಡಲಗಳ ಗಡ ಮುಕ್ಕಿ
ತೇಲಿಸಿ ಮುಳುಗಿಸಿ ಖಂಡ-ಖಂಡಗಳ
ಸಾರ್ವಭೌಮರಾ ನೆತ್ತಿಯ ಕುಕ್ಕಿ
ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಹಾರುತಿದೆ ನೋಡಿದಿರಾ?

ಯುಗ-ಯುಗಗಳ ಹಣೆಬರಹವ ಒರಸಿ
ಮನ್ವಂತರಗಳ ಭಾಗ್ಯವ ತೆರೆಸಿ
ರೆಕ್ಕೆಯ ಬೀಸುತ ಚೇತನೆಗೊಳಿಸಿ
ಹೊಸಗಾಲದ ಹಸುಮಕ್ಕಳ ಹರಸಿ
ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಹಾರುತಿದೆ ನೋಡಿದಿರಾ?

ಬೆಳ್ಳಿಯ ಹಳ್ಳಿಯ ಮೇರೆಯ ಮೀರಿ
ತಿಂಗಳೂರಿನ ನೀರನು ಹೀರಿ
ಆಡಲು ಹಾಡಲು ತಾ ಹಾರಾಡಲು
ಮಂಗಳಲೋಕದ ಅಂಗಳಕೇರಿ
ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಹಾರುತಿದೆ ನೋಡಿದಿರಾ?

ಮುಟ್ಟಿದೆ ದಿಗ್ಮಂಡಲಗಳ ಅಂಚ
ಆಚೆಗೆ ಚಾಚಿದೆ ತನ್ನಯ ಚುಂಚ
ಬ್ರಹ್ಮಾಂಡಗಳನು ಒಡೆಯಲು ಎಂದೊ
ಬಲ್ಲರು ಯಾರಾ ಹಾಕಿದ ಹೊಂಚ
ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಹಾರುತಿದೆ ನೋಡಿದಿರಾ?

English Version (Translated by Vaibhav Lokur)

As night goes on thinning away, day after day,
all around, above and below,
everything goes on rushing forward,
right at the time when the great doors open,
have you seen the bird fly?

It has a tail that is dark black in colour,
it has bright white feathers,
it has many colours like red and gold,
it has two wings on either side,
have you seen the bird fly?

Its colour is like a deep blue sky of clouds,
as if its wings have struck the edge of the sky, brother,
having put on a garland of tiny stars,
it has made the sun and the moon its eyes,
have you seen the bird fly?

Having sucked the nectar of kingdoms and empires,
having touched the borders of lands and regions,
making continents float and making them sink,
having pecked at the foreheads of sovereigns,
have you seen the bird fly?

Having rubbed off the fate of ages and ages,
having opened up the fortune of aeons,
by beating its wings, making awareness arise,
blessing the young children of the new age,
have you seen the bird fly?

Having crossed the boundary of the silver village,
having drunk the water of the moon’s town,
to play, to sing, to keep flying about,
it has reached the courtyard of the world of joy,
have you seen the bird fly?

It has touched the edge of all the directions,
it has stretched its beak out beyond that,
as if it is out to break open the universes,
who knows who laid this great trap of fate,
have you seen the bird fly?