The Kitchen

The Indian theatre director Roysten Abel returns to the Holland Festival with his latest production entitled The Kitchen, a unique mix of music and cuisine. The last time Abel featured at the festival was in 2009, with his performance The Manganiyar Seduction, which was loved by the public and press alike. The performance featured 43 manganiyars, Rajashthan folk musicians, performing their music on a set reminding one of a mix between the Amsterdam red light district and an advent calendar. In The Kitchen Abel has once more chosen for an unusual cast: 12 mizhavu drummers from Kerala, Abel's home province, share the stage with two Indian actors cooking a meal in the foreground. Just as in The Manganiyar Seduction, Abel uses folk music traditions to create a contemporary performance.

The idea for The Kitchen came to Abel a few years ago when he visited the grave of the thirteenth century Sufi poet Rumi, a popular pilgrimage destinatio in the Turkish town of Konya. What he saw when he visited was a melting pot of meditation, dance and cuisine – near the place where Rumi had worshipped and meditated with his followers, there was a kitchen where meals were prepared for those waiting. The cooking was, in Abel's view, taking place on different levels: as well as the preparation of the food, there was also a preparation of the soul and the 'cosmic cooking' by the Sufis. As he left Konya, Abel had all the ingredients he needed for his new performance.

The stage in The Kitchen is dominated by an extraordinary structure in the shape of a huge mizhavu drum, on which the drummers are seated on different tiers. A big copper drum played by the hands, the mizhav or mizhavu is used as an accompanying instrument in the traditional performance arts of kutiyattam (theatre) and kuttu (dance) in the Indian region of Kerala. A tradition which is said to go back two thousand years, kutiyattam was added to the UNESCO list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2001. Kutiyattaam and kuttu are performed in the context of temple rituals by Nangyaramma, women of the maternal line of the Hindu Ambalavasi Nambiar caste. Legend has it that the mizhavu drums were a gift from the gods and therefore are deemed holy. Playing a similar role to that in the actual temple rituals, the drummers in The Kitchen perform the acoustic accompaniment to a drama being played out in the foreground, their rhythms inducing a trance-like state.

Although The Kitchen is carried by two actors, Abel is adamant it's not a play, but rather a work of theatre in the broadest sense of the word, as there is no dialogue and the staging is largely static, apart from the movements which are part of the drumming and the cooking. The actors play a married but estranged couple who gradually, without words, are reconciled whilst preparing their paal payasam (Indian rice pudding). The meaning is clear: how they relate to one another and to the outside world is also a way of 'cooking'. Being present while their personal problems are played out in the privacy of their kitchen puts the public in a somewhat uncomfortable, voyeuristic position. The fourth wall is completely absent, the audience is part of the performance – literally, as at the end the couple invite everybody in the audience to come and taste their freshly cooked paal payasam.

An enthusiastic critic of the The Hindu newspaper remarked after the premiere that no description could possibly do justice to the production: 'It's something one has to experience – just watching is not enough. It's a journey one undertakes, as an individual and as a part of the collective.'