How a Tamil theatre group uses theatre for social change

The seed for Erode Naadaga Kottagai was sown during a memorial meeting for Tamil theatre doyen, the late N Muthuswamy, founder of popular Chennai-based theatre group Koothu-P-Pattarai. Erode-based theatre actor V Sathish Kumar spent two years with Koothu-P-Pattarai that has trained hundreds of actors over five decades. He started Erode Naadaga Kottagai on the first death anniversary of Muthuswamy in 2019.

“Today, there are ten people in our theatre group, most of us school and college students,” says N Pranesh, a member. The team, that has staged over 200 shows in places such as Chennai, Coimbatore, and Puducherry, apart from Palakkad and Thrissur in Kerala and National theatre festivals, is set to present a play titled Thambi this weekend.