Cathryn Fairlee, 63 Years old, a professional American Story Teller for Adults is in City for this week, She is a talented painting artist,  as well a professional story teller for last 30 Years. Surprisingly, she is very fluent with the stories of Mahabharat, that is one of the reason she is now in Chennai.
Having listened to her for 30 minutes on Mahabharat in English, One would really appreciate her for the hard work she had done for reading, listening  & the interest to learn more.  She is actually now lecturing about Mahabharata to English listeners back in the USA, moreover the way Cathryn perceiving the tales & her way of speech would make any listeners to easily understand the Mahabharat in couple of hours of listening.

With support from Dr.Eric Miller, Director, World Storytelling Institute, Chennai, and Dr.Muthukumaraswamy, Director, Mr.Vinod and Mr.Sunder of National Folkore Support Centre, an NGO working on archiving many traditional cultures, Cathryn was assisted to visit experienced storytellers and drama artists of Mahabharat in and around Kanchipuram and Cheyyar Villages.

Cathryn seems to be more interested and impressed with Droupathi & Bheema characters in Mahabharat, I too guess she had a wonderful day in understanding little more about those characters from the Indian Story Tellers with new stories which she never listened earlier.  Specially the roles and characters of Thushyantha, Droupati, Bheema & Nalaayini(earlier life of Draupati). 

Concerning me, I had a wonderful opportunity to be part of this team and assisted Cathryn  from Tamil Translations, also elaborated the myths involved in legendary  literatures of Bharath(India).

Visit to Mahabarat Drama family : Mr.Prabhu a young Drama artist, his father and his grandfather who is now 90 Years Old(photo attached). When we asked the senior man, since when he started acting in Dramas? His answer was that he has been doing this since his teen-wood.
Mr.Prabhu’s family is now running a big drama company in the name of Shreeman Naarayanamoorthy kattai koothu mandram, They are located in a village called Irungoor, a remote village near to Cheyyaar. Kanchipuram District.

Surprisingly, there is a website which can give more information their drama group http://www.therukkoothu.com

(Cathryn, Irungur Narayanan, Dhanjeyan)

Through the trip, we have also visited few other professional Mahabharat Story tellers, Mr.Gangatharan of Vaazhaipanthal Village, Aarcot Taluk. Who is specialized in telling Mahabharat for last 30 years & performed about 126 events ranging from 3 days to 70 days of continuos lecturing, we also met another speaker Mr.Dhananjeyan who also in service for 26 years. Both of themhad to spend about 5~7 years to learn the skill from their Guru at early age. It was a wonderful day, we had hours of discussions, question & answers about Mahabharat, how a story teller can take good message from the legendary literatures of India in effective manner.

(Live koothu performance)