Deepan Sivaraman is an Indian theatre director, scenographer and academic.[1] He is the founder of Oxygen Theatre Company Archived 18 May 2014 at the Wayback Machine based in Delhi. He is from Thrissur, Kerala.
Sivaraman received Charles Wallace India Trust Award in 2003,[2] Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi Award and Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards in 2011 and 2010, respectively.[1] Deepan served as the Artistic Director for the International Theatre Festival of Kerala(ITFOK) for 2014 edition which had a curatorial focus on transition, gender and spectatorship.[3] Deepan Sivaraman currently is an associate professor of performance studies at School of Culture and Creative Expressions at the Ambedkar University in Delhi.
The Legend of Khasak Khasakkinte Itihasam – The Play a Milestone
Deepan involved with KM Kunjambu Smaraka Kalasamaithi.(KMK) Trikaripur for the project of The Legends of Khasak Khasakkinte Itihasam with the local village actors, it was a unique theatre project that has no similarities in the recent Indian theatre history in the terms of its production of working with village actors and the way in which the entire village got part of it. The trans – chronic post-modern novel of O. V. Vijayan, The Legends of Khasak Khasakkinte Itihasam is revived onto the stage, in the Land of dark native myths and tantalizing legends – Kasaragod. The geographical memory of Khasak is transplanted to the landscape of Kasaragod. The tree of life, Revered Time, Slits of spreading self and sins and mythicized nature of Khasak takes a re-birth to burn down into the body ofspectator. The performance fuses native religious rituals and native art forms in separately. The three months of theatre camp for the regional artists were a refreshing wind to the cultural present of Kerala, which proved that the rural art gatherings were not extinct in the cultural space. From the last remaining sapling spread a green hope which rushed the village into a spring of artistic thought. There were muted tunes, silenced slogans and an unbroken harmony which united the whole village onto the theatre. Portraying, or interpreting Khasak into its multidimensional plurality was a challenge to any medium, to which this theatrical interpretation stands as an exemption. The characters of Khasak Allapicha Mollakka, Maimuna, Appukili, Naizam Ali, Kuttandan Pushari and Ravi meet the spectators in the aesthetically subverted, politically deconstructed, surreal space.[4][5][6]
