Ettuangadi and the Rice Bowl.

A devised performance and interaction around a meal of tubers and rice. 

Stories, songs, dance the thiruvathira kalli, an exhibition of photos, cook together and be a part of conversations over a meal. 

Dinner Theatre comes to Courtyard Koota!! 

As the seasons change and the winter harvests are brought in, we sit down to eat together at Courtyard Koota on 25 th January 2020 between 6 and 8 pm .  Over a 5 course meal of tubers and traditional rice varieties from Wayand, we will sing, find out about lesser foods, forgotten foods, climate change, love and lust, dialogue with farmers and celebrate our shared and diverse histories and culture. A meal is a labour of love and a place of exclusion, hierarchy and also a space where we could reimagine and recreate something magical and nurturing. This meal is partial to Malayali, Sindhi, Bengali and Kannadiga influences ! and sourced from our kitchens at Malhar.

Over the 2 hours, we will talk to Rajesh and Uma about their journey into Wayanad and rice farming, climate change and life on a farm, Manuel Chettan will tell us about tubers and Nisha Susan will read to us a story about the humble(?) Kanji. Divya will sing with us. Dancing is an integral to this feast and a group of people from Malhar are also dancing the thiruvathirakali as part of the ettuangadi and the rice bowl. Our inspirations are many, including the historic community feast ‘mishrabhojanam’ which was held at Cherai near Kochi in 1917. Through this community meal, we explore food and agriculture also as a form of art that is a shared heritage, community driven and also intensely private, healing and also political.

The word ettuangadi means 8 markets. Presumably, representative of the diversity and range of ingredients that went into the making of the ettuagnadi puzhuku (A sweet dish made in kerala using bananas, tubers and jaggery) that it could not be found in just one place !!!! 

. The event is curated by Benson Issac and Divya Raghunandan who, apart from teaching and working in the development sector are keen on building community over theatre, art and food .

About the participants

Rajesh Krishnan is a biotechnologist, turned Greenpeace campaigner, turned farmer, now the founder- CEO of the Tirunelly Agri -producer company a collective of organic farmers in wayanad. When not in the paddy fields or talking about sustainable agriculture he can be found cooking up large quantities of delicious, spicy, food. 

Uma Sannasi, did not realise the leap of faith she was making, when she gave up a corporate career in Bangalore to move to wayanad settling for the open skies that the paddy fields ensured. Though she swears it does not match up to the desert horizons in Rajasthan where she grew up !!! A member of the Tirunelly Agri-producer company she is also a self taught carpenter fashioning exquisite furniture from used wood she sources from houses that are being brought down. 

Manuel Chettan, is a long time wayanad resident and farmer who discovered the magic of tubers and has meticulously researched them and collected stories and documented medicinal and other nutritional properties of this almost marginalised or hidden food. He is a gentle, meandering story teller too. 

Nisha Susan in another life or maybe in an avatar-yet-to-come could be a script writer for Malayalam comedy ! She writes, talks and walks the talk on health, sexuality, food, politics in a way it's rarely written about with sensitivity, rigour, sarcasm and humour. Nisha, worked with a bunch of NGOs, including Greenpeace, was a journalist with tehelka and after moving back to Bangalore co-founded the Ladies Finger an online magazine for women and Grist a media company. Nishas short fiction has been published by Penguin, zubaan, out of print.