The magic of words: Roshan Abbas talks about his unique festival 'Spoken'

Writer Audrey Lorde once said, “When we speak, we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.” It is the power of the spoken word that is being celebrated today and tomorrow at Spoken, a one-of-its-kind festival, giving the stage some of the most vibrant voices in storytelling, poetry, spoken word and song from across India and around the globe. More than 50 performers, including musician Raghu Dixit, actor Kalki Koechlin, lyricists Swanand Kirkire and Piyush Mishra, singer Ankur Tewari, improv artiste Sumukhi Suresh, among others, will perform at the fest. Roshan Abbas, Director and founder, Kommune, sheds light on the festival...

You started Kommune to provide a platform to storytellers, artistes and like-minded people. Is Spoken a celebration of that concept? Do tell us about the thought behind the festival.

When we started Kommune, it was to give artistes a stage, audiences a differentiated experience and to take away the pain of producing shows or performances. Artistes are so consumed by their own art but when it comes to logistics, planning or building on the piece, there’s hardly a place where you find support. Kommune did that. Now, over two-and-a-half years, we have nurtured, curated, handheld artistes and discovered the wealth that lies in our country. Spoken is a celebration of that wealth of talent. While we have all been doing it as a micro-community, it’s time to step out on to a bigger stage, with louder voices.

How did you curate, pick and select the artistes speaking at the festival?

Our curation team made a long list of people we would like to see, people we were dying to work with, and encouraged first timers to send in their submissions. Our dream, till two years ago, was to headline the festival with Leonard Cohen. Unfortunately, he passed away. Else, we would have heard Hallelujah ring out in Mumbai. We also follow many artistes abroad and the curation team listed out our top 10 collaborations. Some couldn’t happen due to logistics and time. But most did. Margot Lietman, for instance, is a Moth winner (America’s best storytelling community) but to bring her down just to do a story halfway across the world would not have been enough. So we are having her do a master class as well. Diane Ferlatte is also a multiple award winner and Grammy-nominated artist whose work Tess Joseph from our team has been following and got her to come on board. Shamir Reuben in our curation team got the world lube station champion, Tristan, to join us. The varied tastes of the curation team make for a diverse set of performers. Lynn, who heads our team of curators, has perhaps spoken to over a 100 artistes to finalise the ones we have now. And even today, we are getting enquiries and submissions.

Do you plan to make this an annual event? Also, would you like to extend it to other cities as well, like you did with Kommune?

Oh, absolutely! This will be an annual event. We’ve gone for a moon shot this time and will closely watch the audience response to decide how to take this forward. There are multiple spoken editions planned in other cities as well. Kommune works best on finding Kommuners across cities and placing them at the centre of our team. So, we will see which cities to host the next editions and will support them totally.