"Ecstasy is being willing to feel The Whole Thing."
-ALisa Starkweather
as an artist, writer, singer, dancer/yogini, & ritual guide,
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
My JourneyMy given name - Pooja - translates to "offering". My last name - Prema - means "love". Every offering I make - whether as work of dance-theatre, an essay, a poem, a song, an installation, or a guided ritual - is in service to the unfolding of our shared humanity and the mending of our collective heart.
In each expression my mission is 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 reflowering of our lives beyond the life-alienating structures that have limited us. And that underneath the upturned & under-nourished topsoil of our modern, colonized life, a much older & more fertile story is ever alive - waiting to be re-membered & tended within each of us. Since 2006, I've created, performed & directed 10 original full-length site-specific solo and ensemble performances. In 2013, I began offering transformational ritual work to more than just actors - eventually leading workshops for groups of up to 150. Both of these are containers in which to feel deeply and to expand our capacity to live into a wider range of presence & connection. Ritual, the sacred arts, and the written & spoken word each serve to catalyze personal & collective transformation, and to awaken deeper compassion & connection with all with whom we share this planet. Ultimately, every offering I make is simply about returning Home - homecoming being my deepest wound, teacher & medicine. May we each come home to ourselves, to the Earth, and to what's truly Real. |
"
“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
Performance,Pooja 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, as well as directing & producing several original ensemble-devised plays including Isis-Chernobyl, Theatre of Freedom, The Promenade, and The Lift, as well as Rites of Passage in 2013 - a "living museum" & performance celebrating the stages of women’s lives from girlhood through elderhood, and it's 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 in gestation with her next long-range multimedia solo project Revolutionary Love Letters: Instructions for Future Ancestors. |
Writing/ SongIn Sanskrit "Vacha" translates into that which is spoken/sung, the word, or sacred speech. Vac is also the goddess of of speech and the mother of the Vedas - which reveals that despite the dominance of men and the patriarchal mind in more recent history, the origins of our wisdom traditions have far more ancient, Indigenous / Feminine roots. Breathing life back into this displaced ancestral memory & abandoned eloquence is the responsibility of any modern day word weaver- who knows that words can either illuminate or distort the world; and that rather that merely pointing to something- they're meant to invoke the very thing itself.
Descended from lineages of storytellers, orators & guardians of the written, spoken & chanted word, Pooja is humbly 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 sings and writes, in order to mend that which was broken long before she could speak. |
Lineage
Pooja has been deeply influenced and taught by the aesthetic, ritual, performance & wisdom traditions of her homeland- Kerala, South India. She is grateful to all her teachers in the performing arts & beyond, and especially to the perennial transmissions of Jungle/Forest, Plant, Flower, Moss, Wind, 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: women's dances of Kerala Vinaya Chaithanya - Sanskrit chanting Atsushi Takenouchi - Jinen Butoh Catalysts *Thriving Planet- Family Constellations *Kathryn Hamilton- Viewpoints *Kathi von Kroeber- women's ceremonial practice *Roman Hanis- Amazonian & Tibetan breathwork *Khenchen Trinley Paljor Rinpoche -Vajrayana Buddhism Teachers/ Inspirators in Spirit *Numerous performers and ritual performance traditions of Kerala, specifically: Mudiyettu, Padayani, Teyyam, Pambinthullal & Kudiyattam. *Malidoma Somé, Sobunfu Somé, and Martín Prechtel, 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, Vandana Shiva & Diane di Prima for their articulate defense of all that is sacred in our world. *Victor Turner & Eric Fromm for their writings on ritual & nature *Resmaa Menakem & Gabor Maté for their respective work in multigenerational somatic trauma healing *Visionaries of the Wild Feminine including Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Tami Kent and Susun Weed *The mystic poetry of Rumi, and Daniel Ladinsky. |
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