chennai the alternative tamil theatre movement founded by n muthuswamy artistic director of koothuppattarai kpp received a jolt with his death but its not the end of the world for actors like e kumaravel kalai rani pasupathy vimal vijay sethupathy who believe his work will live on through his students he wouldnt have wanted us to mourn wouldnt have wanted us to lie low and mostly he wouldnt have wanted his art to die says actor kalai rani who worked with him since the 1980s muthuswamys son natesh will take forward his legacy we are planning to have more workshops plays karna prasads book of plays will help in teaching youngsters what a cult figure muthuswamy was says kumaravel the day after the 82yearold thespian died on october 24 several actors gathered and recollected their theatre days and remembered the life lessons taught by him perfection and originality were most important for him he used to say that what makes a person complete is not money or fame it is humanity and humility that counts says kumaravel deeply philosophical his plays made both the actors and audiences think the focus was to make an actor ready to play any role his plays were not melodramatic like the usual dramas of the time living in the moment and empathizing with the audience was his motto he wanted viewers to infer what the entire concept was about says the azhagiya theeye actorjoining kpp was a turning point says kalai rani there was no looking back though i moved to films i got the perfect grounding for a movie its enough to have certain kind of body language but in plays every sense needs to be alert throwing your voice at the audience is of capital importance as there is no concept of dubbing she says adding that she would be teaching youngsters about kpp style muthuswamy uncle had a method he mixed modern and traditional ideas which was uniquemuthuswamy took his students back to their cultural roots and opened their minds to fold art we were unaware about our culture he taught us about it how to look at our cultural heritage what to do to preserve it says karuna prasad who has collected all his works into a book muthuswamy had written more than 1200 pages that had not been published the perception that kpp produces actors for movies is a wrong notion rather it is the film industry that is now recognizing the talent the theatre group produces is unparalleled muthuswamys aim was not to create actors for cinema his aim was to promote and preserve culture says a studentworking under financial constraints for years the group prasad said had been supported by wellwishers once the group began participating in the sangeet natak akademi festival they started receiving some money with which they would put up colourful plays later ford foundation too came to fund kpp to help them preserve traditional folk art when we were full time artists our