Arjun Raina has trained as an Actor at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Through 90's he trained as a Kathakali dancer with Guru Sadanam Balakrishanan. He is a teacher of Voice and Acting at the National School of Drama. His work in films includes playing Annie in 'In Which Annie gives it those Ones'. "Khelkali" is an experimental mix of Kathakali and Shakespeare. It uses the stories and text of Shakespeare and the style and theatricality of Kathakali to try and create a new authentic theatrical voice. Both were theatres emerging out of medieval morality theatre and both had storytelling at the heart of their art. With India's colonial history as a context and its own search for a modern identity as a parameter, a combination of Shakespeare and Kathakali or Khelkali, gives a feel of a modern, contemporary India theatre. The two stories in the repertoire include 'Othello' and 'A Mid Summer Night's Dream'. He gives English introductions followed by dance to soothing Malayalam numbers. In full Kathakali costume and painted face, Arjun Raina as Peter Pillai, uses the Shakespearean comedy to weave it with a story about Bhima and Anjaneya.

On Samavesham:
I think the classical arts trivialise women specially when men transform themselves into women...there is a kind of shared delight with the audience in a seeming act of identifying the female with a kind of mock feminine sexuality. This is an extension of male power and territory. For me as an actor and performer a greater challenge lies in being able to not trivialise but experience a woman in her true spirit and expression.This brings me to the act of not playing a womans' part but of playing a precise aritistic emotion. Anger. To express a Woman's anger. In all it's simple humaness. This desexualises the playing of a womans part by a man but does not degender it. It is about a woman's anger. A specific woman's anger.