Six Norwegian “touchers,” (that’s what these theatre practitioners call themselves) with two invited collaborators (of which I was one), then dived into the immersive theatre production in which every audience member is facilitated to “see” a unique play behind closed eyes or through specially created, semi-opaque glasses. The almost blindfolded participants were led in one by one and offered a range of touch stimuli within a scripted sequence. This play was co-written by audience and actors, the sensorial awareness and imagination of every audience member playing a key role.

When I read about The Skindom through a social media post seeking collaborators who also worked with creative practices rooted in sensorial approaches, I first thought of the ways in which I had known touch to be intrusive, unsafe and unpleasant. Yet, the idea of touch as an artistic offering and a medium of story-telling stirred my curiosity. I felt safe enough to put myself in the path of this “hotbed of touchers.”

By participating in this work, I got a chance to reaffirm my belief in the healing power of touch. I had ample time to reflect on how touch is marginalised, misunderstood and misused in our daily lives. The disappearance or abuse of touch has put us in a questionable relationship with it, I thought, as, in show after show we “touched” strangers – every touch rooted in respect, dignity and compassion.

Before becoming a collaborator in the project, I was invited to be a participant and to offer a sample of my creative practice that involves reflecting on our relationship with trees by touching (and playing with) materials sourced from or near trees in a specially designed workshop that I call the Treevellers’ Katte. First, the other invited collaborator (a Japanese artist from Santiniketan, West Bengal, whose work explores touch as “a non-verbal, embodied method of communication”) and I participated in The Skindom as audience.

I was walking barefoot on tiny pebbles, caressing a dry, fallen leaf under the midday sun, when the creators of this work – Hanna Barfod and Liv Kristin Holmberg led me into the theatre. The Skindom felt like a generous shower of poems on touch that released me from my body into my being.

I travelled through a variety of sensations and freedom from sensations behind the “skin glasses.” New perspectives opened. Maybe the nose can see, eyes can hear and the ears sing, my body pointed out. As I was led from one experience to another, held in the able, empathetic hands of the “touchers,” I could let go. It did not matter that I did not know exactly what was happening because my skin said I was safe. I saw how the skin runs messages between the outer world and parts of me that I cannot touch but can feel within.

Later in the day, I offered a slice of my creative practice to others in the cast and crew through a Treevellers’ Katte workshop. A “treeveller” travels to meet trees and revels in them, while katte is Kannada for hangout. I created the Treevellers’ Katte – a holding space for people’s tree stories and tree memories, in 2016. Over every workshop conducted with diverse populations in the last ten years, I’ve gotten to observe closely that we’re not just wired to watch nature but also guided by it, even if subconsciously.

In the Treevellers’ Katte conducted with team Skindom, a participant remembered the taste and texture of a “grey soup” her mother made for her with seeds she collected from her favourite tree as a child. The memory “just popped up” when she was fashioning replicas of the somewhat conical seeds of the tree using clay dough (a dough I prepared with natural materials as clay was unavailable). Though she could not recall the name of the tree, she vividly remembered the “nutty flavour and heavy grey colour” of the soup made of its seeds.

Similarly, memories emerged through touch, across every show of The Skindom that was offered over the next few days by the team of six Norwegian theatre practitioners and two local collaborators. Aspects of the creative practices shared by the local collaborators were woven into the production. The audience included theatre practitioners, actors, teachers, retired persons, residents from the tribal hamlet that the theatre is located in, daily wage labourers, homemakers, pastoralists, students and others. Some of the audience members were first time theatre-goers. One remembered his father’s voice and touch. Another remembered the feel of the paddy fields he played in as a child. Someone else experienced “the journey of the spirit from birth to death.” Yet another said, “so much could have gone wrong but the intentions that came through the touch made me feel safe.”

The location of Sahyande Theatre in the heart of a tropical forest added layers of magic to The Skindom. Created by Sankar Venkateswaran and Satoko Tsurudome, this is a forest theatre in which trees, the Sahyadri mountains, animals, insects, reptiles, falling leaves, the wind, rain and slanting sunlight play key roles. Sankar sees himself as “a caretaker of the theatre” and Satoko manages every little aspect of it including the puppies that have adopted it. The wholesome relationship that Sankar and Satoko share with land and communities is reflected in the remarkable work of Theatre Roots and Wings – the theatre company they created in 2007. This also shaped how The Skindom was given and received during its first ever India run.

How exactly did a theatrical production that began in Norway touch communities in and near a remote tribal hamlet in the south of India? How did people who have never been to a proscenium theatre and those who have worked in it for many years dive blindfolded into a production that nudged them viscerally to reflect on touch? These and many other questions floated in the air as Hanna Barfod and Liv Kristin Holmberg described the making of The Skindom after the shows ended. Liv Kristin is an organist and performing artiste who was researching after-death rituals through performance when she met Hanna, a performing artiste and theatre educator with a deep interest in sensory based, interactive theatre. They co-created The Skindom with many collaborators of whom Marianne Stranger, Camilla Wexels Riser, Ditteke Waidelich and Andreas Hald Oxenvad participated in the India run. Natsumi Sato and I joined them as local collaborators in the production that seemed to ask, “In a world torn by conflict, how can we cultivate connection and find home in our own skin?”

Charumathi Supraja is a writer, poet and journalist based in Bengaluru.