"Ecstasy is being willing to feel The Whole Thing."
-ALisa Starkweather
As a performance artist, ritualist & writer
Pooja offers spaces of liminal transformation & remembrance
rooted in non-dual, earth-based wisdom
Pooja offers spaces of liminal transformation & remembrance
rooted in non-dual, earth-based wisdom
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My JourneyMy given name - Pooja - translates to "offering"; my last name - Prema - is "love". Every offering I make - whether a work of dance-theatre, an essay, a poem, a song, or a guided ritual - is in service to the unfolding of our collective liberation.
Through each expression, I work to honor the non-dual heritage of my ancestors -or in bell hooks' words - the "both/and". We are both human and eternal, imperfect and whole, tender and strong. By fully embodying this spectrum, we enable a re-flowering of our lives beyond the life-alienating structures that have limited us... Since 2012, I've created, performed & directed 10 original full-length site-specific solo and ensemble performances. And in 2013, I began offering transformational ritual work to more than just actors - eventually leading workshops for groups of up to 150 people. For over a decade, I've been crafting containers in which to feel deeply and expand our capacity to live into a wider range of presence & connection. Underneath the upturned & under-nourished topsoil of our modern, colonized life, a much older & more fertile story is alive - waiting to be re-membered & tended within each of us. Ritual, the sacred arts, and the written & spoken word each serve to catalyze personal and collective transformation - to awaken deeper compassion & reconnection with every living being. Ultimately, every offering I make is simply about returning Home - homecoming being my deepest wound, teacher, and medicine. May we each come home to ourselves, to the Earth, and to what's truly Real. |
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Pooja is an artist who is capable of shouldering the responsibility of a true artist,
one whose function is to deeply renew the cultural and spiritual conversation.
There is no separation between Pooja, her work, and her growth.
She is sort of like a woman with her hair on fire. She has
no choice but to do what she does with her whole heart and as fast as she can.
She is her work, and her work is her growth.”
-S. Hardcastle
Pooja is an artist who is capable of shouldering the responsibility of a true artist,
one whose function is to deeply renew the cultural and spiritual conversation.
There is no separation between Pooja, her work, and her growth.
She is sort of like a woman with her hair on fire. She has
no choice but to do what she does with her whole heart and as fast as she can.
She is her work, and her work is her growth.”
-S. Hardcastle
Ritual TheatrePooja has been working in the performing arts for the past 18 years, inspired at a core level by the folk ritual theatre traditions of her homeland - Kerala, India - in which all forms of art-making are simultaneously woven together to create a whole work of art - at once healing, connective and liberative.
Pooja is the founder & director of The Ritual Theatre - an experimental ritual-based theatre/ dance company in Western Massachusetts (USA) which has created site-specific, original multi-disciplinary work since 2012, and The Rites of Passage Project - a multimedia art & activism project reclaiming initiation for modern women since 2013. Her past works include a solo clown tour on a bicycle through Kerala, India in 2006 - The Kerala Cycle Yathra, producing 2 community-based vaudeville Carnivals, 4 full-length solo performances - Flowers Falling From My Mouth, A Lot to Ask, Endure, and Solidão, directing & producing several original ensemble-devised plays including Isis-Chernobyl, Theatre of Freedom, The Promenade, and The Lift, and two large-scale installation-performances: Rites of Passage in 2013 - a "living museum" & performance celebrating the stages of women’s lives from girlhood through elderhood, and a second incarnation - Rites of Passage: 20/20 Vision in 2021 - dedicated to honoring the initiatory life experiences of Women of Color in America. She is now gestating a long-range multimedia solo project titled, Revolutionary Love Letters: Instructions for Future Ancestors. |
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Writing/ SongIn Sanskrit "Vacha" translates into 'that which is spoken/sung, the word, or sacred speech'. Vac is also the Vedic goddess of of speech and reminds us that despite the dominance of men and the patriarchal mind in more recent history, the origins of our wisdom traditions have far more ancient, Feminine roots. Breathing life back into this displaced ancestral memory & abandoned eloquence is the responsibility of any modern day word weaver. She knows that words can either illuminate or distort the world; and that rather than merely pointing to something- they're meant to invoke the very thing itself.
Descended from lineages of Dravidian storytellers, orators & guardians of the written, spoken & chanted word, Pooja is working to re-member the transmission of her ancestors in ways that can gently but clearly illuminate a world dimmed by forgetting. As an immigrant with English as her second language, she has spent portions of her adult life trying to relearn her mother tongue - Malayalam - after a childhood spent estranged from it, and the last twenty years working to craft a home for herself between these two disparate languages and cultures. Ultimately she writes and sings, in order to mend that which was broken long before she could speak. |
Lineage
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Pooja has been deeply influenced and taught by the ritual, performance & wisdom traditions of her homeland, Kerala. She is grateful to all her teachers in the performing arts & beyond, and to the perennial transmissions of Jungle/Forest, Plant, Flower, Bird, Serpent, Moss, Wind, Rain, River & Ocean. Teachers of Theatre/Dance/Speech Karen Beaumont - movement/ BMC/ Linklater voicework/ Lecoq Mask Jane Nichols - Lecoq Clown Diego Piñon - Body Ritual Movement/ Butoh Ritual Mexicano Nirmala Paniker - Mohiniyattam & Thiruvathirakalli Vinaya Chaithanya - Sanskrit chanting Atsushi Takenouchi - Jinen Butoh Catalysts Thriving Planet- Family Constellations Kathryn Hamilton- Viewpoints Kathi von Kroeber- women's ceremonial practice Khenchen Trinley Paljor Rinpoche -Vajrayana Buddhism Teachers of Liberation Work Vandana Shiva Resmaa Menakem - Somatic Abolitionism The Institute for Social Ecology Teachers in Spirit Numerous performers and ritual performance traditions of Kerala, specifically: Mudiyettu, Padayani, Teyyam & Kudiyattam. *Malidoma Somé, Martín Prechtel, and Sobunfu Somé whose respective life works are dedicated to tending the medicine of ritual, and to protecting the integrity of indigenous village culture. *The dance-theatre of Pina Bausch *The wisdom teachings of J Krishnamurti, Narayana Guru, Pema Chodron, Ramana Maharshi, Thich Nhat Hanh & Milarepa *Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Arundhaiti Roy & Diane di Prima and their articulate defense of all that is sacred in our world. *Victor Turner & Eric Fromm's writings on ritual & nature *Gabor Maté and Peter Levine's their work in trauma healing *Visionaries of the Wild Feminine including Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Tami Kent's approach to womb healing, and the Wise WomanTradition articulated by Susun Weed. *Mystic poets including Rumi and Daniel Ladinsky. |
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Header photo by Jill Goldman
other photo credits: Katie Whittemore, Irina Aha, Janine Strong & Sam Backhaus
other photo credits: Katie Whittemore, Irina Aha, Janine Strong & Sam Backhaus