Beyond imitation: Chennai theatre veteran V Balakrishnan introduces Obscura, a new acting technique

CHENNAI: This isn’t your typical acting class, where students recite scripted lines and rehearse gestures. It’s a plunge into the unknown — the Obscura acting technique, playwright-director-actor Balakrishnan’s deeply personal approach that seeks truth in the shadows.

“The Obscura is an acting technique that moves beyond representation and imitation. It asks the actor to dissolve the self and enter completely into an imagined space, allowing responses to arise truthfully from within that reality. Rather than performing a character, the actor sustains the illusion of the imaginary circumstances until it becomes their lived truth. Obscura explores consciousness, subconsciousness, and what may be called beyond-consciousness, a state where attention is fully externalised and the actor becomes a vessel for authentic responses,” says Balakrishnan.

He is taking this technique to budding actors through the acting workshop, The Obscura with V Balakrishnan, which will take place in the city in a couple of weeks. He has been a theatre educator and acting trainer for more than two decades now.

Explaining the process of the technique, he explains, “Learning the Obscura is an inward and outward journey. The process involves deconditioning (the instinct to represent or imitate), constructing, which is an imaginary space through guided visualisation and sensory imagination, sustaining that space with uninterrupted awareness, allowing genuine impulses to emerge, dissolving self-consciousness that is turning all attention outward until the internal experience becomes truthful and organic and responding only to the stimuli born of that imagined environment, not to intellectual intention or audience expectation.

The training uses a blend of meditative focus, physical movement, and intuitive responsiveness. It’s both a discipline and a ritual rooted in silence, attention, and surrender.”

Although the acting technique does not require any formal eligibility criteria, it demands emotional honesty, discipline, and openness. The Obscura is not about learning to act better; it’s about unlearning performance and rediscovering presence.

Talking about what participants can expect in the workshop, Balakrishnan shares, “The participants can expect two days of intense, immersive exploration. The workshop will introduce the philosophy of Obscura and guide actors through practical exercises that build imaginative and sensory awareness, deepen concentration, dissolve self-consciousness, and train the body and mind to respond organically to imagined stimuli. By the end of the workshop, actors will have glimpsed a new way of being on stage: still, alert, truthful, and profoundly alive.”

The Obscura with Balakrishnan, a two-day workshop, will take place on November 1 and 2, from 9.30 am to 5 pm, at Idam - The Space, Kodambakkam.
For details, contact:
9677172897.