by Susheela Mahendran
Performing annually at the English Theatre in Berlin and soon at the Hundertpro Festival in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Kumar’s play offers a nuanced exploration of queer and diasporic experiences, touching on caste and class issues and connecting Tamils from different socio-political and historical contexts. In this exclusive interview, Kumar shares insights on the play’s themes, the use of humor as critique, and the evolving representation of marginalized voices in German theatre.
Thank you, Kumar, for joining me to talk about your play “Second Class Queer”. You have performed your play annually for the past three years at the English Theatre in Berlin, and your next performance is on Saturday, August 31 at the Hundertpro Festival Vol. 6, Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, in Mülheim an der Ruhr.
Our Tamil context and realities are very different and yet as a queer diasporic Eelam Tamil and an artist it is incredibly empowering for me to see your play on a predominantly white German theatre stage. Queer South Asians are not a homogeneous group and there is ethnic oppression within the South Asian community, particularly for queer Tamils in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and India. It’s crucial that queer Tamil experiences gain visibility everywhere, and your play, which features Tamil language, music, and culture, offers something unique and meaningful to me that I have never experienced on any German theatre stage before. It is an honour for me to have a conversation with you.
I’ve seen your play three times in Berlin and would love for you to introduce yourself and your play for those who haven’t had the chance to experience it yet.
LOL. You have seen it three times!! Hahaha! It feels like I have forced my good friends, like you, to see this play every time it was on, but I know you and others, who came to support me, genuinely wanted to see the play again – so first of all, thanks so much for coming to see the play, I’m so honoured and humbled at the same time! Thousand thanks! Well, I’m Kumar from Malaysia. I’ve been an actor for over 14 years and I’m a newborn writer since 2020.
I can be either a Tamil Malaysia or Indian Malaysia or just Indian or just Malaysian, depending on where I am at the time of the question. But generally, it’s these four labels that mostly circles around my orbit of existence. I moved to London in 2003 to be an actor and then I started living in Berlin since 2019. I wrote a solo theatre play about a queer man from Malaysia, Krishna, living in Berlin and he goes to live speed dating to meet five men because he is tired of the dating apps. He is a closeted gay man in Malaysia and a racialised person of colour in Berlin, and within these identities and struggles and between the conversations he has with these five men, it unravels many things about certain topics that are pretty controversial, taboo, boring, heartfelt and ignored in our society. It’s basically a dramady play.
It’s interesting that you are using comedy to address these controversial themes. I see laughter as resistance and humour as a form of critique – a strategy for nonviolent resistance to oppression. When I saw your play, both white and non-white people laughed and cried. However, I believe it’s different when we, queer Tamils laugh and cry during your play compared to when white people do. What are your thoughts on this?
Yes, you are right, it is different for everybody as they felt something strong with specific moment or a topic – but I purposely wanted to make the play as a love letter to the Tamil people. The play is a love letter to our Tamil people as I wanted to represent a generic related feelings that all Tamil people will (hopefully) relate to with the play. I kind of predicted how the Tamil folks might feel when I wrote the play, coz you know, I’m a Tamil. I just wanted to represent not just our common identities but also our common feelings – that only Tamil people can relate to. And it worked so far, from the feedback I received from different Tamil audiences. But just to give you and those who are coming to the Mülheilm performance a heads up – I had to cut down the play from 60 minutes to 45 minutes as that’s the format the HundertPro Festival is based on, all nine performances in the festival are maximum 45 minutes only, so I had to cut all the strong Tamil reference points at the beginning and at the end from the original play and create a shortened version for this festival. I created something that will be relatable universally for everyone when I open the play. And this is what I love about writing and performing your own work, you have the freedom to do anything without pissing off anyone off. I’m in control of my own work.
Let’s talk about German theatre a little bit which seemed predominantly white and middle-class to me. That’s why I avoided it for a long time. Recently, I’ve noticed more BIPOC and BIPOC-oppressed minority-centred plays, especially in Berlin’s independent theatre scene. How do you see the development of German theatre regarding visibility and representation of queer oppressed minorities?
Ich spreche Deutsch wie ein drei-jähriges Kind, so there is no chance for me to even comment on German theatre, like the Stadt Theatre scenes as it’s difficult to get into and it is I think most likely dominated by white artists and privileged/nepo babies/connections. But the freiszene, there are some projects, festivals I’m seeing emerging in the scene for the queer oppressed minorities but there can be more especially support, resources and funding – I feel the freiszene is still dominated by white queers. They just conquer everything in the name of ‘queer’.
Given these challenges and unequal power conditions, how do you navigate and protect yourself from the white gaze and the risk of your work being appropriated?
This is difficult to answer. Hmmmmm, To answer this question I must say it is all about power. What I mean by power is – who is holding the money, the funding, opportunities, resources and support. I don’t have that power. My power is only my writing and my performance. The rest, as in, in order to get the funding, opportunities, resources and support to execute the project, we have to surrender our work in the hand of the power and that power sometimes contains white gaze and white appropriation. What does one do? Surrender or protect? It depends on the situation I think. How desperate am I to allow white gaze and white appropriation to contaminate my work in order for me to survive in this oppressive system? In an ideal world, no I won’t let that happen but in this reality we are living in, it depends.
Desperation and frustration – I hear this a lot especially from BIPOC artists who often live in precarious circumstances. How do you navigate in a mainly white dominated theatre scene also concerning applying for funding and precariousness?
I don’t even know where to start with this question. It’s a complex question to answer to and frustrating just to even talk about it. It’s a never ending story. It never ever ends – the precariousness. I think one learns to survive it by living experiences and learning the nooks and crooks of it. It just feels like I’m begging all the time to ask for help, support and funding. It doesn’t feel like I deserve it. The system doesn’t make you feel like you deserve it, they make you beg for it in the name of funding applications, callouts, diversity etc. That’s what I feel. I just try my best and try to be positive and try to focus on what they want on the funding applications – it’s all about fulfilling what the statusquo, the people in power wants, it’s not about what we want, it’s about fulfilling about their needs, their ego, they are quota system and they are tokenism checklist, their performative on supporting the marginalised communities and so if you want support, money and resources under a precarious situation, you have to conform to their gaze and to their needs and to their ego system.
How did you fund “Second Class Queer” and what obstacles did you face?
Yes! The play was accepted as a work in progress performance at the English Theatre Berlin for the EXPO Festival in 2022, where they welcome Berlin artists to apply and present six premiers of completed work and six premiers of work in progress. I got accepted and got €2000 Euros to spend on the play and after paying everybody involved in the play, I only got €300 euros something for myself. And then I was invited again to perform a completed version of the play in April 2023 and I earned by getting a percentage of the ticket sales money – which I had to use to pay the technicians and camera crew etc as I didn’t get the Wiederaufnahme funding from the Berlin Senate. And the same thing again for this year’s production as well – I didn’t get the Wiederaufnahme funding from the Berlin Senate. Just used my own money and loans from friends, which I’ve yet to pay. The obstacle is money. I have to pay certain artists and crews for the play and also to create video materials so I can use it to attract other theatres in other cities to put the play on. It’s a very challenging process as I am constantly asking for the goodwill of the people involved in creating/showing the play to do it for free or for less money. This feel sometimes demeaning sometimes. But so far people involved in the play have been very kind and giving so I’m very grateful. I hope one day, I can return their kindness in one way or another.
Facing different obstacles and precariousness resonates with me as a queer Eelam Tamil artist very much. I feel you. I love your play not only because its creation aligns with me as a queer Eelam Tamil but also due its rich exploration of intersectional realities. You touched on caste, an issue that’s often overlooked in Germany, even within BIPOC communities, particularly the South Asian communities. Caste remains pervasive globally, especially in South Asian diasporas. I recommend everyone Thenmozhi Soundararajan’s book, “The Trauma of Caste – A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing and Abolition” (2022), for further reading. We recently attended Nrithya Pilla’s performance and lecture talk at HKW on August 3, which was about caste and Non Brahmin Selfhood in Bharatanatyam dance. It was the first caste-critical, Tamil Bharatanatyam performance there. Do you see your play as part of a broader mission to address caste reality and violence?
Thank you for recommending me the book. Yes, I feel the same as you, it was my first time seeing in HKW’s event about caste and I learned more about it about the critical, complex situation on caste in many levels. My play does touch upon the subject very lightly because I did not want to misrepresent half-baked knowledge about caste as I am still learning about it. The mission is to research, raise awareness and educate myself and the community about a lot of issues we are going through, that’s why, it was one the reason I created and performed this play. But specifically, under the theme of caste, I still need a lot of resources, financial means and support for me to dive into the subject to learn and research about it. I have started learning about it, but I need more time on it. I throw the word ‘Dalit’ right at the beginning of the play to the audience as I wanted them to get curious, confused, lost, any feelings, so that they can go home to ponder about it, google it and read about it.
Do you see development and potential in the Tamil diasporic art scene in Berlin for more discussions on caste violence and increased opportunities in white German spaces for that?
Yes, I definitely see a small development and a huge potential in the Tamil diasporic art scene to talk about how to portray casteism in the German art industry but the people in power should give us more resources and financial support for us to do so. I think that’s where the problem lies, can we do it in a way where the topic is discussed and presented from our own gaze only.
That gets me thinking about how your play really dives into these complex layers of identity. The title itself is so intriguing. “Second Class Queer”. Queerness is usually defined as a sexual and gender identity that does not conform to heteronormative norms, but your play seems to go way beyond that. For me, queerness is not only limited to sexual and gender identity, but also to class and caste relations, and other social categories. I also associate queerness very much with being a foreigner, strangers, the odd, the Other. And I see that in your play. Krishna as a foreigner. Krishna from the oppressed caste and class. Krishna as the exoticized Indian. Krishna as gay. That’s how I feel about it in your play, and I love it. How do you see queerness in your play?
Well my job is done here because whatever you just explained and described in your question above about my play, about Krishna, is exactly what I want to portray because being queer is not just about gender identity or identity itself but is more than, it’s bigger than, so whatever you explained in your question above is what I aimed to do anyway, so thank you for describing it in a very eloquent way, thank you! Also, I just want to point out that, once, a Tamil audience said to me, a Dalit caste person usually won’t be named as Krishna as the name Krishna leans more towards the upper caste group. I purposely named the main character Krishna in my play, who comes from the Dalit background to challenge the system – why can’t someone have the name Krishna? Why not?! This also can be centred around queerness you know!
Haha! So, with all that said, what’s next? Where do you see your play in a few years?
Well, I will be performing my play in Mülheim on 31.08.2024 and then Hamburg on 24 – 27 October at fluctoplasma Festival. I’m now in discussion with London theaters with the hope to perform the play there and I also have plans to translate the play from English to German language so that it is accessible for the German speaking audience. The aim is also to make into an art short film or a TV series in the future. Wish me luck. If you are a producer who are interested in it, please do get in touch with me. My instagram is @secondclassqueer.
How can the Tamil community and the theatre community in London and Berlin support you?
Well, the best way to support me is to write to the theatres bosses, TV producers and ask them to be my co-producer, ask them to co-produce my play and ask them to give me funding support, financial help, support me by applying funding so that I can get more resources and financial help to perform the play and transform the play into a short art film and a TV series. It’s about asking, is about demanding the people in power, the people who are holding the resources. One way of doing is to email the producers of the theatre owners, the programmers, curators, the funding companies, to support me to co-produce the play to perform it in their respective cities.
Thank you, Kumar, for your time and our conversation! People in Mülheim an der Ruhr and nearby go to Kumar’s “Second Class Queer”” and support him. “Second Class Queer” is truly one of the best plays I have ever seen in Germany.
Thousand, thousand thanks Susheela. I’m very grateful for this support and exposure. I’m truly humbled!
The interview was conducted in English and then translated into German by Susheela Mahendran. Kumar Muniandy´s “Second Class Queer” was scheduled to be performed at the Ringlokschuppen Ruhr in Mülheim an der Ruhr on Saturday, August 31st. Due to water damage in the Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, Kumar Muniandy’s theater performance was canceled at short notice. A new date will be announced soon.
