Revanth Revanna on doubt, distance,
and the slow making of an artist
There is a certain kind of artist who does not arrive with certainty. Who resists the urgency to declare, to produce, to belong. Instead, they hover — between disciplines, between identities, between definitions of what it means to be an artist at all. Revanth Revanna is one of them.
An actor and theatre practitioner who continues to hold a full-time job, his journey does not follow the familiar arc of early commitment and steady ascent. It is slower. More questioning. At times, deeply unsettling. But in that in-between space, something else is forming — a philosophy of practice that refuses easy answers.
“I feel like an imposter… but I’m learning to stay with that.”
THE IN-BETWEEN IS NOT EMPTY
“I am in a peculiar position,” he says. “I am not practising art full time.” His artistic life runs alongside a parallel one — structured, stable, necessary. But this duality brings unease. “It feels like I am not risking it all… I do feel like an imposter.”
And yet, that unease is evolving. What once felt like self-doubt now feels like a question worth holding. Why not go all in? Is it fear — or a search for alignment?
“I am able to rest with the idea that maybe I had not fully found my calling yet,” he says. The in-between begins to shift — from a gap into a way of working.
INISIDE THE SYSTEM,
BUT NOT ENTIRELY OF IT
“I often struggle to make myself appealing on paper,” he says. There are criteria, expectations, languages of articulation that don’t always hold the kind of work he wants to make — deeply personal, sometimes difficult to translate into proposals or portfolios.
“I seem to operate at the edge of the community. Sometimes by choice. Sometimes by consequence.”
It is a space that is both freeing and frustrating — where visibility is limited, but autonomy is preserved.
WHAT SUSTAIN, WHAT CALLS
Revanth sees many peers building sustainable artistic lives through teaching, workshops, and hybrid practices. He respects the resilience it takes. But when he turns inward, the answer is less certain. “I sense an inexplicable fatigue thinking about that.”
A quiet tension emerges: between what sustains you, and what calls you. Between the practical scaffolding of a career and the immersive, almost obsessive desire to dwell inside a process without distraction. “I am grappling with fissures or between reality and possibilities,” he says simply.
RETHINKING THE YOUNG ARTIST
“I have a bit of a disagreement with the term ‘young artist,’” he says. “I think I am an artist who is relatively young.” Embedded in ‘young artist’, is often an assumption of incompleteness — of becoming, but not yet being. Revanth resists that. Any work, he insists, is complete in itself.
“Sometimes I wish there was more kindness. More conversations that begin with: what were you intending with this?”
Because transformation does not always require force. Sometimes, it requires being seen.
lEARNING WITHOUT MAP
Revanth’s practice has been shaped less by formal training and more by encounters — performances, workshops, and mentors across disciplines.
A performance of Chandala, the Impure by Indianostrum Theatre. A workshop with Ariane Mnouchkine. An introduction to Koumarane Valavane and the idea of an open school. These moments did not just teach technique. They altered perception.
“Observation is one of the most profound ways of learning.”
“There is no structure,” he says, of building his own path. “You have to curate your own.” It demands time, resources, and resilience. But it offers something institutions rarely offer in full: agency, autonomy, and a deeper process of self-discovery.
In a culture that rewards speed, Revanth’s practice chooses otherwise — slowness, uncertainty, and
the discipline of staying with the question.
Revanth Revanna is an actor, theatre practitioner, and filmmaker based in Bengaluru.
