A non-verbal response to intolerance

The idea for IT IS YOU came to Vivek Vijayakumaran, artistic director at Our Theatre Collective, in 2022, but the desire to stage this performance was slowly taking shape within him over the years. “We had an event scheduled to showcase two documentaries on Kalakshetra Manipur, one on Sabitri Heisnam and one on Heisnam Kanhailal, founder-director of Kalakshetra, Manipur. Tyson is an important person at Kalakshetra, he works as a performance artist and takes care of administrative work and logistics, so it is not easy for him to come from Imphal to Bengaluru. “It started with addressing religious intolerance but after we attended a three-day conference at Fireflies Intercultural Centre in Bengaluru, on climate change and interfaith peace-building, a new connection began to appear. The performance can be interpreted in various ways—it can be about two people, two voices within one person, a person against the system, two systems against each other."