SUNATYAM·

Sunatyam Studios · dance-drama for the screen · India

A fifth Veda,
made to be watched.

The four were closed to most people. So the story goes that Brahma made a fifth out of all of them — one anyone could see and hear. That is still the brief. We are building a studio for dance-drama from India's epics, and building it so that almost anyone can help.

Sunatyam is early. Nothing below is a catalogue of things you can buy today. It is what we are building and the terms we intend to build it on. We would rather publish that now and be held to it than announce it once it is safely finished.
See what we're building Tell us what you'd need

What this is for

Drama is supposed to do something to you.

The Natyashastra is unusually specific about what performance is for. Not to depict an emotion but to produce one — रस, rasa — and to do it by loosening, for a while, the grip of your own circumstances. The texts have a word for that moment: साधारणीकरण, sadharanikarana, when a room full of strangers stops being individuals with private worries and feels one thing together.

We are not promising you that. We are telling you what we aim at. Every choice — what we adapt, who we cast, how long we rehearse — gets measured against one question: does the finished thing leave a room lighter than it found it?

Everything below exists so that more people get to attempt that, not fewer.

The library we're building · कोष Kosha

A drama you can perform to.

Original, cleared, and yours to use.

Yakshagana, Kathakali and Bhaona all separate the voice from the body. One person tells it, another performs it. Half the mythological work ever made for a screen runs the same way, on a track laid down before anyone stepped in front of a camera.

Kosha is built on that. Not a folder of assets, but finished drama in audio — dialogue, narration, song and score, timed and ready — so a group can rehearse to it and perform to it. Which means you do not have to sing, or speak Sanskrit, or like the sound of your own voice, to take a lead role.

Most productions of these stories currently run on material they have no right to use — a film score under a Ramlila, a devotional track behind a recital, a recitation lifted off a broadcast. It works until it doesn't, and the takedown tends to land after the work is finished. Everything in Kosha is commissioned and cleared once, so it can be used again without anyone looking over their shoulder. It fills as we make our own work. Here is what we intend it to hold.

Playback
The finished track a production runs on — dialogue, narration, song and score in one piece, timed so performers can lip-sync to it.
Stems
The same track, separated. Swap the language, re-voice it with your own singers, or cut it to the length you actually have.
Script and cues
The text being mouthed, with transliteration, translation and timings — so a performer knows what they are saying, not just when to open their mouth.
Staging reference
A plain recording of the sequence so you can see what happens when. No notation to read.
Design
Mask designs, makeup charts, costume patterns, ornament and prop references.

Because the voice sits apart from the body, the same drama can be staged in Hindi in one town and Bengali in the next, with the same blocking and the same track underneath it. That is the plan, at least — Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali and English first, and more as the people who speak them join.

How we intend to open it. The exact terms are still being drafted, but three principles are settled.

Students shouldn't pay

Classroom, recital and non-commercial use should stay free, with credit. That is the part we are least willing to compromise on.

One licence, not a maze

Committees, troupes and schools should be able to cover a season in a single arrangement rather than clearing item by item.

Commercial use funds it

Broadcast, brand and ticketed work pays, and that is what keeps the rest of it open.

The route we're designing

A way to make your own, properly.

Most people who want to stage these stories stop at the same three walls: they were never taught, they cannot afford music, and they have no idea what the paperwork should say. We are designing a route around all three. It will take a while to build, and this is the shape of it.

  1. Learn

    Workshops and recorded sessions — movement, abhinaya, recitation, staging for a camera. Taught by people who do this for a living, not by us reading a book at you.

  2. Draw

    Take a track from Kosha under one plain arrangement — the drama already recorded, ready to rehearse and perform to. No rights to chase, nothing to guess at.

  3. Make

    The working method we are assembling as we make our own productions: rehearsal approach, planning documents, consent and release forms, and how we handle working with children.

  4. Publish

    Release it where you choose. What matters to us is that the title is clean, so nothing you made can be pulled out from under you later.

  5. Keep

    Credit should accrue to the person who earned it rather than evaporating into a channel. We are designing for that from the start.

Rights, credit, payment

Sign once. Get credited, get paid, keep the proof.

The reason people get exploited in this work is rarely malice. It is that nobody wrote anything down. So the paperwork is something we are treating as part of the craft rather than an afterthought — and these are the standards we are writing toward.

One agreement, in your language
Plain language, alongside the language you actually work in. Rights, credit, payment and visibility settled in one document rather than four, and short enough to read.
Clean in both directions
A production needs the rights to exist. In exchange you should know exactly what is being made, where it can be shown, and for how long — with no quiet re-use in something you never agreed to.
Credit as a record, not a text file
Contributors named properly and kept in a form that can be carried forward, which is what makes the next line possible at all.
Work that accrues to you
The aim is that credits collect somewhere that belongs to you: roles, scenes, stills, one link to send a school, a producer, or a family that doesn't quite believe you did this.
Money agreed up front
Rate and schedule settled in writing before the work happens, whatever the size of the part. We do not intend to offer exposure instead of payment.

How you appear

Show your work, not your face.

Plenty of people want to perform and cannot be recognisable doing it — because of a job, a family, a community, or simply their own preference. The traditions solved this a long time ago. A Chhau mask or a full Kathakali face is not a compromise; it is one of the oldest and most powerful ways to appear at all.

So visibility is something we intend to make a choice rather than a condition of entry. Three levels, decided before you are cast and written down.

Your face, your name, in the credits.

The usual thing. You appear as yourself, credited under your own name, and you keep material from your scenes for your own portfolio.

Seen
Face, full performance
Credit
Your legal or stage name
You keep
Stills and your scenes
Suits
Performers building a reel
Written before filmed
The agreement comes first and the camera second. That order is not something we intend to bend for convenience.
Reach is yours to set
Where something can be shown should be decided per production, not assumed once and reused forever.
Consent should be revocable
A signature on one day should not bind you indefinitely. That is the standard we are writing toward, and we will say plainly what it covers once it is settled.
Minors handled separately
Guardian consent, restricted hours, a chaperone present, and a higher default privacy level than an adult would get.

Who this is for

You do not have to be a performer to perform.

Some of the strongest work in this tradition comes from people who do something else all week. Teachers, doctors, engineers, homemakers, students. What they lack in training they tend to make up for in the one thing that cannot be taught: they mean it.

So we would rather run this as a ladder than a casting call — a workshop before an audition, weeks of rehearsal rather than hours, and something at the end that is yours to show.

If you already train

Dancers, singers, percussionists, reciters, makeup and mask artists, camera and edit. We are not casting yet, but we are keen to know who is out there. Send a couple of links.

Introduce yourself

If you have never done this

Workshops are the way in, and we are working out the format now. Tell us what you would want from one and it will shape how we build it.

Tell us what you'd want

Not up for negotiation

House rules, and what we refuse to be.

Much of this page describes things still being built. This part does not. These cost nothing to honour, so they apply from the first day of the first production.

Everyone is credited
On screen, by name, including the people who made the masks and cooked the food. Nobody's work disappears into “and team”.
Everyone is paid
Agreed before the shoot, in writing, whatever the size of the part.
Traditions are named
When we borrow a step, a mask or a musical form, we say where it came from and who taught it to us.
Criticise the take, never the person
Notes are about the work, not the body, the caste, the accent or the age of the person in it. This applies to the director first.
Not a competition
No rankings, no eliminations, nobody edited to look foolish for a thumbnail. Beginners are the point, not the comic relief.
Not a sermon
We make work rooted in scripture and history, and we make it as drama. Devotion is welcome in the room; it is not a requirement to be in it.

Honestly

Where we actually are.

Anyone can write intentions. This is the part that is harder to fake, so we would rather keep it on the page and update it than leave you guessing.

  • First production In progress Being made now. We will show it when it is worth showing, and not before.
  • Kosha Being built Filling as we shoot. Not open for licensing yet — the terms are still being drafted with counsel.
  • Workshops Designing Format, length and where they run are all open questions. Input welcome.
  • Membership Not open It will fund the productions when it exists. There is nothing to join today.
  • Commissions Open We work with production partners and are talking to people about work now.

Contact

At this stage, the most useful thing you can send is what you'd need.

We are still deciding a great deal. A note describing what you would actually want out of this is worth more to us right now than an enquiry we cannot yet answer — and it is the fastest way to influence how any of it gets built.

Commissions and partners

Festivals, channels, brands, trusts and institutions, and production partners across India.

studio@sunatyam.com

Everyone else

Performers, musicians, crew, teachers, committees, and anyone who would want to use Kosha one day.

hello@sunatyam.com

Hear when things open

One occasional note when something actually opens. No newsletter, and we never share the list.

hello@sunatyam.com