G. Venu, a scholar and practitioner of kutiyattam, responds to contemporary political conditions in Kerala and draws on the work of India's experimental Theatre of Roots movement in his unexpectedly classical production of Sakuntala . Though imbricated in both the traditional and the avantgarde—creating what Venu aptly calls “present-day kutiyattam”—the question remains: will the project's politics be read to the radical or the revolutionary?