Performance Studies

The Dialectics of the Performance of the Kecak Ramayana in Uluwatu, Bali, Indonesia

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Robby Hidajat1, Utami Widiati2, E.W. Suprihatin D.P3, Guntur4 & Surasak Jamnongsarn5
1-3Department of Art and Design, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang. Email: robby.hidajat.fs@um.ac.id
4Department of Craft, Faculty of Fine Arts and Design, Indonesian Institute of the Arts, Surakarta
5Department of Traditional Thai and Asian Music, Faculty of Fine Arts, Srinakharinwirot University

[Submitted 05 May 20023, modified 20 June 2023, accepted 22 June 2023, first published 24 June 2023]

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 15, Issue 2, June 2023. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v15n2.13
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Theoretical
The Ramayana kecak is a popular tourist art in Bali that is rich in symbolism. The audience watches only from the front of the stage, which is formalistic in nature, witnessing different scenes, characteristics of figures, structures, and dramatic factors. The performers are not aware that the backstage is the realm of rituals and a part of the deep experience of spiritual beliefs. The front stage and backstage should be viewed as complementary duality. Activities behind the stage are more natural while those on the front stage are a manipulation. The backstage can be understood as a dramaturgical richness of a paradoxical and symbolic Eastern performing art. Therefore, the appeal of the backstage is not an attractive consideration. This research uses a qualitative descriptive approach. The data were collected through in-depth interviews with Ramayana kecak artists at Uluwatu Temple, Bali, and a document analysis was done. The theories used are symbolic interpretation, text and context, and symbolic structure. The results of the research present a description of the dramaturgy of Balinese performing art with a specific focus on: 1. Dramaturgy of the front stage, 2. Dramaturgy of the backstage, and 3. Local spiritual aesthetics including the spirit of duality known as taksu which is rooted in Rwa Bhineda.

Keywords: Kecak Ramayana, dramaturgy, performing art, Uluwatu Temple.

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Ballet in Virtual Reality: On the Problem of Synthesizing “End-to-End” Technologies and Theatrical Stage Art

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Tatiana V. Portnova
The Kosygin State University of Russia, Moscow, Russian Federation. Email: portnova_ta@bk.ru

Submitted 10 January 2022, modified 27 May 2023, accepted 17 June 2023, first published 21 June 2023

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 15, Issue 2, June 2023. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v15n2.12
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Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the problem of synthesizing “end-to-end” technologies and theatrical (stage) art. The author proceeds from the fact that in the era of industrialization, a person’s perceptual practices are carried out through the prism of a new, generative reality, which, consequently, causes the transformation of the spatial-temporal model of aesthetic experience. However, the artist as the creator of a work of art, having a special sensitivity to reality, can see what may be inaccessible to his audience. The hypothesis is put forward that this ability is based on a simultaneous perception of time and space, the fundamentalization of which in the perceptual practice and aesthetic experience of the viewer is the main task of a modern artist. The verification of this hypothesis was carried out through the prism of the synthesis of virtual reality as an “end-to-end” digital technology and stage (choreographic) art, where time and space become the subject of artistic reflection. The methodological foundation of the research is based on a discursive analysis, which allows us to understand, firstly, how modern stage (choreographic) digital art offers the viewer to make a path on his own, with a “previously passed meaning” and with the help of his already existing perceptual experience; secondly, how the artist, as the creator of a work of digital art, builds and carries out a “conversation” with the viewer through the prism of the simultaneous communicative space initiated by him. The author emphasizes that a modern artist, regardless of his/her role in art, must have the skill of discursive analysis to be able to create a communicative space in which the viewer will be able to gain perceptual experience and independently “realize” the temporal-spatial mega-code, and understand the idea of the artist, regardless of how much it is hidden from the audience. In turn, the ability to discursive analysis of the viewer will allow you to collect and disperse meanings, transform them, return them to their original state and let them go back into the element of the game of signifiers, offering yourself to overcome the path in the semantic landscape of the work of theatrical (stage, choreographic) art.

Keywords: “end-to-end” technologies, theatrical art, choreographic art, virtual reality, perceptual practice, ballet, space, time.

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‘Healing the World with Comedy’: Anxiety and Sublimation in Bo Burnham’s Inside

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Ann Christina Pereira1 & Dr Sarika Tyagi2
1Research scholar, Department of English, Vellore Institute of Technology-Vellore. ORCID: 0000-0002-2555-4910. Email: ann.pereira9213@gmail.com;
2Professor, Department of English, Vellore Institute of Technology-Vellore. ORCID: 0000-0001-5144-9981. Email: tyagisarika27@gmail.com

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 4, December, 2022. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n4.12 
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Abstract

Bo Burnham is a critically acclaimed American stand-up comedian and filmmaker. The usual themes in his works are the hypocrisy of artists, the commercialisation of art, and the role of social media in erasing the boundary between the public and the private. However, during the pandemic, he chose to focus on the theme of anxiety, a minor theme in his earlier works. Anxiety has been considered an integral part of modernity as discussed by Anthony Giddens and Zygmunt Bauman. In psychoanalysis, anxiety has been explained in a number of different ways. In current psychological discourse, anxiety is described as an unpleasant state of mind that can cause significant bodily and mental stress. The anxiety that Burnham experienced prior to the pandemic appears to have amplified during the pandemic. Two main types of anxiety are observable in the shows of Burnham—performance anxiety and existential anxiety. This paper seeks to understand Burnham’s show Inside (2021) using Anna Segal’s contribution to the concept of ‘sublimation’. We argue that in doing the show Inside, Burnham discovers a new way to acknowledge and channel his ‘depressive’ symptoms towards contemporary times, and he achieves sublimation in the process.

Keywords: Comedy, sublimation, anxiety, existential anxiety, modernity

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“Theatre is not a casual engagement, it is a daily ritual”: Imphal and the Chorus Repertory Theatre as the Sites of Performance

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Subhash Chandra Das1 & Jyotirmoy Prodhani2
1Associate Professor, Department of English, B.H. College, Assam (Gauhati University).
Email: dassubhashc@gmail.com. ORCID: 0000-0002-4346-5444
2Professor, Department of English at North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong, Meghalaya.
Email: rajaprodhani@gmail.com. ORCID: 0000-0002-3420-4322

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 2, April-June, 2022. Pages 1-16. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n2.ne46

First published: June 30, 2022 | Area: Northeast India | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This editorial is published under Themed Issue on Literature of Northeast India)
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Abstract:

The paper contains an exclusive interview of Ratan Thiyam (1948), the famous theatre director from the Northeast and one of the major protagonists of the Theatre of Roots movement in India. The paper also provides the authors’ experience with the place, Imphal, (capital of Manipur state), its people, and its milieu which intimately informed the creative self of Thiyam and his theatre abode—the Chorus Repertory Theatre (CRT). Manipur is a state of an enigma for many outside the state, not only in the mainland but even in other parts of the Northeast as well because Manipur is seen as a place that has been a theatre of political turmoil and unrest following protracted militancy, ethnic anxieties and the tumults of identity assertions besides being subjected to the draconian AFSPA for the longest period of time. Against such a backdrop life continues to thrive in Imphal which provides elaborate nuances and contradictions turning the cityscape itself into a space of performance. The interview was taken on the sidelines of the National Theatre Festival 2017, at the CRT where some of the significant contemporary Indian plays were also performed including Thiyam’s Urubhangam. The paper attempts to look at Thiyam’s theatre against the cultural and spatial context of Manipur and to see how theatre can evolve as an organic form of artistic expression.

Keywords: Performance, Ratan Thiyam, CRT, Theatre of Roots, Urubhangam

Richard Schechner (2006) says ‘anything’ and ‘everything’ can be part of ‘performance’ (p.1). He describes performance as a “broad spectrum” or “continuum of human actions” (p.2) ranging from sports, popular entertainment, performing arts (theatre, dance, music) media as well as everyday activities like the enactment of social, professional, gender, race, and class roles, and even the acts of healing —from shamanism to surgery. The range of performance has further expanded now with the proliferation of digital platforms. Notably, performance is determined not only by the performers but also by its surroundings, its social milieu and also by the history of the place. Therefore, the same play by two different directors from two different locales would differ from each other. K.N. Panikkar and Ratan Thiyam’s productions of Bhasa’s Urubhangam are completely different from each other in terms of their performative forms and theatrical executions, as they have designed their performances based on their respective cultural as well as historical contexts.

Thus, performance is not only a composition implemented through the conscious acts of the actors on stage and the accompanying musicians in the background alone; the passive aspects of performance are equally important without which performance cannot be complete, not even possible. Such aspects would include the lights, settings, props, audience, and also the whole space, for they together form the syntax of semiotic totality of a performance. Performance space is generally understood as the space where the actual performance takes place. However, this space has a culture-specific dimension which is informed and determined by the cultural geography of the place giving it its distinctive character, historicity, and also its identity. Therefore, every culture has its own exclusive performance tradition and modes that are distinct and different from the other.  Ankia Naat, developed by Srimanta Sankardeva in the 16th century Assam, could only be possible against the geographic, cultural and historical context of the place and time that it belonged. The same is true for other traditions such as Kutiattyam of Kerala, Yakshagana of Karnataka, Kuchipudi of Andhra Pradesh or Jatra of Bengal.

Time is another key aspect that plays a seminal role in providing a connotative dimension to performance as it is time that assigns fresh significations and meanings to a performance. The Off-Off-Broadway theatre movement of America could emerge as a reaction against the robust capitalist exigencies of postmodern America, it could have never happened at any other time. Similarly, the Theatre of Roots movement of India could only emerge in the aftermath of India’s independence as a result of its desperate search for a form that was quintessentially Indian to assert a claim for a modern theatrical form of its own, free from the colonial cultural baggage. The evolution of a theatre tradition cannot be in an empty space, rather it invariably happens in the wake of the cultural, political, historical as well as day-to-day exigencies of a given place and time.

The Setting: Imphal and CRT

When we reached Imphal on 29 March 2017, by an Indigo flight from Guwahati, we were actually clueless about the place. The image and ideas about Imphal that we carried were mostly shaped by the media, hence we anticipated a war-ravaged town with the gun-trotting armed personnel patrolling the streets against heaps of ruins. The few things we knew about Imphal were that there was an all-women market, Ima Keithel1 (Mother’s market) where all the shops were owned by women and that it was a dry state2. Manipur is known for the dance tradition of Raas Leela as well as Lai Haraoba and also the indigenous martial art, thang ta. Quite significantly these traditions are integral to the theatre productions of Ratan Thiyam.  However, Manipur has always been there in the news as a militancy hotbed, known all over as the state having the uncanny distinction of being under the longest imposition of one of India’s deadliest anti-terrorism Acts called the AFSPA or the Armed Forces (Special Power) Act3 which turned citizens of Manipur, in the age group from nineteen to ninety, as they say, into potential candidates to be halted, questioned, picked up or even killed at will by the armed forces virtually whenever they wished to. It reached a flashpoint with the alleged brutal killing of Thangjam Manorama by the Armed forces in 2004 which led 12 Imas (mothers) to disrobe and carry out the historic protest in front of the Kangla Fort4 which was the Headquarters of the Assam Rifles. Significantly, the protest turned into almost a live enactment of the famous sequence of H. Kanhailal’s play, Draupadi (2000), based on Mahasweta Devi’s Dopdi, where the protagonist, Draupadi, subjected to sexual threats and mutilation, vanquished the aggressive masculinity of the Senanayak with the banal power of her naked body by challenging him to rape her.  Kanhailal once said that following the KAngla Fort protest, people used to call him a seer as if he had foreseen almost with a prophetic vision what was to come four years later (in his interview with Prodhani, 2015). Life in Manipur against such backdrops seemed like a tightrope walk holding a precarious pole of faith that keeps oscillating between hope and a mess.

 In 2017 Manipur was yet to come under the ILP (Inner Line Permit)5 regime unlike Mizoram, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh in the Northeast.  Therefore, after having arrived at the small but well-decorated airport, we came out of the lounge without having to show our permits and credentials. Coming out we saw several taxi drivers standing in front of the gate expecting passengers. In the Northeast, there are at least three similar airports – Aizawl, Agartala and Imphal— the three state capitals with small airports of similar sizes. The arrival lounges of these small airports would typically feature the billboards of the state tourism departments showcasing the picture-perfect scenes of the landscape and some historic monuments of the states, dancers in gorgeous ethnic costumes and also stalls selling exquisite ethnic wares at high prices for the travellers to pick up their souvenirs as the last-minute picks. But Imphal airport has one difference—it is an international airport, which we did not know until we had arrived there. Bir Tikendrajit International Airport. The borders of Manipur are the final lines of India’s map in the Eastern extreme, hence Imphal in the common imagination in the mainland is the end of the world, a Shangrila, beyond that exists a frontier with fading horizons and a void.

As we drove in a Maruti 800 towards the Manipur University Guest House, we were in for a big surprise. Contrary to our premonition of frequent halt by the armed personnel in combat fatigue, there were hardly any in the street and more surprisingly, unlike the streets from the airport to the city in the other similar airports of the Northeast, the road to Imphal from the airport was unexpectedly wide and straight like an arrow, running through the assured stretches of the plains on either side dotted with well-appointed showrooms of premium cars and bikes that included TATA, Mahindra, Honda, Toyota and several other billboards including that of the Sangai Festival. The festival was over last winter, but the boards were still there. The driver, an enthusiastic and stylish man in his early thirties, informed us that the Sangai Festival was one of the biggest annual festivals of Manipur and the sangai, an endangered antler and the mascot of the event, was found only in Manipur. As we drove down, he informed us that it was Tiddim Road, the Indo-Myanmar international road that went right into Tiddim in Myanmar. This road seemed one of the widest in any city in the Northeast. Manipur has a sense of space. Wide and vast, plain and fertile. No wonder when, just before India’s Independence in 1947, a section of the British officials proposed a Crown Colony6 comprising the Northeastern states including the Chittagong hill tracts (now in Bangladesh), and also parts of Burma, they wanted to develop Imphal with an international airport as the capital of that dream, to turn the city into the gateway to South East Asia. Imphal might well have turned into the Hong Kong of Northeast had the plan for the Crown Colony materialised. Being so close to Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos and the other South East Asian countries, Imphal, in fact, still has the geographical edge to become, with the right policy and planning, a major economic hub, a veritable ‘Mumbai of the Northeast’.

At the university we were the guests of Prof. Gambhir Singh of Manipur University who had arranged a three-wheeler tempo, a popular mode of transport in Imphal, to take us to CRT situated on the outskirts of the city. Our vehicle would take us to the CRT and bring us back after the show at around 8 pm at night, which was, by Imphal standards, rather quite late at night. The tempo rickshaw drove us through Imphal town. Our driver, Ranjit, a Meitei boy, who was also on a contractual job at the university, showed us the gate of the famed Kangla Fort. The roads in the central junction of the city had fancy cast iron railings like the ones one comes across in some parts of Calcutta. Contrary to our anticipation, downtown Imphal was not a sleepy pad, but rather a bustling city with a busy throng.

But as we proceeded, one thing struck us—the residential buildings had some common characteristics. Most of the multi-storied buildings were large, straight, and in terms of visual appeal quite banal, and noticeably, they mostly looked incomplete for most of them were not coloured as the outer walls were left without the final coat of plaster and the red bricks of the walls were left bare to tackle abrasion of weather by their own. Could it be the impact of protracted militancy that none wanted to be too visible in the vicinity? Coming from Shillong, where exquisitely designed houses are a common feature, Imphal looked rather plain in this respect. As we left behind the main city and entered the outskirts of Imphal, the landscape looked familiar, quite like that of the small towns in Assam—full of greenery, sprawling household campuses, betel nut groves and a pleasant but a bit humid climate. From the main road, our vehicle diverted to a gravel path that ran through the green fields on either side. Right at the junction, there was a Gate welcoming visitors to the All India Theatre Festival at the Chorus Repertory Theatre (CRT), one of Northeast India’s most legendary abodes of theatre. They call it the CRT Shrine. CRT is spread over a sprawling campus fortified by walls and many of the structures were still under construction. Entering through the first gate of the compound one comes across the first CRT building, an Assam-type, single-storeyed long structure. The compound was well-curated with several artistically designed artefacts and wood crafts including the publicity boards of the earlier productions of the CRT which were painted on the iron sheet boards signed by Ratan Thiyam. One could see the great artistic skill of the legendary theatre Director.  There were boards of Macbeth, Chakravyuha and also of Chinglon Mapan, Tampak Ama (Nine Hills One Valley). The last play is the part of the Manipur Trilogy along with Wahoudok (Prologue) and Hey Nongshibi Pritihivi (My Earth, My Love), which were competently translated by our friend Bijoykumar Tayenjam which is also part of the course that we teach in our university.

Before coming to Imphal we were constantly in touch with Mr. Dolendra, the Manager of CRT. He took us to his office and gave us the brochures and cards to watch the plays. When enquired about the possibility of meeting Ratan Thiyam, Mr. Dolendra, a thin bespectacled gentleman, was not quite sure when ‘Oja’ would come to the venue. He had introduced us to his son instead, Thawai—a handsome, energetic man with a smile. He showed us the compound, the CRT shrine where the festival was underway and also showed the tea stall if we wanted a break. When we asked him how to meet Ratan Thiyam, he was also a little evasive. He advised us to watch the play first and assured us of a possible appointment. He got busy with the arrangements. Suddenly there was a spell of rain, so we took shelter under the Shrine. But the CRT people were moving about with the usual pace from one building to another with their hats on without at all bothering about the rain. None even took an umbrella.

Just before the show began, Ratan Thiyam, the legend of Indian theatre, entered the venue. He came in a dark suit with a red silk square on his breast pocket. He was the most distinctive presence in the venue. Everybody approached him with veneration and greeted him with namaskar to which he responded just by his nodding head. He went toward the open tea stall and sat under a shed. Dolendra hastily went to him with a bunch of files and papers and they discussed for quite some time when we were cooling our heels to get a chance to introduce ourselves. But before we could go near him, he got up and moved towards the Shrine. He went in and disappeared. We noticed that somehow everybody maintained a respectable distance from him, everybody would become self-conscious if happened to cross his path, after all, he was such a towering presence in the theatre shrine.

We went inside the hall. It was an amphitheatre where the audience was to sit in the permanent gallery and the play was to be performed on the floor down below. The entire hall was covered with screens in Thiyam’s favourite colour—black. One of the major creative ambitions of Thiyam, as he said once, was to create the colour black in his productions (see Das, 2018). The scheduled play that evening was Panchajanya, a production by Nandikar of Rudraprasad Sengupta, another legendary figure of contemporary Indian theatre from Kolkata. In the play, Sohini Sengupta, daughter of Rudrapradad, was in the lead role to enact the role of Radha. Indian theatre in Eastern India is slowly making a transition from one generation to another. The play reinterpreted Krishna and his evolution from a pastoral hero to a major protagonist of grand politics and his subsequent entanglement with a devastating moral crisis. Here, Krishna is a humanised individual rather than a divine figure. This was an energetic, vibrant performance with a lot of interplay of colour and lights.

Sohni Sengupta, while speaking about the play confided that when they were preparing the play for the theatre festival at CRT, they were particularly attentive to infusing a lot of energy into the play, therefore they had improvised their performance with several elements from Ratan Thiyam’s poetics of theatre. The inclusion of the martial arts based on Manipuri thang ta to enact the fight sequences was one such improvisation.

After the show, we could meet Ratan Thiyam, who advised us to come the next day in the evening for the interview.

Image 1: The Chorus Repertory Theatre (CRT) at Imphal

We also met Thawai before leaving CRT for that evening. He was happy that we could get an appointment with his father. He also informed us that the closing play of the festival would be a CRT production; it could be either Urubhangam, one of the legendary productions directed by the Master, Ratan Thiyam or a new production, Dumb Waiter of Harold Pinter, directed by Thawai. But our preference was Urubhangam. He also told us that he had got his theatre training in Japan under the legendary theatre director of Asia, Tadashi Suzuki.

Image 2: On the entrance of CRT the boards of two famous plays are on display- Nine Hills One Valley and Chakravyuha

Coming out of the CRT we saw the tempo rickshaw of Ranjit waiting for us in front of the gate. It was about 8 pm at night and the roads were deserted. As we entered the city thoroughfare, most of the shutters were down barring a few medicine stores and other odd shops. But the empty roads looked fully decked up. In many places, they put up barricades on one side of the road and lit up the venue with bright lights, played loud music and the young boys and girls in their gorgeous phanek and traditional wear overtook the streets to dance. We stopped our vehicle and got down to watch the programmes. Ranjit informed us that the soiree would be on for long because it was a special time; it was time for the Sajibu Cheiraoba or the Sajibbu Nongma Panba festival. In between March and April, they celebrate the Manipuri or the Meitei New Year festival and organise programmes of dance and music in their respective localities. The overall mood all around was like that of Rongali Bihu in Assam when thousands throng the venues to celebrate the spring festival. Given the festive mood and the spontaneous community participation in the cultural programmes, it was difficult to imagine that this was one of the most ‘disturbed states’ of the country. Sajibu Cheiraoba is part of the indigenous faith of the Meiteis, the Sanamahi religion though Vaishnavism is the main religious order in Manipur. But in recent times there have been serious efforts to revive the rites and rituals of Sanamhai among the new generation. The cultural revival in Manipur has its impact on the script of Manipuri language too. The king of Manipur, Garib Nawaz (King Pamheiba) adopted Gaudiya Vaishnavism in the early 18th century under the influence of Shanti Das Gosain. This was the time when a large number of Puyas written in Manipuri script were burnt and the Bengali script was adopted for the language. However, the ancient script of Manipur, the Meitei Mayek, has been retrieved and restored in recent times.

The next morning, we went to the famous Ima Keithel—the Mother’s Market- also called the Nupi keithel or the Women’s Market. It was literally an all-women market. The huge market had only women shopkeepers who were selling an assortment of stuff and wares, from household implements to attractive Manipuri dresses, ornate puja items, exotic handicraft pieces, imported blankets, T-shirts, jackets and also the famous Manipuri mosquito nets. Most of the tourists while browsing through the market would get stuck with the mosquito nets as an unexpected discovery. Those shops were crowded with tourists and also families of army officials who were on a spree binge buying the mosquito nets. Some even called home to get the right count to pick up nets for each bed, as it were. Those mosquito nets were not ordinary ones; they looked straight from a royal bedroom. Those were so rich and luxuriant that it was almost impossible to avoid them. In fact, we saw such mosquito nets mostly in interior decoration magazines. Prices ranged from rupees one thousand to five thousand apiece and even more if it was customised for special occasions like weddings etc. We also ended up buying a couple of nets for ourselves. Manipur is also famous for blankets and many other foreign brands which were directly imported from Myanmar through the Moreh market at the Indo-Myanmar border. No wonder, the Manipuri youths are known as the brand-conscious fashionistas flaunting their imported haute couture.

Image 3: Ima Keithel (Mother’s market) or Nupi Keithel (Women’s market) in Imphal

Imphal is also the place where everything related to Govinda puja and Krishna samkirtan is greatly available. In fact, Imphal looks like a temple town where devotion to Krishna is quite evident in public spaces as women and young girls would sport tilak neatly drawn from the foreheads reaching to the tips of their noses. This was not meant only for some religious occasions but it was a part of the everyday formal dress code. One can feel that in public places without that tilak they might well feel a little awkward. There were plenty of shops selling high-quality brass wares. That part of the market looked like an extension of a temple compound where one could pick up assortments of puja items—ornate dresses for idols, brass lamps, bells, mandiras and so on.  The city of Imphal has its own rhythm as an abiding site performing life.

The Interview

As we reached the CRT a little early that day. Ratan Thiyam arrived at the venue in his trademark black suit and sat in his usual spot under a cottage-like shed when Mr. Dolendra came to him with files and papers. In the midst of their conversation, we proceeded to him. As Mr. Dolendra made room for us, we set up our camera and switched on the recorder to go ahead with the session.

Image 4:  Ratan Thiyam at CRT (2017)

Subhash Das: Indian theatre has come a long way. There have been major experiments in contemporary Indian theatre, especially in the form of Theatre of Roots,8 a movement of which you have been one of the major pioneers. How do you look at the contemporary theatre in India, including your own theatrical repertoire?

Ratan Thiyam: Well, I believe theatre is a continuous process; it is a laboratory where we as individuals, associated with theatre, keep exploring varied dimensions of the art form which, of course, keep evolving with the change of time. Therefore, you see, it cannot get stuck anywhere, it cannot be like stagnant water; it has to be always fresh and flowing.

Jyotirmoy Prodhani: How do you accomplish that?

RT: Theatre is not a casual engagement; it is a daily ritual. In order to keep theatre fresh, to bring in that fresh dimension and attitude, one needs to make it happen from within—one needs to keep the very thought process associated with theatre ever alive and dynamic. Theatre evolves through our sustained attachment to it, which does not get over at one particular juncture. One thing or one production, or one kind of exposition is not really enough to depict my ideas or can really portray my notion of theatre. So, you have to keep renewing your mode of engagement, you must have the agility to adopt and adapt to the changes. And I firmly believe in the changing dimensions of theatre. After all, theatre by nature is a medium of constant experimentation.

SD: How do you think the other components of theatre have led to the changing dimensions of its form?

RT: Theatre is a composite art form; a composite totality and every component here has its own modes of evolution and changes. You can see how, throughout the world, various art forms are undergoing changes and transformations. Theatre by default becomes a part of that dynamism, that mode of transformation. In fact, many other composite art forms are changing the world over, and theatre, as one of the composite art forms, is no exception. So, naturally, theatre reflects and will reflect, or any art form for that matter, those dynamics of changes. I mean, it strives to reach out to the elements of aesthetics all the time. For me, it is not really one kind of exposition or description that one should think of in terms of theatre. At least I don’t think so.

JP: Sir, how do you look at the Indian theatre now? After all, you Panikkar, Habib Tanvir, Badal Sircar, and others have been the pioneers in evolving a new kind of experiment in Indian theatre.

RT: I think technology has really come into Indian theatre though it has come very slowly, gradually; but now it is a sudden kind of advent of technology. And it has affected us in a big way. It is, I would say, a good thing, you know, and also a bad thing. I mean, merits and demerits of it, because, so far as the creativity in theatre is concerned, there may be technological advent with creativity; but at the same time, I believe, there should be a balance; there we need to work out to draw a balance between technology and human(e) qualities. That’s very important in order to understand art because art is all about, particularly in theatre and performance by human beings. It cannot be overshadowed by technology.

SD: In your plays violence is a recurring motif that keeps coming back to your plays, to your interpretations of experiences where Manipur is also one of the major recurring images. How do you think, over the years, your plays could affect this very consciousness, i.e., the Manipuri consciousness vis-à-vis the lived realities of the place and the people…

RT: It is not really only Manipur; it is about the entire human race, you see. The turmoil is everywhere, in any portion of this world, which is really violent. And one has to think about it because it is not something that is happening far away from us, at a distance, somewhere in another country. It is not. It affects us with its impact, the kind of vibration, the violent vibration, that we are getting around is very dangerous. So, one has to be very much aware and alert (and) which would naturally find reflections in various productions, in various art forms, and in cultural expressions. In fact, everywhere. If it is not, it is not like the time when entire Europe or even the oriental factor in the Orient had expressed common concerns. The impressionist or expressionist painters were coming up. The kind of paintings that artists like Pablo Picasso did were something to protest against the war. They reflected the time in their paintings irrespective of whether something was good or not very good at that point in time but they tried to reflect their anxieties and experiences in their art, in their paintings, in various expressions of culture. They also came to the theatre, opera…., in everything, you see. Therefore, it is very natural that it automatically finds its reflections in our minds which is also an expression of the time.

JP: Epic is one of the most powerful and profound metaphors in your plays as you keep reinterpreting the epics, the epic motifs. How do you relate your experiences of the epic to that of modern theatre?

RT: See, epic is a very big thing It carries many dimensions. So, when you work with an epic that means you can work with the multifaceted dimensions that unfold layers after layers. Therefore, it is exciting and you try to portray its varied nuances and aspects through the portrayal of its characters. These characters are really very, very strong. They are a powerful lot of characters that emerge in the epics, whether it is in the Mahabharata or in the Ramayana. All these aspects are enormously interesting. Human beings or human civilizations though often thought to have changed a lot, I don’t think the human mind has travelled that far. It remains a kind of mind that dwells in many aspects of the epics. Therefore, we enjoy the epics; they make such an impact upon us. It talks about morality, high moral values, it talks about philosophy, it talks about arts, it talks about everything. So, it becomes an important imperative to explore the idea of an epic. If one is exploring that, I think it’s a beautiful thing.

He stood up as one of the CRT guys came and informed that the play was about to start.  He politely took leave, “I think I have to leave now. The play is about to begin. Don’t forget to watch our play tomorrow, if you are around.”

***

The play that evening was Tumhara Vincent directed by Satyabrata Rout of Rangakalpa from Hyderabad. The highlight of the play was the recreation of the yellow sunflowers of Vincent van Gogh all over the stage through the use of light and cloth props that depicted not only the creations of Van Gogh but also the artist’s intense struggles against the dehumanising tentacles of capitalism. After the play, Prof. Rout informed the audience that there was a major glitch as one of their actors could not come beyond Guwahati and failed to arrive at Imphal that morning. Therefore, her part was enacted by one of the actors from CRT who was prepared barely a few hours before the show and she acted impeccably. Prof. Rout praised the rigorous training regime in the CRT developed by Ratan Thiyam.

As we came out of the show, Thawai informed us that the next day, as the closing act, it would be Urubhangam and not his play, The Dumb Waiter, as he was too busy to be with the team to prepare for the play next evening. So, they had settled for Urubhangam, which the actors knew by heart, like the back of their hands to pull off the play at any time.

Urubhangam

It was the sixth and the last day of the Theatre Festival. We were inside the packed CRT Shrine. The thespian arrived. It was his play today. Bhasha’s Urubhangam. This play by Thiyam is an iconic play in the history of modern Indian theatre. This is one of the major plays often cited as an example of what the theatre critics Suresh Awasthi and Richard Schechner defined as the Theatre of Roots – post-independent India’s most significant theatre movement. Ratan Thiyam, Ebrahim Alkazi, K.N. Panikkar, Habib Tanvir, B.V. Karanth and others were the major exponents of this movement that had picked up in the ‘70s. This was a movement in search of a form of its own as the Indian theatre was in an urgent need to invent an indigenous theatrical form by liberating itself from the dominant Western mode of theatrical representation. Theatre could have been one of the most effective discourses to achieve post-independent India’s cultural goal of decolonisation.

The last show of the festival was dedicated to another legendary theatre director from Manipur, H. Kanhailal, who had expired the previous year in 2016. The opening play of the festival was Kanhailal’s one of the most celebrated plays, Pebet. The play was one of his early productions, first performed in 1975. Theatre critic Rustom Bharucha (1999) had described the plays of Kanhailal as ‘Poor Theatre’ However, Kanhailal preferred to call his theatre the ‘Theatre of the Earth’ (qtd. in Prodhani, 2014). Pebet is a rare bird found in Manipur, smaller than a sparrow. The director used the bird as a metaphor to depict the contemporary social and political crisis of his state. The most striking aspect of the play was the unique mode of theatrical narrative that Kanhailal had developed through this play which eventually turned out to be the hallmark of his theatre. Kanhailal was everything what Ratan Thiyam is not. Though intense and evocative, unlike Thiyam, Kanhailal’s plays are stark and spartan, distinctively marked by the conspicuous absence of the luxurious play of lights or elaborate costumes. His theatre abode, Kalakshetra Manipur, is another important theatre school of contemporary theatre in Imphal.

Urubhangam of Thiyam, on the other hand, represents the quintessential creative vigour of Ratan Thiyam. The classical Sanskrit play by Bhasha depicted the last few days of Duryodhana after he was defeated by Bhima through an unfair battle. The invincible Duryodhana was hit below the belt by Bhima at the instigation of Krishna, violating the rule of the game. In the duel with maces, at the instigation of Krishna, Bhima had hit Duryodhana on his thighs, which was against the basic principles of war. Unprepared for such an enormous violation of the fundamental ethics of battle by his adversary, Duryodhana fell to the ground. With broken thighs, he was lying in a remote corner of the vast Kurukshetra battleground. His young son, Durjaya, his wives and his parents, Gandhari and Dhritarashtra, would come looking for their father, husband and son. Every dramatic moment was intensified by the beating of the drum, the only musical instrument used to complement the moods of the scenes as the background score, be it the fights, moments of melancholy, despair, anger and also joy and divine solace. The actors not only used the traditional costume but extensively incorporated the mudras and gestures from the classical Manipuri dance, Raas Leela. The fight sequences were enacted through the prolific display of thang ta, an indigenous martial art tradition of Manipur. This is one of the signature plays of Ratan Thiyam in terms of its stylistics—particularly the use of light, colour and costume. As opposed to Kanhailal, the productions of Ratan Thiyam are visual extravaganzas, which he achieved not by using opulent settings but through its poetic plasticity—subtle manipulations of lights. In fact, his son Thawai had confided that he had learnt the art and trick of using light from his father. From him, he had learnt to be audacious enough to break ‘the grammar of lighting’. The last scene of the play, when Duryodhana, along with his other brothers, would travel to heaven in a chariot flown by swans, was a visual treat, superbly enduring; it looked like an VFX illusion of a film, though Thiyam had used just blue shades and the arms of the actors. The performance constantly underlined its innate recalcitrance to be re-created in another location without the cultural hinterland of Manipur. This is one of the fundamental achievements of the Theatre of Roots movement that could attain an essentially Indian identity by incorporating its roots as an integral component of the poetics of performance.

Image 5: A scene from Thiyam’s Urubhangam (2017)

After the play, when we met Ratan Thiyam, he asked us how the play was. We told we lost our words when we watched the final scene of the play, it was mesmerising, like a dream. Ratan Thiyam smiled in response and quipped, “This play I had designed thirty years ago. The play is still fresh. This is the magic of an epic.”

Image 6: The last scene of Thiyam’s Urubhangam (2017)

When we left Imphal the next day, we felt like just having completed a pilgrimage. As our flight took off, we looked down from above and was wondering how this land of nine hills and one valley nurtured such great cultural figures who were so renowned all over the world yet so rooted in their native land.

Notes:

1 Ima Keithel (mother’s market) or Nupi Keithel (women’s market) is a unique market in Imphal where all the shop owners are women. This market has been there since the 16th century when it was mandatory for the male members to serve in the royal army. Since the husbands were away for months on the battlefields, the women had to take over the economic activity to keep their hearth burning. This is ironic in the present context that following militancy and the repressive regime of the armed forces, the male folks are away when the women are taking charge of their households. The market has a symbolic significance in the present context as well.

2 In several states in India alcohol is prohibited which are known as the ‘dry states’ where consumption of alcohol is seen as an ‘immoral’ act. But in the Northeastern states, prohibitions are mainly imposed to curtail alcohol abuse. However, in states like Manipur substance abuse has become a major concern now.

3  The Armed Forces (Special Power) Act is an Act promulgated in 1958 in the form of an ordinance and was imposed in Manipur on 22 May 1958. Later it was passed as an Act by the Indian parliament. As per the provisions of the Act the armed forces are equipped with extraordinary power to maintain order in the areas designated as ‘disturbed areas’ without being accountable to any state authority including the state governments. There were several allegations of massive human rights violations. One of the most controversial incidents was the alleged rape and killing of Thanjam Manorama by the Indian Armed forces on 11 July, 2004 on the sheer suspicion of being a cadre of a banned militant outfit, People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

4 On 14 July 2004, 12 imas (mothers) disrobed themselves in front of the Kangla Fort, which was the Assam Rifles headquarters, holding banners that screamed “Indian Army Rape Us” as a desperate protest against the alleged killing of Thangjam Manorama and atrocities on other women by the armed forces, which Simrin Sirur described as the incident that “shook India and transformed the state forever”. (https://theprint.in/india/17-years-since-their-naked-protest-against-army-mothers-of-manipur-say-fight-not-over-yet/700093.)

5 Inner Line Permit (ILP) is a special permit required by an Indian citizen to travel to the protected areas within India. It is required for three Northeastern states- Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram. The ILP for Manipur was introduced in 2018 and became duly operational in 2020. Another Northeastern state, Meghalaya, is also demanding ILP protection.

6 In around 1941, just about six years before India’s Independence in 1947, four top British Indian Civil Service officials proposed at the highest level the formation of a Crown Colony after India’s Independence. The colony was proposed to comprise the tribal states of Northeast India including Arunachal Pradesh (which was then known as North Eastern Frontier Agency or NEFA), Nagaland, Mizoram (Lushai Hills) and also Manipur, Tripura, Chittagong as well as the tribal areas of Burma or present Myanmar. They proposed to make Imphal, the capital of Manipur, the capital of the colony with an international airport. (see On the Edge of Empire: Four British Plans for North East India, 1941–1947  by David Siyemlieh, 2013)

7 Chorus Repertory Theatre (CRT) was established by Ratan Thiyam in the year 1976 at Imphal on a two-acre sprawling campus. CRT is known for having developed a specific theatre tradition that has incorporated several indigenous elements including native Manipuri dance forms (Lao Haraoba, Raas Leela, Mridhangam et al) Manipuri martial arts (Thang ta), several aspects of the Sanamahi, the indigenous spiritual order of Manipur and so on. The theatre tradition developed by Ratan Thiyma has become one of the abiding examples of the Theatre of Roots movement.

8  The term Theatre of Roots was first introduced by the drama critic Suresh Awasthi in his celebrated essay published in the TDR, “Theatre of Roots: Encounter with Tradition” (1989). About the movement, the noted theatre critic Erin B. Mee writes, “After Independence in 1947, in their efforts to create an ‘Indian’ theatre that would be aesthetically different from the Westernized theatre established during the colonial era and prevalent in urban areas at the time, Indian theatre practitioners ‘returned’ to their ‘roots’ in classical dance, religious ritual, martial arts, popular entertainment and Sanskrit aesthetic theory.” (see her essay, “The Theatre of Roots: Redirecting the Modern Indian Stage”)   The theatre directors associated with the movement were Ebrahim Alkazi, K.M. Panikkar, Habib Tanvir, Badal Sircar et al. (see Awasthi, 1989)

References

Awasthi, Suresh. (1989) ‘“Theatre of Roots” Encounter with tradition. The Drama Review, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Winter, 1989), pp. 48-69 (22 pages), MIT Press DOI: 10.2307/1145965. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1145965.

Bharucha, Rustom. (1992). The theatre of Kanhailal: Pebet & Memoirs of Africa. Seagull Books.

Das, Subhash, C. (2018). History, Myth, Violence and Hope: A Critical Study of the Select Plays of Ratan Thiyam. PhD Thesis, NEHU, Shillong, 2018. Unpublished.

Das, Subhash, C. (2016). “Reinventing identity: Theatre of roots and Ratan Thiyam”. The NEHU Journal, Vol XIV, No. 1, January – June 2016, pp. 105-116. ISSN. 0972 – 8406

Kanhailal, H. (2015). “I call my theatre as the ‘Theatre of the Earth’”. An interview by J.  Prodhani in NEZine. https://www.nezine.com

Prodhani, J. (2014). “Theatre of the Earth” in Shillong Times, 27 July.

Siyemlieh, David. (2013). On the Edge of Empire: Four British Plans for North East India, 1941–1947. Sage. 

Thiyam, Ratan. (2008). Manipur Trilogy. Tr. T. Bijoykumar Singh. Wordsmith.

Thiyam, Ratan. (1999). “Ratan Thiyam: A man with a peace mission” (Interview) with North East News Agency (NENA) in Oriental Times, Vol. 1, Issue 42-43, 22 March-6 April. http://www.nenanews.com. (12.5.2012). 

Thiyam, Ratan. (2009). “Art has always been surrounded by strife”. Interview with Nirmala Ravindran and Sujay Saple in Infochange India. 2009, http://infochangeindia.org.  (02.09.2012).

Subhash Chandra Das is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at B.H. College, Assam (Gauhati University). He teaches modern drama, poetry, classical theory and American literature. He did PhD on the plays of Ratan Thiyam from NEHU, Shillong, India.

Jyotirmoy Prodhani is Professor and Head of the Department of English at North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong, Meghalaya, (India). His published books include Creativity and Conflict in the Plays of Sam Shepard, Culture, Ethnicity and Identity: A Reader (Ed), Madhupur Bohudoor (Translation of Assamese short stories of Sheelahadra), This Land This People (Translation of Rajbanshi poetry).  

 

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Art and Culture in the Diplomatic Ceremonial as the Basis of International Relations

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Oksana Zakharova

1Department of Art Management and Technology Events, National Academy of Management of Culture and Arts, Kyiv, Ukraine. E-mail: o.zakharova@tanu.pro

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 2, April-June, 2022, Pages  https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n2.16

First published: June 26, 2022 | Area: Performance Studies | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under Volume 14, Number 2, 2022)
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Abstract

Currently, there is an increased interest in ceremonial culture. A ceremonial is a kind of cultural message from one social group of people to another. The basic idea of behaviour, the inner meaning of secular ceremonial is laid down in church rituals, and external forms of behaviour can be borrowed from the traditions of everyday secular life. Diplomacy as one of the spheres of applied politics is a very complex and responsible type of human activity, which has always had a pronounced ritual character. The conclusion of contracts and alliances took place according to a certain scenario plan, according to which the ceremonial action developed. During the preparation and holding of the ceremony, the exchange of diplomatic letters and embassies continued, solemn meetings were arranged for the honored guests, feasts, theatrical performances, games, and festivities were given in their honor. the purpose of the article is to conduct a comprehensive study of the communicative functions of diplomatic ceremonial in international communication based on the analysis and generalisation of new facts with the involvement of archival materials and other sources introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. In this study, art is considered for the first time from the point of view of the communicative factor of a diplomatic ceremony. A ceremonial is an event in the life of society that has a symbolic meaning. The norms of ceremonial reflect not only ideology but also the social psychology of society, without an adequate interpretation of which it is impossible to correctly understand the behavior of statesmen in specific situations related to their official status.

Keywords: diplomacy; culture; art; political elite; ideology; society.

Introduction

By the beginning of the First World War, the Russian Empire was a state whose opinion could not be ignored. Court ceremonials, which emphasised the strength and power of the ruling dynasty, were the political programmes of the government (Golubev & Nevezhin, 2016; Gould-Davies, 2003). After the February Revolution of 1917, the politicisation of leisure became the most important feature of public life. Not only rituals, but also performances, concerts, and cinema sessions turned into political demonstrations. The Revolution used new artistic forms, decorations of demonstrations, processions, and mass celebrations. The origins of this phenomenon are in the mass celebrations of the French Revolution (Martin & Piller, 2021). The ceremonial action itself is a synthesis of the arts – pictorial design of space, music, choreography, and costume.

Already in the first years of Soviet power, the symbols of power entered “into the struggle for power.” At diplomatic ceremonies, this struggle was in the nature of a confrontation between European protocol traditions and the newly created rules of Soviet diplomatic etiquette by the staff of the Protocol Department of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (ICID). The uniform at diplomatic receptions, concert programmes, the list of dishes served – everything had to meet the norms of Bolshevik ideology (Karyagin, 1994; How to Be Diplomatic, 2022). During the leadership of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs under V. Chicherin, Protocol Department under D.T. Florinsky is a collective of creative personalities who, without being afraid to experiment, developed norms of protocol practice that have been relevant for decades, compiled in 1923 by D.T. Florinsky’s “Brief Instruction on observing the rules of Etiquette adopted in bourgeois society” was taken as a basis for the creation in 1935 of a new manual on the protocol “Diplomatic Technique” (reprinted in 1938) (AVPRF. F. 057. Op. 3. P. 101. D. 1. L. 20-25).

From the first years of its existence, the Protocol Department of the NKID (People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs) (until November 12, 1923 – the protocol division (protocol unit), took an active part in the preparation of foreign visits to the RSFSR (Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic), and since 1923 – to the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). In the 20-30s, Protocol Department employees were literally at the forefront of “diplomatic” relations, forming the foundations of Soviet protocol practice. Reports of D.T. Florinsky and comments on them by G.V. Chicherina are filled with interesting details that convey the atmosphere, and the spirit of the time with a lot of humor and self-irony. Elegant in form, they are very deep in content. Chicherin and Florinsky carefully analyse every situation that arises during visits, not to punish the guilty, but so that in the future such mistakes of the protocol service do not discredit the authorities, for many of whom the European diplomatic protocol is an external manifestation of bourgeois morality (AVPRF. F. 057. Op. 8. P. 106. D. 6. L. 157-159).

In addition to the development of regulatory documents for the preparation and conduct of foreign visits, the Protocol Department staff actively participated in the organisation of diplomatic ceremonies with the participation of diplomats accredited in Moscow and their family members. The peculiarity of the diplomatic corps’ stay in Moscow was that the embassy staff were in an unusual socio-cultural environment, the value system which was formed by the norms of Bolshevik ideology. Using the methods of agitation and propaganda, the authorities sought to form a negative attitude among citizens towards modern European culture, representatives of which were, among others, employees of diplomatic agencies.

Diplomatic life and ceremonial culture after the formation of the USSR

From 1923 to 1929, the diplomatic corps in Moscow was distinguished by the cohesion of its members and at the same time isolation from Russian reality. But at the same time, from the point of view of the development of diplomatic ceremonial culture, the life of the diplomatic corps was very busy. Receptions at embassies were arranged almost daily and were built according to a certain scenario: during lunch – conversations about politics and art, then a dance or concert program. Many accredited diplomats in Moscow were engaged in collecting objects. So, the Ambassador of France, one of the best French journalists J. Erbet acquired a collection of objects from Ural malachite. The head of the German Embassy, Count Brakdorf-Rantzau, collected antique bronze. Norwegian diplomat Dr. Urbi collected icons. Just like the Latvian Ambassador K. Ozols (2026), he believed that a modern diplomat should spend two years in Moscow to consider himself a professional. The embassies of the Baltic states were practically under siege in Moscow, as states that the USSR wanted to seize into its sphere of influence. The aggressive policy of the authorities has led to the fact that the diplomatic corps has become even more united. Receptions were held quite often at the Latvian Embassy, they were attended not only by well-known journalists, but also by representatives of the Soviet elite (Ozols, 2016). The Lithuanian Embassy occupied a special position in Moscow, largely due to the personality of the envoy Jurgis Baltrushaitis – poet, translator of Byron, Ibsen, d Annunzio, Hamsun, Wilde, Strindberg. Of the Soviet diplomats, who also needed to be included in the diplomatic corps, the most significant was G.V. Chicherin, who was a brilliant pianist, a subtle connoisseur of musical culture.

Despite an active diplomatic life, the Italian writer C. Malaparte (2018) calls the Soviet capital a provincial city in which the creativity of European writers was preferred to the creativity of European fashion designers. The Soviet nobility tried to “try on” the lifestyle of the pre-revolutionary elite of Russian society, but copying the form, it did not care about the content, about its moral and spiritual origins. The traditions of pre-revolutionary secular life continued to develop at receptions at embassies, to which representatives of the Soviet creative intelligentsia were invited. Stalin did not take part in the events of the diplomatic corps, but at the same time the entire diplomatic corps “with one voice” praised the lifestyle of the leader, whom he compared to Bonaparte after 18 Brumaire (November 9), 1799, when the Directory was dispersed in France, and the government headed by Napoleon Bonaparte came to power. Stalin was a dictator, the communist nobility was against him, in the late 20s its representatives tried to imitate Paris, London, Berlin or New York manners (Malaparte, 2018). Notably, the embassies of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were the peculiar centers of the diplomatic life of the capital of the USSR. In the 20s, the Italian Embassy played a leading role in the life of the diplomatic corps, forming programs of diplomatic receptions, in which, for example, dancing was replaced by playing bridge.

Sports, in particular tennis, united members of the diplomatic corps, but did not contribute to their rapprochement with Soviet colleagues, who for the most part came from a working-peasant environment, were neither practically nor psychologically ready to communicate with foreign diplomats. This problem was discussed in the language of art at one of the most striking events of Soviet diplomatic life in the early 30s – the ball at the German mission (1931), at which, during a theatrical performance, the Soviet protocol was criticized for being late, not knowing foreign languages, etc. (AVPRF. F. 057. Op. 11. P. 109. D. 2. L. 73). During this period, ballroom ceremonial ceased to be a component of the state ceremonial culture, but it still remained an important component of European life. In diplomatic Moscow, balls were given not by official Soviet officials, but by members of the diplomatic corps.

It was the ballroom ceremonial, combining various types of arts, that allowed achieving the greatest emotional impact on those present, who, at the same time, were active participants in the ceremonial, owning a whole complex of relevant class norms. Of all the ceremonials, the ball had the utopian function to the greatest extent. Music, choreography, architectural decoration created an ideal environment from the point of view of artistic harmony. In the 30s, the staff of the German Embassy were the leaders of secular life, but at the same time, German diplomats did not seek to isolate the embassy and the entire diplomatic corps from the NKID staff, but were looking for ways to get closer to them. In particular, discussing protocol issues, for example, the appearance of a diplomat at official receptions.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, the music of R. Strauss and all modern German composers was banned in the USSR. Excluded were the repertoire of Wagner’s operas, which were performed on the stage of the Kiev Opera and Ballet Theater – in the 1926-1927 season – “Meistersingers”, in the 1932-1933 season – “Lohengrin” (Stefanovich, 1960). The Soviet-German agreements signed in Moscow in 1939 had a noticeable impact not only on the political, but also on the cultural development of Soviet society. In 1939, during negotiations with the German Foreign Minister in Moscow, the foundations of a new world order were laid and the map of Europe was “reshaped” considering the interests of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

At the end of 1939, the pro-German musical policy began and the reason for this phenomenon was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. But the changes in the foreign policy of the USSR were said in the language of art a few months before the meeting in Moscow, namely on May 5, 1939. On this day, at a concert for the participants of the military May Day parade in Moscow, the “Chorus of Sailors” by R. Wagner was performed in the 3rd department. Symphony orchestras began to perform R. Strauss (Nevezhin, 2011). The Protocol is not only an instrument, but also a kind of indicator of the priorities of the state’s foreign policy, which was especially clearly manifested in the relations of the Soviet leadership with German representatives in Moscow and during the visit of I. von Ribbentrop. The totality of protocol norms as a whole demonstrated the priorities of the Kremlin leaders in the field of international relations. One of the clearest confirmations of the Kremlin’s loyalty to the chosen course aimed at establishing friendly relations with Germany was the decision to stage R. Wagner’s opera “Valkyrie” on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater by the outstanding Soviet film director S. M. Eisenstein, who openly expressed his anti-Nazi views (Golubev & Nevezhin, 2016). On November 21, the premiere of the opera, which was a kind of “greeting” of a delegation that arrived from Berlin after Molotov’s talks with Hitler and Ribbentrop.

During the Soviet period, all the details of state ceremonies were carefully developed, each of which is an illustration of the ethical norms accepted in society. As in the pre-revolutionary period, great importance was attached to the gesture, musical accompaniment, and the language of the costume. Methods of appearance design are important signals, personality signs. Clothes are a business card. The attitude towards a diplomat is related to the perception of the country he represents. In choosing a suit, the personal preferences of a diplomatic employee give way to political expediency. The “expulsion” of the tailcoat, and even earlier the top hat, from Soviet protocol practice was regarded as a victory in the struggle against bourgeois values. Modern European dances were also considered carriers of ethical norms alien to the Soviet citizen. Despite the prohibitions of the authorities, the daily, unofficial life of Soviet people was filled with foxtrot, tango, waltz, which literally “punched” their way into dance halls at different periods of history. Each of them was accused of promoting sexual promiscuity, called obscene and vulgar. And here it is very important to distinguish between the original choreography and the subsequent “processed” by classical choreographers, teachers of ballroom dancing. The ennobled returned dancing to the ballroom floor and became its kings. Each dance in different periods of history had its own semantic meaning, its own intonation at the ball, being not only an organizational link, but also a kind of expression of the basic ideas of banal ceremonial. Diplomatic privileges and immunities extended not only to diplomats, but also to the forms of their leisure, in particular, to the programs of dance evenings. Thus, the foxtrot, banned in the USSR, is performed in embassies not only by foreign diplomats, but also by the head of the protocol department of the NKID, D.T. Florinsky. The 20s were a time of searching for ways to reconcile traditional European protocol norms with the Bolshevik ideology of the Soviet state.

With the expansion of international contacts, the problem of the exchange of commemorative gifts both in the foreign missions of the USSR and in Moscow itself became more acute and urgent. Especially acute was the issue of the relationship between the authorities and the keepers of the cultural heritage of the USSR – museum workers (AVPRF. F. 057. Op. 8. P. 106. D. 10. L. 223, 223 rev). It should be noted that if the interior items that were not returned to the museum storages remained in the USSR, then the works of painting, sculpture, decorative and applied art became the cultural heritage of other states. The canvases of B.M. Kustodiev “The Beauty” (AVPRF. F. 057. Op. 8. P. 105. D.1. L. 128, 129), S.Yu. Zhukovsky “Forest in early spring” (AVPRF. F. 057. Op. 21. P. 115. D. 4. L. 19), V.I. Zarubin “Landscape with three old ladies” (AVPRF. F. 057. Op. 21. P. 115. D. 4. L. 23), K.F. Yuon “Parade on Red Square on November 7, 1941” (AVPRF. F. 057. Op. 31. P. 155. D. 20. L. 48), A.I. Laktionov “Girl for embroidery”, P.P. Konchalovsky “Lilac” (AVPRF. F. 57. Op. 41. P. 198. D. 36. L. 168), I.E. Grabar “Frost, the last rays” were used as diplomatic gifts (AVPRF. F. 57. Op. 41. P. 198. D. 36. L. 169).

Foreign guests were generously gifted with fur products, some of which can rightfully be attributed to works of art. So, in 1943, Molotov’s wife gave the wife and daughter of the representative of the President of the United States (United States of America) Davis’s outfits were made of fox and ermine, and in 1946 a sable fur coat was presented to the Princess of Iran A. Pahlavi personally from I.V. Stalin (AVPRF. F. 057. Op. 26. P. 127. D. 7. L. 18). The range of Kremlin gifts is very diverse. If in 1944 U. Churchill received as an official gift 10 kg of caviar, 15 liters of vodka and 40 packs of cigarettes, then his wife in 1945 – a diamond of 5.58 carats (AVPRF. F. 057. Op. 24. P. 120. D. 7. L. 33; AVPRF. F. 06. Op. 7. P. 22. D. 246. L. 62).”The Prime Minister’s grocery set is rather evidence of special friendly relations, since in 1944 Churchill was still “his boyfriend”, and you can also give vodka to “your own”. In turn, M.A. Churchill earned a diamond for organising Soviet aid during the war. In this regard, the question involuntarily arises – for what merits the wives and daughters of Soviet leaders received very valuable gifts from foreign guests (platinum watches with diamonds of Stalin’s daughter from I.B. Tito, etc.) (AVPRF. F. 057. Op. 26. P. 127. D. 8. L. 32).

The visit of K. Churchill was one of the first independent visits of the wife of a state leader to the USSR. The “women’s visit” forced the staff of the Protocol Department to depart from the “men’s code” of the Soviet protocol, in which the presence of women at official receptions was not welcome. The situation began to change in March 1945 during the visit of Czechoslovak President Benes and his wife to Moscow: members of the delegation were invited to dinner with Stalin (March 28) together with their wives (AVPRF. F. 057. Op. 25. P. 123. D. 8. L. 53.). Ulanova, Maksakova, Kozlovsky, Mikhailov and others performed at the concert in the Central House of the Red Army (CDKA) [25]. The President’s wife visited the Moscow Art Theater (Moscow Art Academic Theater named after M. Gorky) (the play “Russian People”) and the ballet school at the Bolshoi Theater.

It should be noted that in the programs of official foreign visits there is practically no information about the visits of guests to academic drama theaters in Moscow and other cities of the Soviet Union. The reason for this phenomenon probably lies not only in the difficulty of translation – professionals possess a number of artistic techniques that allow not only to understand the meaning of what is happening on stage, but also to feel the atmosphere itself, the mood of the performance. Probably one of the reasons is the repertory policy of theaters, which could not refuse to stage plays by foreign and pre-revolutionary domestic playwrights. But even in the traditional staging of classical works, censorship could detect an encroachment on the foundations of communist morality, at the same time, visiting the Bolshoi Theater was an important component of the programs of foreign visits to the USSR. Great music and choreography, and outstanding performers, greatly contributed to the fact that the ballet “Swan Lake” became a kind of element of Soviet classical diplomacy (Karyagin, 1994).

After the “Basic provisions of Protocol practice in the USSR” approved in 1976 by the Central Committee of the CPSU (Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), official visits to the theater were excluded from the programs of foreign visits. (AVPRF. F. 057. Op. 60. P. 260. D. 1. L. 40, 41, 43, 44). The official version is saving public funds. But in our opinion, the main reason is the confidence of the leaders of the state that their political course does not need the support of art. Moreover, in the 70s and early 80s, representatives of the creative intelligentsia, including soloists of academic opera and ballet theaters, were either expelled from the country – Vishnevskaya and V. Rostropovich – or preferred to work in foreign collectives in the Bolshoi Theater or the Kirov Theater (Mariinsky Theater) – Natalia Makarova, Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Alexander Godunov. But the specific features of the Kremlin leaders’ “understanding” of the significance of works of art in the political life of society in no way begs for their value.

The art of ballet forced the world community to see the USSR as a country in which the traditions of classical art continue to develop, and, consequently, human values are not alien to the Soviet state. Thus, it is possible to build partnerships with the Soviet Union, which are based on mutually beneficial cooperation. At Kremlin receptions, there was a representation of power, the process of interaction between the party leadership and the invited audience, which allowed communicating (including using the language of art) to the broad masses the main ideas of power. Individuals with a high social status, an active and trustworthy part of society, were invited to the Kremlin.

Features of the development of the cultural repertoire in Soviet Moscow

In states with a pronounced vertical of power, state policy in the field of culture largely depends on the tastes of the leaders of the state. At the same time, not only are the people deprived of the right to choose, but also the ruling elite, which for the most part was deeply mistaken about their real capabilities. The slightest violation of the designated rules of the game could lead to moral and physical destruction. The proof of the above is the Soviet musical doctrine of the 30s-50s of the twentieth century during the active process of the totalization of art in the USSR.

A comparative analysis of the programmes of government concerts in Moscow and the repertoire policy of Ukrainian theaters showed that they were united not by what was performed, but rather by what was forbidden to perform. So, in the repertoire of theaters, including concert programmes, there are no works of Hindemith, Stravinsky, Bartok, Kozelli, Schoenberg, Mesian, Penderetsky, Berg, Krshenek, Schreker and Kurt Weil. They were excluded from concert programs and theater posters after Zhdanov’s articles against Shostakovich’s music – “Confusion instead of Music” (about opera “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district”) and “Ballet Falsehood” (about the ballet “Light Stream”), published in January and February 1936 in the newspaper “Pravda” point to this.

In totalitarian states, the government deprives the people of the right to choose. The development of entire directions in the field of art depends on the leader’s predilection. Before the war, Stalin liked the music of I. Dzerzhinsky. As a result, the composer’s operas were staged on the stage of leading musical theaters: “Raised Virgin Land” – in Kiev (season 1937-38); in Odessa (1937), in Dnepropetrovsk (1937); “Quiet Don” – in Kiev (season 1936 – 1937), in Lviv (1940). The works of D. Shostakovich, including the opera “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district”, did not make a proper impression on the leader. So, it is not surprising that they were not on the theater posters of opera houses and in the programs of government concerts. At the same time, the 7th Symphony (Leningrad) was performed on February 21, 1943 on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences in London during the theatrical performance “Salute to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Red Army”, which is a unique event in the history of Soviet-British cultural ties (RAHE/1/1944/16).

The press noted the “grandiose” design of the stage space, which represented a stylized view of the Russian city. Each of the two thousand participants, attracted from various services, factories, civil defense institutions, as well as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, numerous Guards orchestras, outstanding artists, was an important component of the stage action, which The Times called a “triumph” (The Times, 2022). Against the background of the aggravation of allied relations caused largely by the Katyn tragedy, as well as the problem of opening a second front in Europe, a concert dedicated to the twenty-sixth anniversary of the Red Army on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall on February 23, 1944 acquires special political significance.

A kind of culmination of the concert, composed of works by outstanding composers of the English musical Renaissance, led by Edward Elgar, was the work of G.F. Handel “Hallelujan Ghorus Aroma Messiah” performed by the Royal Choral Society and the London Symphony Orchestra (The Times, 2022). Despite the fact that the concert was dedicated to the Red Army, it became an important factor in British cultural diplomacy. In London, the music of D. Shostakovich and S. Prokofiev was played, but we could not find them in the programmes of government Kremlin concerts either during the war or in the post-war periods.

In totalitarian states, the subjective factor prevails over national interests, priorities in domestic and foreign policy. Stalin loved opera. Excerpts from opera performances by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Rossini, Gounod were performed at almost every government concert. In choreography, he preferred characteristic and national dances to classical dance. The leader did not like instrumental music, especially symphonic and chamber music. We were unable to find fragments of symphonic works by Russian and Western European composers in the programs of government concerts, as well as long-lasting compositions for solo instruments – sonatas, concerts.

Stalin considered vocal music to be the highest kind of music. These opinions of the leader were reflected in the musical Soviet policy and were theoretically justified in the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1948. In the field of folk music, he preferred Ukrainian and Russian folk songs. The Kremlin leaders had a special dislike for vocal and instrumental modernist music. Thus, Stalin’s tastes formed the basis of strict control in the field of musical creativity. The musical doctrine of the Soviet government was based on the musical tastes of the leader. This doctrine wore the mask of “socialist realism in music.” But it was the “mask” under which the music that gave Stalin pleasure, the works that acted on the leader “like a dentist’s drill or a musical slaughterhouse” (as Zhdanov put it), were excluded from the repertoire. In February 1948, the Moscow central newspapers published a resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) (Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Bolsheviks) about the opera “The Great Friendship” by Vano Muradelli, in addition to the author, D. Shostakovich, S. Prokofiev, A. Khachaturian, B. Lyatoshinsky, V. Shebalin, N. Myaskovsky.

Lviv Theater excluded the opera V. Muradelli and other “dubious” performances in the light of the new party decrees. In Lviv, Prokofiev and Khachaturian were “rehabilitated” only in 1965, when the ballets “Cinderella” and “Spartak” were staged on the stage of the theater. In 1985, S. Prokofiev’s opera “War and Peace” was presented to the audience. It is a mistake to say that only modern music was subject to the ban. What the leader did not like and did not understand, for example, the Viennese operetta, was not performed. Ballet “The Big Waltz” to the music of I. Strauss was stopped in Lviv in 1957, and the operettas “The Gypsy Baron” and “The Bat” – in 1960 and 1982, respectively. In the 40s, paradoxically, the cultural programmes of the Allies contributed more to the creation of a positive image of the USSR – a theatrical performance (1943) and a concert (1944) at the Royal Albert Hall – than the programmes of government concerts in the Kremlin and the Bolshoi Theater. A performance glorifying the Red Army was created in the Albert Hall, and in Moscow in the same year a reception was held at the Spiridonovka, which was more famous for abundant treats, rather than a concert programme. The “thaw” that came in the mid-50s forced Soviet leaders to reconsider the style and methods of international activity.

The number of diplomatic missions accredited in Moscow increased from 1918 to 1945 from 2 to 32. In 1960, the USSR already had diplomatic relations with 69 states, 53 foreign diplomatic missions were accredited in Moscow. Soviet leaders practically did not attend receptions at embassies, diplomatic staff, military personnel, cultural figures were sent there – all according to the approved list. In the early-mid-50s, the Soviet government began to take measures aimed at establishing active contacts with the diplomatic corps, providing it with information about new achievements, processes in the development of the economy, science, culture, etc. The protocol service organized regular screenings of new works of cinematography and theater, trips around the country, meetings with representatives of the creative intelligentsia.

In 1953-1954, conditioned upon the intensification of the USSR’s foreign policy, more international meetings, congresses, festivals, exhibitions, etc. began to be held. In the “activation” of work with the diplomatic corps, the main role was assigned to cultural programs. In the Bolshoi Theater, in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, separate seats were assigned to diplomats. In the representative mansion of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) Since January 1963, the USSR has organised weekly screenings of feature films, monthly author’s evenings of famous cultural figures. The demands to take measures to “activate” work with the diplomatic corps were repeated in the decisions of the Board in the 70s and 80s.

In 1970, the British Council (a semi-governmental organization operating under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the field of cultural, scientific and other humanitarian exchanges) promoted the organisation of an exhibition of ancient Chinese drawings in London. In exchange, Beijing received the London Symphony Orchestra. In diplomacy, this cooperation has been called “symphonic ping-pong”. “Ping Pong diplomacy” became a household name after the Chinese-American table tennis match, which marked the beginning of active relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (People’s Republic of China).

Conclusion

In the early years of Soviet power, representatives of the workers’ and peasants’ government tried to ignore the norms of diplomatic protocol and etiquette, arguing that they were based on bourgeois morality alien to the young Soviet Republic. But already in the early 20s it became obvious that it is impossible to build partnerships with foreign countries without observing generally accepted European norms, traditions and conventions in international communication.

In the post-war years, the isolation of part of the diplomatic corps continued on an ideological basis. Such a situation could not but influence the behaviour of the members of the diplomatic corps in Moscow, in which there was, along with the traditional, a kind of diplomatic counterculture, that is, the deliberate disregard by the participants of international communication of the accepted protocol norms, and the rules of respect and politeness in international communication. Behind the seemingly “dry” language of the protocol are specific individuals with their habits and characters. In the system of international relations, art as a communicative factor not only poses problems, but also contributes to their resolution.

The study identified that art is a communicative factor not only in classical, but also in public diplomacy. In this regard, the profession of a diplomat implies communication both with persons provided for by the protocol service, and with scientists, writers, musicians, artists. Otherwise, diplomacy will remain an archaic institution that ignores public opinion, denies the possibilities of public diplomacy, and, consequently, the role of “soft power” in world politics, which defends the national interests of the state peacefully, using, among other things, the language of art in state ceremonies.

Declaration of Conflict of Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest.

Funding

No funding has been received for the publication of this article. It is published free of any charge.

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Kanhailal’s ‘Theatre of the Earth’ as Political Allegory

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Pranjal Sharma Bashishtha1 & Goutam Sarmah2

1Department of Assamese, Gauhati University, Guwahati, Assam, India. ORCID: 0000-0001-8408-7008.  Email: psb@gauhati.ac.in

2Dr. Bhupen Hazarika Centre for Performing Arts, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh, Assam, India. ORCID: 0000-0002-6280-654X

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 2, April-June, 2022, Pages 1–13. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n2.ne10

First published: June 09, 2022 | Area: Northeast India | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under Themed Issue on Literature of Northeast India)
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Under the Canopy of Sal Trees: A New Vocabulary of Performance in Sukracharya Rabha’s Minimal Theatre

Abstract

Playwright and director, Heisnam Kanhailal (1941-2016) was an eminent theatre personality from Manipur. He began as one of the exponents of the ‘theatre of roots’ movement, like his compatriot, Ratan Thiyam. He was influenced by Badal Sircar’s politically motivated ‘Third Theatre’ in the early 1970s who had introduced him to the ‘Poor Theatre’ of the Polish director, Jerzy Grotowski (1933-99). However, Kanhailal gradually developed his unique concept of theatre, which he later called ‘The Theatre of the Earth’ with which he had tried resist the ideologies like aggressive nationalism, which was found to be rather oppressive. He retained deeper faith in art and restricted his theatre from becoming overtly propagandist by privileging its poetic, allegorical, and ‘transcendental’ appeals. The present paper is an attempt towards critical evaluation of Kanhailal’s ‘Theatre of the Earth’ and to compare his works with that of Grotowski, Sircar, and Thiyam as well as with two contemporary theatre directors from Assam, Gunakar Deva Goswami (b.1969) and Sukracharya Rabha (1977-2018). The paper also takes up his significant plays like Pebet and others in order to closely read his poetics of theatre.

Keywords: Poor theatre, resistance, theatre of rituals, theatre of the earth, the third theatre.

Introduction:

Modern Indian theatre, which was set in motion in the British colonial cities in India in the late eighteenth century, assumed a postcolonial stance in the fifth decade of the twentieth century. Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker (2008) point out that Nabanna, written by Bijon Bhattacharyya in 1943 and staged under the direction of Bijon Bhattacharyya and Shombhu Mitra for the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) in 1944, was the first postcolonial Indian play. She has regarded Nabanna to be so as it mounted stiff resistance to the British fiscal policies (Dharwadker, pp. 31-32). Earlier, Kiranmoy Raha (2001), in his book on Bengali theatre, brought out its anti-colonial stance while discussing how its first production resisted the European performance ideals (Raha, p. 155, p. 169). Bhattacharyya (2004) described the play in the following words:

As mass movements began in reaction to the imperialist power throughout Asia, India also got dispirited by it…. After ceremonial partition, insubstantial independence came with a curse of destruction…. The writing of Nabanna fell into the first phase of this blood-spattered history. (pp. 26-27; translated from the Bengali by the first author of the present paper).  

Postcolonial Theatre has two distinct features — one of them involves resistant cultural representations, which have become a means of asserting the richness of the indigenous culture by thwarting the dominant colonial cultural ideals, and the second is a tendency for highlighting the contemporary situation with the help of parallelism found in the indigenous histories and mythologies from pre-colonial period. Nabanna and the other productions of the IPTA in the fifth decade of the twentieth century, without doubt, looked for anti-European ideas of performance, but not so seriously. It emphasized content-related matters in the light of the leftist ideology, leaving artistry aside. Several theatre activists broke up with the IPTA towards the end of the decade with objections to this negligence of artistry. They formed individual theatre groups to begin a ‘Group Theatre Movement’ in India. These activists included Bijon Bhattacharyya, Shombhu Mitra, Habib Tanvir, Utpal Dutt, and Arun Mukherjee (Dharwadker, 2008, pp. 85-89). Consequently, the theatre groups began experiments on thematic novelty and artistic originality. A few independent playwrights like Dharamvir Bharti joined them from outside.

Two plays, both written ten years after the first performance of Nabanna, bear early evidence of such experiments. One is Agra Bazaar (“The Bazaar at Agra”; Urdu; 1954) by Habib Tanvir and the other play is Dharamvir Bharti’s Andha Yug (“Blind Age”; Hindi; 1954)). Agra Bazaar takes the audience back to eighteenth-century Agra and critiques the twentieth-century scenario of capitalist coercion on creativity while depicting the poetic achievements of the eighteenth-century Urdu poet, Nazeer Akbarabadi. It exposes the class difference between the elites and the plebeians of old Agra by using two variants of the Urdu language. The elite characters in the play speak the urban variant, whereas the plebeians use the rural one. Later, Tanvir established the ‘Naya Thatre’ group in Chhattisgarh in 1959 and experimented with improvisation and different dialogues to find a more reliable indigenous dramaturgy. Dharamvir Bharti’s Andha Yug is a critique of human violence (expressed during World War II and at the time of the partition of India in 1947) through the use of a mythological story that tells about the futility of violence in the Indian epic, the Mahabharata.

These plays demonstrated that stories from the histories and mythologies of the Indian past could help the playwrights and directors take critical stances against the ills of contemporary India. Plays like Mohan Rakesh’s Ashadh Ka Ek Din (“One Day in Ashadha”; Hindi; 1958) and Lehron Ke Rajhans (“The Swans of the Waves”; Hindi; 1963) Girish Karnad’s Yayati (Kannada; 1961) and Tughlaq (Kannada; 1964) took such experiments forward in the late 60s and the early 70s.

Indian theatre between 1970 and 1990 became so experimental that it seemed as if it had completely severed itself from the earlier tradition indicating the postcolonial epoch of Indian theatre that entered a new phase of theatre movement. Suresh Awasthi (1989) has called this experimentalist theatre the ‘theatre of roots’ (p. 48). Here is what Awasthi says in this regard:

I am taking the risk of giving a label— “theatre of roots”— to the unconventional theatre which has been evolving for some two decades in India as a result of modern theatre’s encounter with tradition. Theatre of roots has finally made its presence felt. It has compelling power, it thrills audiences, and it is receiving institutional recognition. It is deeply rooted in regional theatrical culture, but cuts across linguistic barriers, and has an all-India character in design. Never before during the past century and more has theatre been practiced in such diversified form, and at the same time with such unity in essential theatrical values. (p. 48). 

Erin B. Mee (2008) has observed that the ‘theatre of roots’ movement “challenged colonial culture by reclaiming the aesthetics of performance and by addressing the politics of aesthetics.” (p. 5). The movement determined a new theatre idiom, which has become a means of resisting the colonial theatre framework. For that purpose, it looked for extra-communicative traditional forms and novel visual aesthetics by exploring the ‘roots’ of the Indian people in the indigenous folk, traditional, and classical cultural heritage (Raut, “Indianizing”, p. 7). Thus, the new theatre emerged as a synchronization of modern contents and traditional folk forms. Playwrights and directors adapted forms and elements of folk tales, legends, myths, epics, and history to enhance the potentialities for visual representation. It looked like going back to the past, but it facilitated explorations of the contemporary Indian realities. It also contributed to the construction of an identity of modern Indian theatre. The playwrights and directors of this new experimental theatre included Habib Tanvir, Badal Sirkar, Girish Karnad, B.V. Karanth, K. N. Panicker, and others. This list was enriched from the north-eastern region of India by two legendary figures Manipuri playwrights-cum-directors Heisnam Kanhailal (1941-2016) and Ratan Thiyam (b. 1948).

Kanhailal’s Departure from the ‘Theatre of Roots’ Movement:

The ‘theatre of roots’ movement in modern Indian theatre by and large asserted a kind of ‘Indianness’ (“an all-India character in design”; Awasthi, 1989, p. 48) with its use of elements from the indigenous cultural traditions of India. The movement influenced young Kanhailal, and he began his theatre career as one of its exponents. However, he gradually evolved as a playwright and director with a unique ‘poetically political’ stance. He started to represent the socio-political realities of North-East India, especially Manipur, and more especially his Meitei community. However, he preferred not to be overtly political. He remained truthful to art and began to represent these realities poetically. As a result, his plays became politically resilient and poetically allegorical.

To represent these realities properly, Kanhailal enriched his plays with relevant folk (as in Pebet; 1975), mythological (as in Karna; 1997), and literary (as in Dakghar; 2006) elements. His plays have highlighted the pains and struggles of those communities in the North-East region that have been subjected to repressive nationalist paradigms of post-independent India. He drew attention, especially to the identity crisis of the traditional Meitei community of Manipur, which he belonged to. His plays also uphold the cultural strength and the associated spirit of the community for freedom from all kinds of nationalist oppression. It is evident in the following comment made by him:

I remember my meeting with Eugenio Barba in Calcutta in 1987. He asked me why the Manipuri productions demonstrate so much nationality. He was right, for he did not know that our national culture was fighting a struggle for existence between the dominant forces of a big culture and complicated politics. We do not have the objective of creating a national hullabaloo. But our theatre contains the happiness and sorrows of some people who are fighting for maintaining their identity. (Kanhailal, 2007, p. 30; translated from Hindi by the first author). 

The Formative Influences on the ‘Theatre of the Earth’:

In contrast to the ‘Theatre of Roots’, Kanhailal preferred to call his genre as the ‘Theatre of the Earth’. Three distinct factors played pivotal roles in shaping Kanhailal’s ‘Theatre of the Earth’. First, unlike his contemporaries, such as the Manipur University Professor Lokendra Arambam or the National School of Drama (NSD) product Ratan Thiyam, Kanhailal did not have any institutional affiliation. He was expelled from the NSD as he could not follow Hindi and English, its languages of instruction (Bharucha, 1998, p.  22; Ahuja, 2012, p. 276). He felt “humiliated and angry” (Bharucha, 1998, p. 22). The incident alienated him from mainstream urban theatre and inspired him to discover an alternative (Ahuja, 2012, p. 276). He also became resolute in upholding Manipuri culture to the whole world. The following words summarize the effects of the incident on Kanhailal’s mind and works:

My hopes of becoming a trained theatre activist evaporated when in 1968, I was expelled from the school before the classes began. I was psychologically affected but did not lose hope. I followed the way of self-education in my hometown Imphal. I established [the theatre group] ‘Kalakshetra Manipur’ in July 1969 with the love and assistance of my wife Sabitri and a few unfailing friends. We had the objective of studying, determining, and uplifting the Manipuri culture to such a standard level that would be regarded as the best not only in India but also in the drama scene of the whole world. (Kanhailal, 2007, p. 30; translated from Hindi by the first author). 

Sabitri Heisnam (b. 1946), Kanhailal’s leading actress since 1961 and wife since 1962 (Bharucha, 1998, p. 21) exerted the second significant formative influence on his works. Sabitri Heisnam was a rurally trained accomplished actress even before their first meeting. Yet, it is only in the folk-related productions of their theatre group ‘Kalakshetra Manipur’ (established in 1969) that the best in her came out. They had their own home in 1970 (Bharucha, 21), and after that, they became closer than ever before. She eventually became the body and voice for his folk-based theatre ideas (Ahuja, 2012, p. 276). In the words of Rustom Bharucha (1998),

It is only mandatory that any description of Kanhailal’s theatre should acknowledge the contribution of his wife. Sabitri is the centre of his work. Indeed, it is difficult not to idealize this diminutive, unpretentious, unfailingly cheerful woman, who happens to be one of the greatest actresses that I have ever seen. In her temperament, Sabitri exemplifies the resilience and commonsense of a peasant. And I use the word not in any derogatory sense, but after John Berger, in his viewing of the lives of agricultural communities. (p. 20). 

The third notable formative influence on Kanhailal came from the Polish playwright and director Jerzy Grotowski via the Bengali playwright and director Badal Sircar. Kanhailal met Sircar in a workshop in Imphal in 1973 (Katyal, 2015, p. 171), where Sircar shared his viewpoints about space and physicality in his ‘Third Theatre’ and Grotowski’s ‘Poor Theatre’. He “was very inspired by Badal Sircar’s work, but then he went another way.” (Singh, 1997, p. 22). In-depth discussions on the influences of Grotowski and Sircar on Kanhailal and the distance that Kanhailal maintained from them can make out several important features of the ‘Theatre of the Earth’.

Grotowski, Sircar, and Features of Kanhailal’s ‘Theatre of the Earth’:

The points of similarity and difference between Grotowski and Sircar are striking. Sircar negated any direct impact from Grotowski, but his rejection of the colonial theatre elements— such as the proscenium stage, costumes and make-up, lights, sounds, set property, and others— has a striking similarity with that of the ‘Poor Theatre’ of the Polish playwright and director (Ahuja, 2012, p. 251). According to Grotowski, these elements are not essential but supplementary. It means that theatre can exist without them. Grotowski, therefore, minimized the stage property to highlight the core ingredients of theatre. He held that the living relationship among the actor, audience, and space was the organic power that constituted the life of theatre (Grotowski, 1968, pp. 28-32).

In Grotowski’s ‘Poor Theatre’, the ‘holy actor’ communicates to the audience on a sensory level about his inner self by removing his outer self or ‘life mask’. He compels the audience to get rid of their masks also. Consequently, the actor and the audience confront a new truth, which inspires them to change individually (p. 37). The change is personal and spiritual, though this spirituality is not religious. It uplifts an individual to a higher level of humanity.

Like Grotowski, Sircar felt the need for “a harmonious union of the body with the mind” (Sircar quoted in Katyal, 2015, p. 170). In the 1973 workshop in Manipur, he “[began the morning class] with a series of psycho-physical exercises, not so much for muscle-building as for developing the strength and flexibility of the spinal system.” (p. 172). However, Sircar’s minimization of theatre elements, such as set property, costumes, make-up, and others, was not meant for deciphering the core ingredients of theatre. He had little to do with spirituality. He was interested in the political possibility of theatre, and this he did assert emphatically through overtly leftist subject matters and dialogues.

An actor in the Poor Theatre (“holy actor”) does not play a character in the way the actors of the conventional realistic theatre do. He disregards Stanislavsky’s theory of character-building, which tells of a definite motivation or recalling sense/ emotional memory in a given circumstance. He does not try to represent outer life as it is, nor does he try to manifest real-life actions in his movements. He moves inward: he sacrifices his persona to dissect his inner self and expose it before the audience. Grotowski (1968) puts it in the following words:

But the decisive factor in this process is the actor’s technique of psychic penetration. He must learn to use his role as if it were a surgeon’s scalpel, to dissect himself. It is not a question of portraying himself under certain ‘given circumstances’, or of ‘living’ a part; nor does it entail the distant sort of acting common to epic theatre and based on cold calculation. The important thing is to use the role as a trampoline, an instrument with which study what is hidden behind our everyday mask— the innermost core of our personality— in order to sacrifice it, expose it (p. 37).

Thus, it is like portraying his true deeper self rather than portraying an imaginary character. The sacrifice of his persona is painful, and to reach the self is no doubt a spiritual act. The actor expresses his deeper self through various body movements, gestures, postures, and vocal sounds. These expressions are some psycho-physical acts to communicate some emotion. Thus, finally, one can observe a series of impulsive body movements of the character:

The education of an actor in our theatre is not a matter of teaching him something; we attempt to eliminate his organism’s resistance to this psychic process. The result is freedom from the time-lapse between inner impulse and outer reaction in such a way that the impulse is already an outer reaction. Impulse and action are concurrent: the body vanishes, burns, and the spectator sees only a series of visible impulses. (Grotowski, 1968, p. 16)

Sircar experimented with this approach to ‘holy acting’ in his ‘Third Theatre’ productions, where the actor explored his present-day truth in place of the situation faced by the character. Yet, in his conception of theatre, Sircar stressed more on political content. As a leftist theatre activist, he made theatre more politically motivated after the fashion of Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht.

The unique stance that Kanhailal’s ‘Theatre of the Earth’ maintained compared to Grotowski and Sircar’s theatres is understandable from a close look at Sabitri Heisnam’s way of performance. Kanhailal felt that Sabitri Heisnam’s acting demonstrated her own experience, what she had perceived or realized in her society. Instead of doing any logical cause and effect characterization, she went on to transcend the situation and portray her experience. About the process of her acting Kanhailal said:

Sabitri’s process of acting is a way towards self-discovery, privileging herself over the character— the otherness…. Her way of controlling emotion and self-discovery is worked out by the inner action— a single vital force impregnated with a type of cathartic and psychic process, … [which] reveal[s], say, a Sabitri underneath— her true self. (Kanhailal, 2008, p. 3)

Like Grotowski, Kanhailal regarded the bodily movements of the actor as the core part of his theatre construction: “The idea of resistance in my theatre is incarnated by the body of the actor and represents a collective and communal vision” (p. 3). The inner journey to the self-found expressions in Grotowski and Kanhailal’s theatres through body movements and sounds made in a dream-like or trance-like situation, which is spiritual by nature.

An actor in Kanhailal’s theatre does not follow the conventional way of the ‘Actor-Text-Character’ journey. Rather, he/she takes the ‘Actor-Character-Text’ approach (p. 11). For such an actor, the character is an extended part of the actor’s body and mind. Thus, this process provides more artistic freedom instead of repeating or imitating the superficial day-to-day life. As in the holy actor of Grotowski’s theatre, here also one can observe impulsive body movements in a ‘transcended’ way. Here also, the actor’s body vanishes. The point can be highlighted with the example of the 70-year-old actress Sabitri Devi’s portrayal of the 9-year-old boy Amal’s character in the play Dakghar. Here, the spectators witnessed a journey to Amal’s dream world despite the point that the performer was an elderly lady. (Raut, 2019, p. 139).

A second point is notable here. Grotowski’s is “poor” theatre as it held on to theatre’s essential elements without which theatre could not exist. Kanhailal’s theatre was “poor” due to his financial scarcity in his early career. Therefore, instead of expensive sets and costumes, lights and sounds, and a decorated stage, he started his theatre only with a few actors, their bodies, voices, and minds. He gradually focused on the cultural materials, rituals, lifestyles, and behaviour of his native community and tried to derive his language of communication. Kanhailal also experimented with the actor’s body (p. 137). Besides, like K. N. Panicker, he developed some theatre exercises based on indigenous folk forms of martial art and dance. For example, he took up elements from Thang-Ta, a Manipuri martial art form, and Lai Haraoba, a type of Meitei dance. Thus, the actor’s body became the central element in his theatre experimentation. He even did not prioritize the written text or words of the playwrights (pp. 143-44). The minimization further intensified with influences from the ‘Third Theatre’ and ‘Poor Theatre’.

Thirdly, as in Grotowski’s ‘Poor Theatre’, Kanhailal’s actors also communicate with the audience at the spiritual level. Communication is comparable to the spiritual unification of the devotees in religious or cultural rituals (Raut, 2019, p. 144). Due to this similarity, Kanhailal’s theatre suits the label of ‘a Ritualistic Theatre’. One needs to remember that his spirituality and ritualism were also not religious. Here, the theatres of Grotowski and Kanhailal become closer, but still, Kanhailal’s theatre remains distinguishable for his altruism. His actor is different from that of Grotowski. Grotowski’s actor sacrifices himself to change morally or spiritually, while Kanhailal’s actor wants to induce the change on the societal level. He uses impulsive body movements to raise various socio-political issues (p. 144). Here lies the altruism that is the basis of Kanhailal’s plays.

At this point, a comparison between Badal Sircar and Kanhailal becomes obvious. Sircar’s Third Theatre also wanted change, but this was not a spiritual but social change. His theatre was more politically vibrant, as it hoped for a structured political revolt as per the leftist ideology. It advocated for the liberty of the common masses against all kinds of oppression. It aimed to eradicate illiteracy, poverty, and others in the post-independence scene. In this sense, Kanhailal’s theatre was also political but slightly different. It did not uphold any existing political ideology. It dealt with the same societal issues but suggestively and allegorically. Thus, he was different from both Sircar and Brecht (Kanhailal, 2008, p. 3).

There are more points of difference between the theatres of Sircar and Kanhailal. Like Sircar, Kanhailal rejected the dramatic text, though for a different reason. Sircar took the help of improvisation to enhance the realistic appeal of his productions. Kanhailal preferred to take up folk forms. He noticed that traditional folk theatre forms rarely demanded a written text. These forms were more flexible and mouldable. Therefore, with his anti-colonial and anti-nationalist position, during the early part of his career Kanhailal preferred simple Manipuri folk tales to readymade plays. He found that the Manipuri folk-tales had contemporary significance (Kanhailal, 2008, p. 2). He added additional/ allegorical meanings to these expressive folk tales to raise contemporary social issues. He gave his performance a poetic dimension by using other folk theatre elements, such as sound, movement, mime, dance, song, music, and stylization. The familiarity and the immediacy of these elements helped his Manipuri audience be aware of their crisis in terms of their identity, environment, colonial history and oppressive nationalism.

Thiyam’s ‘Theatre of Roots’ and Kanhailal’s ‘Theatre of the Earth’:

Being the two stalwarts of theatre from Manipur belong to the same period, comparisons between Kanhailal and Ratan Thiyam is quite inevitable. This is also helpful in understanding the similarities and the differences between the two. Thiyam, an exponent of the ‘Theatre of Roots’ movement, has brilliantly delineated a kind of ‘Indianness’ with his plays like Chakravyuha (“Army-Circle Formation”; 1984). The play uses episodes from the Mahabharata and evokes a sense of solidarity among the Indian audience. On the contrary, Kanhailal found the concept of ‘Indianness’ too comprehensively and dominantly ‘nationalist’ to accommodate the regional realities and issues. He, therefore, used episodes from the epic not to evoke a nationalist feeling but to highlight the socio-political issues of his immediate society. Kanhailal (2015) in his interview with Jyotirmoy Prodhani described his distinctiveness from Ratan Thiyam in the following way:

Ratan Thiyam’s plays are fantastic; they make majestic theatrical presence and are superbly spectacular. It is a mindboggling visual treat. But for me theatre is not only about copious extravaganza, it is essentially about the intimate nuances, the raw earthy immediacy of experiences. This is what “Theatre of the Earth” is all about. I strongly believe that theatre is essentially grounded with ideology and a deep-rooted social commitment. (para 2).  

The Legitimacy of Kanhailal’s Relation to ‘the Earth’:

Kanhailal was right to call his theatre the “Theatre of the Earth”, for it was down-to-earth. It was against the elaborate and decorative ‘nationalist’ theatre of his contemporary Manipuri playwright Ratan Thiyam. Kanhailal’s theatre was not ethereal; and it was not about fairies and farishtas. Rather, it was grounded on the ‘earth’. It was real, contemporary, and politically aware. It related the contemporary burning problems of his own people. He connected it to the contemporary North-Eastern, especially Manipuri, socio-political realities and cultural milieu. His theatre was deeply committed to the land and people of his Meitei community, their aspirations, pains, oppression, and frustrations. It took inspiration from their life and culture. According to him, this connection could make sense: “Even the social experiences of the individual and the community are actually solidified through its intimate linkages with the earth’’ (interview with Prodhani, para 1).

It is true that, had Kanhailal been direct while dealing with the bitter realities of the North-East, he could have become more successful in propagating his political ideas. Yet, he preferred to go with allegorical themes. Did it not limit the possibility of his theatre? The point remains that a direct delineation of the political themes would have made his theatre overtly propagandist. Kanhailal was a political playwright but never allowed his work to degenerate into artless propaganda. Theatre was art for him as ‘modern’ poetry is for a modern political poet. It is through art that he tried to raise his voice of resistance.

Elucidating Examples of the Plays of the ‘Theatre of the Earth’:

His Pebet (1975) exposes the ideological dominance of the Brahminical faith. For this purpose, it focuses on the indoctrination of the ethnic people of the Meitei community to Brahminism. The exposition occurs through the use of a Manipuri lullaby. Similarly, his ‘Memoirs of Africa’ (1985) is based on a poem that likens Manipur to the once colonized continent of Africa. Thus, Kanhailal’s theatre is political allegory. It does not make any direct statement on social issues. Sircar’s primary aim was to impart political lessons to the audience, as are the cases with the German playwrights-cum directors like Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht (Kanhailal, “H. Kanhailal and Sabitri” 4). Kanhailal believed in making them aware of their crises and inspiring them to bring in social change. He did so by evoking awareness and not by propagating any established political ideology. His theatre raises the voice and represents the pain and agony of the common masses under ideological oppression. The collective and communal vision gets expressed in his theatre through the actor’s movements and non-verbal sounds. His actor becomes the voice of the oppressed.

Kanhailal (2015) revealed that his Karna (1997) re-interpreted the consequence of Karna in the Mahabharata. Karna was abandoned by Kunti, his mother, soon after he was born. Kanhailal shows Kunti claiming his body after her younger son Arjuna kills him in the Kurukshetra war. However, she does not claim the body out of her motherly feeling. She claims it to save this ‘Aryaputra’ (“Son of the Aryans”) from being cremated by Radha, his non-Aryan (and therefore outcaste) foster mother. The re-interpretation, therefore, highlights the Aryan people’s negligence and oppression of the non-Aryan people. Kanhailal (2015) maintained that he had used this re-interpretation “to raise the question of social segregation and politics of caste and marginalisation.” (n. pag).

The resilient attitude of Kanhailal is reinstated very powerfully in his Draupadi (2000). Inspired by Maheswata Devi’s story, the play demonstrates its female protagonist, Dopdi, played by Sabitri Heisnam, challenging an oppressive army officer, the Senanayak,  by being starkly naked in front of him. Her acting disturbed the audience, but it was also lauded by critics as one of the boldest enactments on the Indian stage. After four years, an incident occurred in Manipur where women came out for public protest against the oppressive Indian army (Hariharan, 2017, p. 18). It is an example of inspiration taken by life from art. In this way, Kanhailal tried to awaken the fighting spirit of the common masses through his plays.

Kanhailal’s Later Experiments:

In the last two decades of his career, Kanhailal did more theatrical experiments. His concept of ‘The Ritual of Suffering’ further enriched his ‘Theatre of the Earth’. He explained the concept in his Theatre for the Ritual of Suffering (1997). It made his theatre more humane, poetic, and ‘transcendental’. Chaman Ahuja (2012) has explicated it in the following way:

All great plays display human misery and exploitation of man by man; it is this experience of suffering that provides one with a sense of sacrifice, or martyrdom, of heroism…. Being a proof of the human spirit, suffering is holy and that is what makes it a healing agency— a catalyst in lifting a finite human being to the higher realm of infinitude. Such being Kanhailal’s aim and assumptions, he regards actor as a medium. The way Sabitri goes into immediate trance is a ritualistic transformation. (p. 277).

Kanhailal’s group, ‘Kalakshetra Manipur’ took up ‘The Nature Lore Project’ in 2005. The project had the objectives of embarking on a new kind of theatre practice with cultural adventure and expedition, doing a collective search for indigenousness, removing racial and linguistic biases, giving up city-centric theatre, and addressing the rural audience (‘Kalakshetra Manipur’ 4). These objectives reflect a clear postcolonial standpoint with a more tuned form of his earlier ideas. These objectives were detectable in his productions like Sati and Dakghar (Kalakshetra Manipur, 3).

The nature-lore project emphasized a kind of community theatre of an ethnic group in a rural or remote environment. It tried to develop a naturalized and ritualized theatre. This theatre tries to find the original power that only live theatre possesses. It abandons the city-based rich conventional theatre tradition and negates ‘method acting’ or realism or the psychological approach of character building. On the contrary, it emphasizes the ‘physical-psychic’ approach of characterization. The actors create the theatre idiom with their instinct and intuition. The identity of a naturalized actor of a particular community reflects through their instinctive and intuitive body expression, which has its base in folk performances. The process of such a performance is thus a ‘renewal of ancestral tradition’ (p. 12). Naturalized actors learned this through their livelihood in a particular geo-ecological system:

For them ethnicity is a way of life and expression of an ancient tradition orally transmitted from generation to generation in case of a specific people live in a specific geo-ecological system. The ethnic identity is thus shaped by the body vocabulary which the people learn and evolve from the ecological system through generations. (p. 11). 

Multilingualism is another feature of this project. Under this project, Kanhailal’s theatre tries to break all the racial and linguistic barriers of various ethnic communities. It does so as it wants to challenge the supremacy of one ‘nationalist’ language and culture over these communities. In this way, the theatre tries to overcome the dominant politics of culture and identity. A real challenge lies in collaborating with artists from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Kanhailal solved this problem by accommodating multiple languages together. He reconstructs a conventional text like Dakghar into a multilingual Text. The process creates a language of images, impulsive body movements, and sounds (Kanhailal, 2008, p. 2).

An Analysis of Pebet:       

‘Pebet’ (1975) is a non-verbal play constructed from a Manipuri fireside folk story. It was performed without a dramatic text, i.e., in the same way as Kanhailal performed many of his plays. In it, Pebet, a bird of an almost extinct species, gives birth to her fledglings, nurtures them, and teaches them how to fly. A cunning cat comes to eat them up. The mother bird manipulates the cat and rescues the innocent ones.

This simple storyline of the Manipuri folk tale unfolds some allegorical meaning in Kanhailal’s theatre. It illustrates how the rulers of Delhi dominate the Manipuri people with their divide-and-rule policy. The cat, shown wearing a dhoti and holding a rosary in hand and bells around the neck, stands for the aggression of the Vaisnavite culture over the indigenous ethnic cultures of North East India (especially the Meitei culture of Manipur) (Bharucha, 1998, p. 34). The play has been regarded as “anti-Hindu” and “anti-Indian” (p. 34). The point that the bird is nearly extinct suggests that the traditional culture is under severe threat from Brahminical aggression.

The second author of the present paper had the privilege of watching ‘Pebet’, produced by Manipur Kalakshetra, at Nazira in the Sivasagar district of Assam on 06 February 2005. The play unfolded in a temporary auditorium lit by two halogen lights, but there was almost no stage property except a small platform on one side of the stage. The actors who played the roles of the fledglings wore light brown dresses, meaning that they were birds of the same feathers, i.e., similar sufferers unified by the ‘Ritual of Suffering’.

On the contrary, Mother Pebet, played by Sabitri Heisnam, wore a blue dress. The blue colour of her dress reminds one of Siva, who once drank poison benevolently to become blue-throated. In this light, the mother Pebet’s blue dress suggests centuries of torture on the indigenous communities. Again, the sky and the seas are blue. Therefore, despite her tiny appearance, her blue dress can suggest the grandeur of the indigenous cultures. Against the timidity and vulnerability of the birds are the aggression and violence of the cat. All these qualities found expressions through physical movements and non-verbal sounds. They held the audience spellbound. In December 2021, the authors sat together to study a few YouTube videos on different enactments of the play. The videos gave them the same semiotic suggestions and expressive emotions.

The challenges of the construction process lay in concretizing the dream-like images evoked by the lullaby-like story. The dramaturgy was constructed from point to point. Rhythmic body movements and non-verbal sounds like screams, wailing, hummings, and others added audio-visual splendour to the action. According to Sabitri, her inner journey evoked by the story took the form of dream-like impulsive physical actions and sounds. Sabitri termed the physical manifestation of her inner emotions as psychical. It was reflected even in her breathing pattern (Kanhailal, 2008, p. 8).

Legacies of the ‘Theatre of the Earth’: 

Kanhailal has been a strong influence on the next generation of playwrights and directors of India in general and the North-East in particular. Two such playwrights-cum-directors are Gunakar Dev Goswami and Sukracharyya Rabha from Assam. Dev Goswami, a disciple of Kanhailal, learned to use rare Assamese folk cultural elements, such as folk tales, myths, and historical episodes after the fashion of his Guru. He has also used folk and classical theatrical forms and elements from Oja-Pali, Ankia Bhaona, and others to construct his visual aesthetics, movements, and music. Moreover, like the plays of Kanhailal, his productions like Jerenga, Birangana, Sati, and many others have expressed strong protest against women’s oppression in contemporary society. His production of Santras, based on a Panchatantra story, took inspiration from Kanhailal’s Pebet. Its rigorous physical movements, ups and downs of voice and music, and the allegorical way to deal with a postcolonial subject matter strongly remind one of Kanhailal’s play.

Sukracharya Rabha, who met an untimely demise a few years ago, was one of the most brilliant young playwrights-cum-directors of the region. He recognized Kanhailal as his Guru and tried to grasp the actual essence of his theatre. He arranged the “Under the Sal Tree” theatre festival regularly in a completely natural environment. The productions of his group, Badungduppa, discard all artificial theatre elements, such as lights, sounds, heavy sets, costumes, and make-up. The plays are performed in daylight in front of the audience seated under the Sal Trees. As a talented playwright and director, he also constructed his theatre basically from the folk tales and myths of his community, with all folk actors. Through his theatre he tried to explore the cultural heritage of his own Rabha community. To Poidan, Rupalim, Tikhar, Changkoy, and Madaiah Muchi were some of his well-known productions.

Declaration of Conflicts of Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest.

Funding
No funding has been received for the publication of this article. It is published free of any charge.

Acknowledgement
Feature image courtesy: Indrakshi Chaudhury.

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Pranjal Sharma Bashishtha,, a PhD from Gauhati University who did his MA in English (Banaras Hindu University) and in Assamese literature (Gauhati University). He teaches World literature, Assamese Literature, Translations and Critical Theory at Gauhati University Institute of North-East India Studies (GUINES) and at the Department of Assamese at Gauhati University. Besides critical writings, he has published several collections of poems, and short stories in Assamese.

Goutam Sarmah is an MSc in Physics and MA in Performing Arts (Theatre Arts) from Dibrugarh University and has submitted his Ph.D. thesis on Shakespearean plays in Assamese at Dibrugarh University. He teaches Theatre Arts at the Dr. Bhupen Hazarika Centre for Studies in Performing Arts of Dibrugarh University. Besides his research articles, he has published several full-length and one-act plays. He is also an active theatre director and an actor trainer.

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Under the Canopy of Sal Trees: A New Vocabulary of Performance in Sukracharya Rabha’s Minimal Theatre

Abstract

This paper would be structuring and documenting Rabha’s theories of performance which are heavily laced with ecological concerns, and also his penchant for body-centric performances that explore the contact point between man and nature, the given and made, public zones and biospheres. The paper aims to capture the nuances of his unique ensemble called “green theatre,” something that is akin to a search for roots, a drive to cultivate an “intrinsic rural mechanism”, in the words of H. Kanhailal, a renowned theatre exponent and Rabha’s mentor. There is an urge to capture the ebb and flow of country life, humankind’s vital affinity with nature. Rabha fuses lifeworlds, bio-forms, and landscapes. He gives birth to new grammar and vocabulary of “physical theatre” by weaving the synergy of life into the fabric of performance.

Keywords: Sukracharya Rabha, Theatre of the Sal, Badugduppa Kalakendra, Green Theatre, Body, Space, Ecology

Introduction

The act of situating the oeuvre of Sukracharya Rabha (1977-2018) on the map of contemporary theatre practices requires a thorough inspection of the relationship between theatre and nature. Rabha’s attempt at liberating the operations of theatre from the impact of media and its technological strangleholds leads to an interesting re-contouring of dramatic patterns and semiotic principles in regard to the performance text notwithstanding the challenges his unique theatre-aesthetics pose in terms of stage décor, the logic of display and audience-reception. In a world of post-truth, when drama and theatre “rely on the institutions of mass art and the media of mass communication, and examine the rituals of a society in which reality is crucially constructed via its media representation”, Rabha’s conscious dig at the possibilities of digital and electronic reproduction charts out an alternative grammar and vocabulary of theatre: his penchant for ecological balance further enables him to form a close association with nature, a move away from a world ruled by technology (Potter and Gann 2016, 135). Rabha’s theatrical language conjures up local and indigenous elements in favour of a site-specific performance. His plays are staged in the lap of nature and there is a total admonishment of the need for artificial light, sound, stage and technological aids in the mentioned province. Notwithstanding the entanglements and overlaps inherent in the process of representation itself, Rabha’s insistence on drawing a line of demarcation between theatre and media finds an echo in Pavis too. In this regard Pavice maintains:

The task would be an arduous one, however, and we will note only that theatre and media tend to move in opposite directions. Theatre tends towards simplification, minimalism and the fundamental reduction of the direct exchange between actor and audience. The media, on the other hand, tend to become more complicated and sophisticated through technological advances and are, by definition, reproducible and multipliable ad infinitum. Being part of technological, but also cultural and ideological practices, of a process of information and disinformation, the media can easily expand their audience to become accessible to a potentially infinite number of spectators (Pavis 1998, 207).

Sukracharya Rabha, the man behind the innovative Theatre of the Sal festival in Rampur, Goalpara, (Assam) is always seen interrogating the reliance of theatre on mass media and the latter’s nature of repeating and diversifying the ‘ready-made’, ‘immediate’ and ‘served-up’ ingredients of performance (Pavis 1998, 207). In the rural set-up where he performs, Rabha intends to do away with the influence of technology on audience tastes and expectations, not to mention his derision for ‘the artificial’. In his performances there is an urge to capture the ebb and flow of country life, humankind’s vital affinity with nature. Rabha fuses lifeworlds, bio-forms, and landscapes. He gives birth to a new kind of theatre by weaving the synergy of life into the fabric of performance. In his words, “This can be achieved only by aligning the make-believe world of theatre with the world of nature, by borrowing from the latter its music, rhythm, light, silence, darkness…its elements” (In a personal interview with the author). In the grove of Sal trees where Rabha performs, “theatre is a subsidiary of nature; it is a process of reflection that conjoins the external world with the inner sanctum of the soul, but with varying degrees of freedom and imagination” (In a personal interview with the author). His is a move away from mainstream Assamese theatre, which is more of a consumerist spectacle, an urban hodge-podge, “an unwanted noise, a piercing shriek, a cacophony” (In a personal interview with the author). In Rabha’s words:

Amidst the craziness of saleable entertainment, organic traditional media are hardly making sense to the people nowadays. Popular media are now affected by the idea of commerce. This notion of consumerism applies to all…the way processes of de-rooting are emerging in the new world through marketing strategies and consumerism, it is almost impossible for us to look back at the notion of ‘belongingness’ (Baruah 2019, 50).

Towards a Minimalist Theatre

Sukracharjya Rabha’s Badungduppa Kalakendra founded in 1998 in Rampur, Goalpara, creates a performance space out of a lush green Sal grove, leaves, tree trunks, stems, branches and roots. In Badungduppa Kalakendra we are ushered into a world of theatre that is pared down to the core. His is a space of minimal propensities, and it is a kind of theatre that “seeks to reduce its effects, representations and actions to minimum” by dispensing away with exaggerated and excessive modes of presentation, verbal overplay, spectacular visual effects and extraneous layers in the plot (Pavis 1998, 215). Roland Barthes traces the origins of theatrical matter to “atoms of meaning” that can be reduced to “the smallest sign transmitted in time” (Barthes 1964, 258, as cited in Pavis 1998, 214). On one hand we have the distinctiveness of sign and its implications in the constitution of overall meaning, and on the other hand there is a relativity of absorption and segmentation that wholly depends on the changing meanings as per the eclectic reception of the audience. However, Rabha’s conceptualization of minimalist theatre is neither akin to Beckett’s adherence to what is “ontologically unsayable” nor Vinaver’s chamber theatre whose signature styles are “montage, the spaces in between, silence, the unspoken” (Pavis 1998, 215). Rather Rabha’s strategy is to turn the autonomy of ‘the artificial’ (light, sound, and stage) upside down. The stillness of the performance space is occasionally and rarely penetrated by music, that too when there is an extreme necessity, “otherwise a loaded silence pervades the air” (“A Tribute to a Progenitor of New Ideas”, Pathak 2018).

He dispenses away with the proscenium arch by vouching for a rural, idyllic setting— a modest clearing in the middle of a grove. According to Rabha, there is no need for artificial light. He prefers “the intrinsic, regulatory time of nature with the sun as the only source of light” — accordingly “the performance is attuned to a specific time of a day, be it a warm, scorching afternoon or a not so well-lit evening” (“A Tribute to a Progenitor of New Ideas”, Pathak 2018):

There is an occasional play of light and shadow with the canopy of the Sal trees acting as a natural sieve that filters light. The sky acts as the roof on the head. The twitter of a bird, the rustle of the wind-caressed Sal leaves, a clap here and a footfall there—all add to the rhythmic sound that we get to hear, occasionally spiced up by songs with the accompaniment of musical instruments (“A Tribute to a Progenitor of New Ideas”, Pathak 2018).

Rabha’s site-specific performance creates a kind of “displacement through a wedding of artwork to a particular environment” (Crimp 1993, 16-17, as cited in Collins and Nisbet 2012, 103). As an effect, Rabha not only articulates “an exchange between the work of art and the place in which its meanings are defined” but also underlines “its positioning in relation to the political, aesthetic, geographical, and institutional” (Collins and Nisbet 2012, 102).

There is a close affiliation to Japanese theatre, especially in Rabha’s precision and clarity, his employment of pauses, stillness, and silence in his performance. Moreover, the influence of Barong in Balinese is hard to miss in Rabha’s creation of trance-like moments in which a man is momentarily sucked by the instantaneity of the occurrence. Moreover, the fusion of opera with dramatic arts, popularized by Richard Wagner, the preference of shifting tonal centres, chromaticism and Wagner’s concept of Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”) found a way to Rabha’s theatre too.

Community Building and the Theatre of the Sal

Sukracharya Rabha’s theatre resists politico-cultural indoctrination by circumventing the stereotypical and accepted. Deeply entrenched in the community-life of his people, his theatre carries at its heart indigenous philosophy, aesthetics and traditions. Usham Rojio, his close aide who happened to witness the genesis of many of his plays, talks about Rabha’s affiliation to the concept of rasong, which means ‘the being of existence’. By attaching rasong to the precepts of ‘live theatre’ Rabha foregrounds a deep understanding of the ‘lived-world’ or the experiential realm in which he is steeped. In the words of Rojio:

What is important concerning the rich concept of rasong is the safeguarding of the community participation and Nature-Human symbiosis. The insistence on performance as a way of creation and being as opposed to the long-held notion of performance as entertainment has brought forth a movement to seek and articulate the phenomenon of performance in its multiple manifestations and imaginings. The concept of rasong was more of bringing closer the celebration of life to nature. We share the idea that this concept has a close affinity with the concept of noiba in our Meitei tradition… (“Together We Heal: Remembering Sukracharya Rabha (1977-2018)”, Rojio 2020).

Rojio further dwells on an interesting intersection of two cultures, Manipuri and Assamese, and this he does by harping on the Meitei equivalence of noiba. The word noiba translates to ‘movement’, and its philosophical meaning is “embedded in the cultural practices and day to day lived-world” of the Meitei (“Together We Heal: Remembering Sukracharya Rabha (1977-2018)”, Rojio 2020). According to Usham Rojio:

It is believed that just as noiba (movement) of the foetus within the mother’s womb gives her the joyous anticipation of a new life; the Meitei believe that they are immersed in a womb-like Universe, so god and goddess are pleased when they perform dance. Therefore, body movement is life and thus we celebrate life through dancing in Lai Haraoba (“Together We Heal: Remembering Sukracharya Rabha (1977-2018)”, Rojio 2020).

Community participation and a peaceful coexistence with the objects of nature, therefore, form the pulsating life force in both Kanhailal and Rabha’s performances. However, alluding to Rabha’s initiation of and commitment to a huge cultural movement in Rampur, H S Shiva Prakash mentions that,“…he (Rabha) has realized over the years that theatre institutions have to be self-supporting to grow in a desired direction. He had hit upon the idea of setting up small-scale industries in the village. This would ensure jobs for the local people, sustenance for the artists and funding for activities” (Baruah 2019, 91). Rabha maps the aesthetics of rural life in his performances. He also incorporates local ingredients into his theatrical mold by taking resort to folk forms of the Rabha community.

Rampur, near Agia, is a small village, economically backward and far away from nearby urban centres in Goalpara. Even though Rabhas and Bodos chiefly populate this place, the social fabric is multihued because of the ongoing cultural assimilation and harmonious co-existence of micro-communities. In the words of Aparna Sharma, Rabha’s theatre has a deep connection with the Rabha community as his theatrical explorations hinge on a balanced representation of the community’s textile, architecture, music and cultural heritage. Moreover, the ownership of resources like the Sal groves obliquely teaches the practitioners the essence of performance that is efficacious and ritualistic, and that revolves round the everyday tasks and activities of the Rabha community which is chiefly agrarian in nature:

Specific movements were first studied. For instance, how the body moves while working in a rice field flooded with water; or, how does the body traverse distance while climbing a Sal tree; or, indeed, how we rise from a lying position, say when we wake up at dawn…there is an emphasis on the breath that changes in every step with the movement (of the body). Finally, the studied movement was considered for its narrative potential and then applied to theatrical performances (Baruah 2019, 384).

Rabha’s theatre is a consciousness-raising project based on the ethics of harmony, social responsibility and an allegiance to certain forms of community expressions. Moreover, his yearly theatre festival, Under the Sal Tree, attracts audience from all over the world. In Rabha’s words, the practitioners pick up bits and parts from everyday life, from the synchronized vocabulary of rural life and in the process cleanse and purify these forms and constructions to implant them in a new terrain or locale. This transference is an intrinsic part of his theatrical process as “Badungduppa’s attempt is to inherit, interpret and evolve through immediate contexts, mother nature and village life” (Baruah 2019, 152). Such a unique synthesis paves way for an alternative model that maintains a distance from “the ultra-commercial and cheap entertainment gimmicks” (Baruah 2019, 153). Rabha is also against publicity of any sort. In his words, “We have never been anywhere to sell tickets; we have never announced anything loudly. Nor we pasted any banner, poster elsewhere” (Baruah 2019, 153-4). Nevertheless, every year thousands of people from both India and abroad, ranging from scholars, practitioners, theatre exponents to common people, throng Rampur to partake of the spectacle under the Sal trees.

It would not be wrong to say that Rabha envisages theatre as a community exercise, a collective enterprise that takes in its fold the whole village or the entire area. He involves “the whole community— the Rabha community that he belongs to, by giving them back what was their—the theatre” (Baruah 2019, 180). As a performance maker Rabha is adept in creating passageways that help in negotiating, appropriating and admixing multifarious cultural forms. He also slashes the taut line of demarcation between mainstream theatre and regional practices by drawing upon the raw materials and resources of a community’s collective memory. Interestingly, he moulds and chisels these ingredients and segments, oral lores and narratives, through a special act of “concentrating” on “the (bodily), mythical and ritual” axes (Baruah 2019, 182). Rabha explores:

their delicate relationship with nature and finally this relationship underlies how a text is developed. It is this particular attention to break down the text into infinitesimal bits and to blend it with the type of existences mentioned above, and the act of giving it back to the audience with the energy of the soil, and leave the audience susceptible to a performance (to borrow Clifford Geertz’s expression) that is “deep” and “thick”…(Baruah 2019, 182)

Therefore, the performance text is made up of basic units borrowed from the rich repertoire of community life and also, from the narrative of the everyday which, then, undergoes “tangible manifestations of the intangible experience” in the performance space (Baruah 2019, 182-83).

The Performance Space in Badungduppa

On a small mound of earth Rabha created his stage. It is created on the ground level and the use of wood or iron is discouraged. As intended, the audience and the performers stand on the same level as there is no elevation of the proscenium to draw a line of division between the two. The purpose behind this technique is a conscious debunking of the idea of theatre as a mechanism to create illusion and fantasy. Right from the beginning, Rabha makes an effort not to weigh the audience down with tricks to sustain illusion, an unnecessary endeavour as per his theatre tactics. Rabha narrates how the surreal environment of the Sal grove adds a special charm and ambience to his performance. Of course, the sieved light filtering through the canopy of Sal trees and the southern winds whistling and rustling the Sal leaves create natural light and sound. There is, “A sudden dappled light. A sudden flight of an unseen bird. A faint echo of the jili in the distance” that add to, supplant and blend with Rabha’s performances (Baruah 2019, 188). Due to this strange concoction of natural elements there is an infusion of a layered semantics in his performances. Rabha reminiscences:

A narrow path passes through the jungle. There was a small open area on the side. We cleared that area, prepared benches and space for the stage. The idea of a gallery made of bamboo was implemented to preserve the ecological balance and it is in tandem with the idea of theatre close to nature. The gallery benches were thus prepared from bamboo and betel nut trees… The cyclorama was prepared with hay. The wings too (Baruah 2019, 188-89).

Sangeeta Barooh Pisharoty in her article, “Under the Sal Tree, A Unique Theatre Festival that Unites the Villages of Assam” (2017), discusses the ingenious stage arrangement, décor and style of Rabha’s theatre:

Every December, young volunteers gather to erect a mud stage under the Sal trees. The backdrop is delicately arched with a fence of straws. Bamboo planks are placed around the stage in an ascending order to seat the gathering, like in any open air auditorium.

Besides being located inside a forest, what makes the venue unique is that the performers don’t make use of mics or artificial lights – features commonly associated with proscenium theatre.

The actors typically modulate their voices so their dialogues reach the audience. The Sal grove also acts as a natural receptacle for trapping the sound. The background music is played live and the stage is set up in a way use the sun rays filtering through the trees as the natural spotlight (“Under the Sal Tree, A Unique Theatre Festival that Unites the Villages of Assam”, Pisharoty 2017).

Under the Tutelage of Heinsam Kanhailal

In Rabha’s theories of performance which are heavily laced with ecological concerns, there is a penchant for body-centric performance that explores the contact point between man and nature, the given and made, public zones and biospheres. His unique ensemble called “green theatre” is akin to a search for roots. It can be termed as a drive to cultivate an “intrinsic rural mechanism”, in the words of H. Kanhailal, a renowned theatre exponent and Rabha’s mentor. Kanhailal’s Kalakshetra Manipur is situated at the outer-most limits of Imphal, precisely at the foothills of the valley of Manipur. It seems “to have quietly celebrated, over the many years since its inception, this position of silence and liminality as a source of strength, creativity and resilience” (“The Lost Wor(l)dsof Heisnam Kanhailal”, Banerjee 2016). In “Ritual Theatre: Theatre of Transition” (2004), Kanhailal elaborates on his art of performance as such:

Believing in the autonomy of theatre, we swallowed the text and absorbed it into our body instead of speaking out the lines through lip movement, facial and finger gestures. We shattered the whole network of illusion on the stage. We were no longer burdened with the heavy light, costume and make-up. We cleaned the stage as an empty space where we began to unfold the autonomy of theatre…(Krasner 2008, 550)

Kanhailal has been a strong influence on Rabha. The latter’s definition of theatre as an “inward churning of emotions and feelings”, “…a glance at one’s own soul and body” has intersections with his mentor’s theories of performance (In a personal interview with the author). The methodical minimalism culminating in novel experiments by Kanhailal, especially in the late 1970s and early 1980s are noteworthy. Like his mentor who trained the villagers and the market women of the famous Nupi Keithel of Imphal, Rabha too worked with the rustic lot, the villagers of Rampur. Both shunned the Western proscenium and the “spatial politics of the city” for community spaces which are more specifically, sites of interactions for the spectators and actors (“The Lost Wor(l)dsof Heisnam Kanhailal”, Banerjee 2016). In this regard, Kanhailal’s Nupi Lan is noteworthy which, in the words of Rustom Bharucha, is “an open-air production involving approximately 70 working women from the Women’s Bazaar in Imphal” (Bharucha 1992, 66). Also:

The production created, through improvisations with the ‘market women’, simultaneously juxtaposed images of women in the festival of Lai Haraoba (perhaps especially the maibis) and the imas of the market, followed by a theatrical representation of the historical Nupi Lans. Distinctions between spectator and actor were strangely blurred during performance of this theatre event in the open public space of the city (“The Lost Wor(l)dsof Heisnam Kanhailal”, Banerjee 2016).

The aesthetics behind Nupi Lan grew out of his disenchantment with the draconian AFSPA, an Act that is much criticized for catalyzing bloody sagas of communitarian suffering. Without any obvious slant towards any ideology, his performance subtly touches upon the hidden, regulatory political force running at the underbelly of Manipur and the regimes of control of the military on the public spaces. The politico-linguistic domination of the India that Manipur battles every day, and also, a lopsided and partial Meitei nationalism that is raising its head slowly in the state creep into the fabric of Kanhailal’s performance, thereby impregnating it with issues of identity and citizenship. The complexities of resistance movements and the authoritarian position of the Indian state as a “military-legal killing machine” are not to be ignored:

After Nupi Lan, Kanhailal continued his career with similar projects that sought to break down the schism between political theatre and the people it claimed to represent. He worked in a village called Umatheili or the Valley of Durga to produce a play called Sanjennaha (Cowherd) from a community of rural non-actors, followed by a production that emerged from extensive work with the young men and women of the Paitei tribe of Churachandrapur (“The Lost Wor(l)dsof Heisnam Kanhailal”, Banerjee 2016).

The overlaps between Kanhialal’s and Rabha’s theatre are hinted at by Richard Gough when he maintained that the “enchantment” and “bewilderment” that we discern in their art stem from a common place, the magical woods: in Rabha’s case, it is the “Macbeth jungle” (the term was first coined by Rabha’s ally and a famous theatre exponent HS Shiva Prakash) in which “identities are lost and changed”, where there is a “possibility to affect change” (Baruah 2019, 72-74). Richard Gough, artistic director, Centre for Performance Research, Wales, used five words to describe the theatre of Sukracharya Rabha:

Disorientation, Bewilderment, Interruption, Turbulence and Contagion or Infection. These might all seem rather negative concepts but I want to think through the positive implication and provocations that lie behind these words…Three images, so you all see I’m following a sort of classical structure of three acts and five acts but that actually make it eight which is not a good number in some cultures, too symmetrical, too balanced and so to follow the Japanese aesthetics I must add one, another one which will operate as a sort of sub-terranean theme and that is transformation, not just as a theoretical separation but practical realisation with an apparatus to affect change which I am feeling, seeing here (Baruah 2019, 73).

Gough has first-hand experience of watching 20 minutes of Rabha’s performance at Goalpara. In a letter to Kanhailal, he mentions Rabha’s act of mobilizing the village women to participate in the theatre movement— he calls it “the power of women combined with a political edge” (Baruah 2019, 75). :

I like the sense that what is happening here is that we have all been infected, that we have all been contaminated and that we take this disease, so much like Auto’s vision of theatre, that now we take this disease, this viral infection with us to other parts of India and as for me, I will take it back to the UK. But through that it begins to spread and I think that is what I am seeing, I think what I am seeing is the political- with a small ‘p’- a project that is happening here. Your (Kanhailal’s) work needs to be distributed and diffused and needs to find other emanations, other forms of it. I very much enjoyed the production of Sukra. It was very different from your work but he is clearly taking the inspiration (from you) (Baruah 2019, 75).

The power of the collective in Rabha’s theatre lies in the presence of women’s bodies on stage— both Rabha and Kanhailal draw upon women’s embodied resistance, and thus, negotiates the binaries between inner/outer and private/public to propagate progressive notions of femininity. By moving away from the urban metropolis, Rabha reevaluates the “nation-state’s systemic legacy of failure to address issues surrounding women’s “visibility” in civil and political spaces” (Purkayastha 2015, 519). How does a woman utilize theatre space is a matter of concern for both Rabha and Kanhailal. Does this space give a woman a possibility to reassess her representation in history? The village women of Rampur whom Rabha ropes in for his performance can see the emergence of a new logic of retaliation; the structural limitations of patriarchal thoughts are exposed and tampered with. Theatre in this way can be an answer to what the Indian nation-state fails to recognize: women’s labor or granting her “equal access to civil liberty” (Purkayastha 2015, 519).

The Body that Elongates, Constricts, Moves and Stays Still

When the borderlines between the body and its technological mediations are inflected, how do we frame the immediacy of agency in a site-specific performance? If Rabha’s creation of an alternative corporeality hinges on the location and reliance of human conditions on a special spatio-temporal configuration, how do we look at “ontological exhaustion” which is aesthetically linked to “the modern or postmodern age of simulations” (McMullan 2001, 167)? Taking account of the proclivities of self-willed bodies that slip away from the director’s hands, and also the bodies-in-performance that are ever “dissolving, redefining or establishing identity”, Paula Cooey draws our attention to “the ambiguity of the body as both site for and artefact of human imagination” (1994: 42, 110). Cooey connects “the phenomenological concept of the lived experience of the body (the body as site) with the body as an agent of its own symbolic creation”, contending that we should keep an eye on how a body is normalized, mediated and reproduced in a historical moment (1994:42). Therefore it is impossible to do way with the “corporeal labour of performance, in terms of the physical discipline which has produced this sign / spectacle” and the body’s sustained engagement with the ever changing norms of perception, truth, and beauty (McMullan 2000, 111).  On stage, a body is more than a material, aesthetic and political sign.

Rabha’s framing of the embodied experience of a community, chiefly his discourse that extends beyond the material limits of a body, can also be read as a commentary on the connections between theatre space and the bodily ‘other’. The systemic assaults on those who are denied entry into mainstream spaces and the larger praxis of life, in Gautam Bhadra’s words, point out the “curious complicity” inherent in perceptual modes of representation and  historiography. This does not deride the body’s vehement resistance to the “signifying economy inscribed upon it” and regimes of political order and ideology by its act of forging webs of instantaneous connections with audience and theatre-environments.

In the plays of Badungduppa, “the body is a prop. A utensil. Something that is elastic, and can be moulded and filled” (Baruah 2019, 236).  The regular long walk of the theatre artists in the early morning to the heart of the groves, hills and rivers is necessary to understand the language of nature, to know its soul. Such expeditions coupled with numerous breathing exercises and meditation, “open the doors of our corporeal frames” to the bounty of nature and help mirror it, which eventually leads to a transcendence “beyond our own selves” (Baruah 2019, 236). Rabha is interested in a state that is reached when “the corporeal frame, of flesh and blood, formed out of cosmological happenings cease to exist and we become a part of nature” (Baruah 2019, 236). Every day after the morning walk, Rabha’s artists and workers practise “yoga, maati-aakhora, Manipuri martial arts, Kalaripayattu of Kerela”, and various European forms to make the body flexible (Baruah 2019, 237). In Badungduppa, more than the expressive potential of words, an extra emphasis is given on the responses and reactions of the body, its gestures, distinctive movements and the embodiment of “each rasa, each emotion, each stimulus” (Baruah 2019, 237). Rabha describes this process as such:

Most significantly, the objective is to make the body capable and strong enough to elicit any kind of reaction or impulse in a way that leaves an impression on the audience. So that we are able to bury in the depths of our minds waves of thoughts, that when mulled upon, are emitted at once as vibrations transferred, transfused, and transmitted to the audience. The more immediate this process, the greater intensity and pervasiveness of the play. The reverse would mean a weak statement of the play conveyed or weak acting performances (Baruah 2019, 237).

Along with the semiotics of the body, body-art and body-painting, certain formulae and symbols are devised for the special purpose of replacing dialogues and at times, these are either used as add-ons or alternatives to dialogues. More than an abundance of words, a meaningful silence pervades which is loaded with layers of signification at a different level. Linguistic assemblages and verbal excess are sacrificed for distinctive bodily gestures and movements— the power of the non-verbal is foregrounded. By resisting the spectacular and gaudy, Rabha’s theories of the body aim at unmasking and denuding the body by stripping off the extraneous, artificial layers. In this regard H S Shiva Prakash makes an apt comparison between Rabha’s practices and his mentor Kanhailal’s style, “The theatre expression that Badungduppa developed was no doubt inspired by Kanhailal’s ‘Theatre of the Earth’, which is an orchestration of the movements of the body, breath, mind and rhythms of nature” (Baruah 2019, 89). However, we can rope in both Sabitri and Kanhailal in this regard who as theatre exponents share and disseminate a common belief that “bodies, when stripped bare of urban affectations (inhibitions that restricted the expression of vulnerability, for example) and sharpened by processes of psychophysical training, could release narratives of collective pain in a way that was unmitigatedly political” (“The Lost Wor(l)ds of Heisnam Kanhailal”, Banerjee 2016). Both of them speak about the role of the body in the cultivation of empathy, it being a resonator that catches “the reverberations of pain” which is not their own (“The Lost Wor(l)ds of Heisnam Kanhailal”, Banerjee 2016). Partly, Sabitri’s adept imitation of the sounds and movements of animals stem from a need to “withdraw from the soul-killing noises of the city” and to know “how to become animal, in order that she may not shrink from encountering the horror of the human body in a state of absolute violation” (“The Lost Wor(l)ds of Heisnam Kanhailal”, Banerjee 2016). Both Sabitri and Kanhailal quip, “How to embody, and not simply express, another’s pain?” (“The Lost Wor(l)ds of Heisnam Kanhailal”, Banerjee 2016). This question takes on a totally different colour in the wake of insurgency and counter-insurgency movements in Manipur when communitarian violence has torn the social fabric of the state. The Indian government’s employment of repressive tools to silence the entire valley is another example of apathy towards the state. However, the expressive potential of the body is highlighted by Kanhailal in an interview with Naveen Kishore and Biren Das Sharma for the Seagull Theatre Quarterly in January, 1996. He states, “The child, I looked at the new born child crying. I noticed that the whole body of the child cries. But actors only use a certain resonator. Actors do this because we are socially and culturally conditioned. […] what we need is the creation of a new body culture…” (Katyal 1997, 46).

Creating New Permutations and Combinations

Evelien Pullens, theatre director and puppeteer from Netherlands, after an intensive workshop in Badungduppa, co-created a play with Rabha named Bijuli in which she explored the possibilities of physical theatre, music and puppetry. She laced the play with images from Western theatre, but the mould given by Rabha to Bijuli was noteworthy, “Sukra showed me how you can express emotions and messages by the body. Body language went hand in hand with the puppets and objects, partly made of natural materials. We used rice bags, leaves, seeds, jute, bamboo and traditional cotton” (Baruah, 2019, 97). Also, her Soul Tree theatre-research-workshop which she did for Netherlands Theatre Embassy is based on a special communication and communion with the trees, like singing from a distance and singing near the trees, calling out commands while climbing trees, “hiding and acting in the middle of the dense green vegetation” (Baruah 2019, 209). The participants explored natural environments like “fields…rocks, hills”, fish ponds too and honed “theatre skills such as timing, group-balance, and action-reaction” (Baruah 2019, 209-210).  The outcome is quite interesting:

In the second half of the workshop we started to extend our research to natural objects in theatre. We mainly focused on leaves, sticks, seeds, vegetables and mud. We concentrated on the world of insects. We started to make them out of natural materials without the use of any glue, pins or other artificial help. So we moved into puppetry as we let the insects come to life (Baruah 2019, 209-210).

Some of the unique experimentations by Badungduppa are carried out in the heart of the forest, amidst the lush Sal trees. It is noteworthy that the grove extends an interesting acoustics to the soundscape of the performance and provides scopes for “disparate aural tones, textures and affects” (Baruah 2019, 385). An optimal place for forging “intimacies with other beings” and life-forms, his theatre has a deep ecological understanding of the physical environment and shared materiality (Arons 2012, 567). The democratizing impulse stems from the belief that to a great extent both the human and the non human are “enmeshed in a dense network of relations” with no “firm, bright boundaries between inside and outside, male and female, life and nonlife, or between and within species” (Arons 2012, 567, 569). Rabha’s act of imagining and imaging permeable world/s of nature in theatrical spaces is noteworthy as this leads to an “open-ended concatenation of interrelations that blur and confound boundaries at practically any level: between species, between the living and the nonliving, between organism and environment” (Morton 2010, 275-76).

References:

Arons, Wendy. (2012). Queer Ecology/Contemporary Plays (QUEER RESEARCH IN PERFORMANCE). Theatre Journal, Vol. 64, No. 4, pp. 565-582.

Banerjee, Trina Nileena. (2016, October 7). “The Lost Wor(l)ds of Heisnam Kanhailal”. Raiot, Retrieved from https://raiot.in/the-lost-of-worlds-of-heisnam-kanhailal/#_ftn1

Baruah, Nilutpal. (2019).  Sal Soul Sukracharya. Goalpara: Badungduppa Publications.

Bharucha, Rustom. (1992). The Theatre of Kanhailal: Pebet and Memoirs of Africa. Calcutta: Seagull Books.

Chaudhuri, Asha Kuthari. (2018, June 14). “Rhythms of the Sal Trees: Sukracharya Rabha”. The    Thumb Print- A Magazine from the East. Retrieved from http://www.thethumbprintmag.com/rhythms-of-the-sal-trees-sukracharjya-rabha/

Collins, Jane and Nisbet, Andrew (Eds.). (2012). Theatre and Performance Design, A Reader in Scenography. London: Routledge.

Cooey, Paula. (1994). Religious Imagination and the Body: A Feminist Analysis. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP.

Katyal, Anjum (Ed.). (1997). Seagull Theatre Quarterly: Theatre in Manipur Today. Calcutta: The Seagull Foundation for the Arts.

Kanhailal, Heisnam. (2008). “Ritual Theatre: Theatre of Transition (2004)”, in Krasner, David  (Ed.). Theatre in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology (pp. 550). Oxford: Blackwell.

McMullan, Anna. (Fall 2000/Spring 2001). Performance, Technology and the Body in Beckett’s Late   Theatre. Journal of Beckett Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 and 2, pp. 165- 172.

Morton, Timothy. (March 2010). Guest Column: Queer Ecology. PMLA, Vol. 125, No. 2. pp. 273- 282.

Neveldine, Robert Burns. (1998). Bodies at Risk: Unsafe Limits in Romanticism and Postmodernism. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Pathak, Namrata. (2016, June 2). Personal interview with Sukracharya Rabha.

Pathak, Namrata. (2018, June 15). “A Tribute to a Progenitor of New Ideas”. The Thumb Print-   A Magazine from the East. Retrieved from http://www.thethumbprintmag.com/a-tribute-to-a-progenitor-of-new-ideas-sukracharjya-rabha/

Pavis, Patrice. (2008). Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts and Analysis. Toronto and    Buffalo: University of Toronto Press.

Pisharoty, Sangeeta Barooah. (2017, January 10).“Under the Sal Tree, A Unique Theatre Festival that Unites the Villages of Assam”. The Wire. Retrieved from https://thewire.in/culture/sal-tree-unique-theatre-festival-unites-villages-assam

Potter, Keith and Gann, Kayle (Eds.). (2016). The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music. London: Routledge.

Purkayastha, Prarthana. (2015). Women in Revolutionary Theatre: IPTA, Labor, and Performance.   Asian Theatre Journal, Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 518-535.

Rojio, Usham. (2020, June 8). “Together We Heal: Remembering Sukracharya Rabha (1977- 2008)”. Raiot, Retrieved from https://raiot.in/together-we-heal-remembering-sukracharjya-rabha-1977-2018/

Murray R., Eleanor James and Sarah Ann Standing. (2014). Eco Theatre. PAJ: A Journal of  Performance and Art, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 35-44 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of Performing Arts Journal, Inc.

Namrata Pathak is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU) Tura campus, Meghalaya. An MPhil and PhD from English and Foreign Languages University (formerly, CIEFL), Hyderabad, she is an academic, poet, and a critic. Her latest books are Indira Goswami: Margins and Beyond (2022, Routledge) and an upcoming Reader on Arun Sarma (Sahitya Akademi, 2022). Her debut collection of poems, That’s How Mirai Eats a Pomegranate was brought out in 2018 by Red River. Her poems are included in the Sangam House Monsoon Issue (July, 2019) and anthologies forthcoming from Aleph and other publishing houses.

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Yemapoetics: Towards a Theory of Healing in Indigenous Poetry from Sikkim

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Swarnim Subba1 and Namrata Chaturvedi2

1Research Scholar, Department of English Literature and Cultural Studies at SRM University, Sikkim. ORCID: 0000-0003-1808-628X. Email subba.swarnim06@gmail.com

2Department of English, Zakir Husain Delhi College, (University of Delhi). ORCID: 0000-0001-9186-7651. Email: namrata.chaturvedi@gmail.com

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 2, April-June, 2022, Pages 1–13. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n2.ne07

First published: June 09, 2022 | Area: Northeast India | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under Themed Issue on Literature of Northeast India)
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Yemapoetics: Towards a Theory of Healing in Indigenous Poetry from Sikkim

Abstract

Literature that is being composed from or about the politico-geographical category of Northeast India focuses on violence and ethnic movements in major ways (Hazarika, 1996; Barpujari, 1998; Baruah, 2005; Paula, 2008). While Weberian understanding of indigenous cosmology has led to archiving, documenting and research on ethnic epistemologies from Northeast India, in the absence of indigenous literary theories, literature from this region faces the challenges of homogenisation or becoming case studies for ethnographic documentation and anthropological inquiry (Karlsson & Subba, 2006; Subba, 2009; Lepcha et al, 2020 in the context of Sikkim). This paper intends to propose a theory of reading that upholds the role and participation of the poet(ess) as a shaman- a transforming agent and a transformed individual herself. This theory is being named Yemapoetics, deriving its epistemic framework from the figure of shamaness or Yema in the Limboo healing tradition in Sikkim. Yemapoetics is an attempt to propose a new indigenous paradigm for indigenous literary expression around the world.  This theory identifies stages of poetic composition as well as reception, ranging from purification, possession, communication to catharsis. An indigenous literary theory like this will provide contexts for locating the poet(ess), examining her/his role as community healer who connects the modern, urban psyche of individuals with communal, archetypal symbols. This enables a process of retracing and re-membering through the poetic act that is essential to healing and recovery. Just as Limboo cosmology recognises women as first humans to be created, this paper argues that women’s psychospiritual agency should be at the centre for poetic theories to accord validity and applicability of feminist spirituality to indigenous literary theorisation. For the purpose, an illustration of the proposed theory will be made with reference to select indigenous poets from Sikkim.

Keywords: Limboo-Literary Theory-Feminist Spirituality- Northeast-Sikkim.

Introduction

In northeast India, the topographical contours are intrinsically linked to similar yet distinctive epistemologies that shape the ethnic diversity and indigenous identities of the inhabitants. The eight states that are identified as belonging to the political category of Northeast India possess a range of indigenous worldviews (?div?s?dar?an) that are distinctive in symbolisms and rituals yet connected by shared cosmological structures and ceremonial significations. In Northeast India: A Place of Relations (2017), Saikia and Baishya (Eds.) argue for continuities, intersectionalities and solidarities in the political, cultural and lived traditions in the geopolitical category of Northeast India. In Oral Traditions, Continuities and Transformations in Northeast Indian and Beyond (2021),  Sarkar and Modwel (Eds.) argue for the need to reassess the continuities, exchanges, interdependence and influences between lived cultures of ‘Asian Highlands’ to recontextualise the folk knowledge systems and their relevance in the wake of modernity, to understand the frontier geopolitical challenges and richness of the ‘shatter zone’ called India’s Northeast and to locate the political and cultural history of the region in its negotiation with external as well as internal colonialism and rapid globalisation. Recent studies as these are incorporating newer methodologies of interpretative politics, cultural geography, material culture studies, ecoethnography and transindigenous comparative frameworks to revisit the cultural and literary knowledge traditions of Northeast India. As the indigenous philosophies of Northeast India do not possess a textual or metaphysical nature, they are evolutions out of lived experiences and oral knowledge transmission. These communication models are largely based on intergenerational preservation and distribution of knowledge. The nature of this knowledge is transpersonal and environmental involving the participation of human and transhuman entities in the nature of elemental deities, spirits, ancestor personas, animal and plant spirits, and the relationships of reciprocity and interdependence between them. The ‘indigenous religion paradigm’ (Maarif, 2019) necessarily involves a web-like relationality between these participants that is epistemologically different from a hierarchical paradigm of divine-human-nature in Western religion. This paper incorporates an ethnopoetic approach that aims to locate indigenous poetics in ethnospiritual terms of reference by focusing on a specific healing ritual in the Limboo spiritual tradition in Sikkim.

In Indian Adivasi literary and cultural discourse, concerns of sovereignty, knowledge of orature, and archiving and documenting ethno literature are major concerns as reflected in the work of critics and scholars such as GN Devy, Anand Mahananda, Ganga Sahay Meena, Ramdayal Munda, Ramanika Gupta and Ruby Hembrom and others. In contemporary Adivasi literary discourse, there is space left for exploring dimensions of human and nature interdependence, communal identity formation through participation and trans-indigenous philosophical and political solidarities are being highlighted as counter-narratives of sustainable development and ecofeminist activism (Chaturvedi, 2021). As northeast India is home to indigenous communities varying in ethnic and spiritual identities, the literary discourse can gain much from such theoretical investment in trans-indigenous solidarities and spiritual poetics. The development of research and its directions in Northeast India became visible only after late 1980’s when some scholars started probing into the diverse contemporary issues of ethnicity, identity, conflict, inclusion, violence, political inequality, cultural imagination and nation-state as represented in the literature composed from or about the politico-geographical and ethno-political categories of Northeast India. Scholars such as Udayon Mishra (1988) and Apurba Baruah (1991) examine the ethnicity and identity-based conflicts; Geeti Sen (2005) and Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih (2005) reflect on the conflict between states and the country, the brutality of political oppression, violence, cultures in transition, psychological and social difficulties in the contemporary poetries etc. Otojit Kshetrimayum (2009) critical analysis on the role of shamanism in establishing women’s power and autonomy and also provides trans-ethnic, trans- indigenous reading. Tilottoma Misra (2011) explores the dimensions of the multi-ethnic and multilingual cultures reflected in the Northeast literature; Mark Bender (2012) employs ecocritical theory to ethnographic poems of Northeast India and Southwest China. Watitula Longkumer & Nirmala Menon (2017) seeks to understand the multicultural aesthetics in the literary works of the region and Amit R. Baishya (2019) on political terror and survival in contemporary literature of the Northeast. Populated by numerous and distinctive ethnic groups that share international borders with China, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Nepal, this landlocked Northeast Himalayan belt of Indian subcontinent has witnessed and withstood all kinds of inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic clashes and conflicts. Therefore, the focus of research on Northeast Indian studies has been located mostly in the issues of terrorism, ethnic clash, ecological degradation, historical and socio-political issues, insurgencies, and related others (Baruah, 2005; Nongkynrih, 2005; Sen, 2006; Mishra, 2011; Ray, 2015; Baishya, 2019). However, the abundant narratives of “indigeneity” and “ethnicity” in the contemporary texts are often overlooked or side-lined in a complex history of migration, colonization, conflicts and unrest (Menon &Longkumer, 2017). In this view, this paper attempts to sketch a theoretical framework for the literary criticism of Northeast Indian poetry through the paradigm of indigenous poetics. It is developed to study and understand the indigenous existence and realities by linking it to the Mundhum narratives (Limboo ritual oral narratives) that are foundational to Limboo culture and tradition. As Neal Mcleod asserts ‘Indigenous poetics is the embodiment of Indigenous consciousness’(Mcleod 2014, p.4) just as the oral narratives of the Mundhum that are the source of inspiration, information and enlightenment for ‘Limbus’ and guidance of the way of life, customs and rites-de-passage. (Chaitanya Subba, 1995)

This paradigm emerges from the ground-up by deriving its conceptual structures and vocabulary from indigenous spiritual ritual practices of women, specifically that of the Yemas who are women healers of the Limboo community of Sikkim. The stages of the spiritual experiences, the links between language, sound, rhythm and poetry, and the centrality of their spiritual experiences are the foundations of the theoretical propositions in this paper. In seeing the Yemas perform their social roles bearing responsibility and sacrifice as mediums, one can revisit the social and cultural roles that poets of Northeast India perform in the context of transition from oral to written literature, preserving oral knowledge traditions and undertaking writing to counter underrepresentation in history as being similar. The poets can be seen as undertaking the roles of community healers and channels for communication between the ancient realms of ancestral wisdom and present layers of modern experience.

A predilection for images and motifs drawn from nature is proof that Northeast poetry in English is deeply rooted in the land. ‘Nature’ is not an impassive witness to the existential despair of men and women as in the contemporary wasteland of modernist poets, but a living presence for the Northeast poets, where hills and rivers are also deities…and the fates of natives are inevitably intertwined with them. Thus, in spite of the trappings of modernity, the life of most communities of the Northeast is defined by their folk origins. The mythic world still survives at the frontiers of the civilised world, and the ‘folk’ still continues to assume the ‘intensity of reality’ for many. Myths provide a key to the cultural behaviour of a people, but when communities seem to be losing their way in the midst of cultural colonisation, mythopoeic poets, out of a deep-seated desire, step in and try to emulate the traditional storytellers and shamans by recalling the lore of the tribe.

 For elaborating on this role and experience, the experiential knowledge and expressions of women have been focused upon with the intention to highlight feminine epistemology as being capable of encompassing the range of human experience, much as masculine epistemology has been recognised for years. While shaman, yogi, jogi, jhankri, yeba, phedangma, ojha, medicine-man, magician and many other terms have used a masculine gender vocabulary to designate and reflect on the spiritual agency of the healers, the feminine healers have either been subsumed within a masculine vocabulary or been relegated to a position on the margins. It is either argued that the word ‘shaman’ naturally includes a shamaness too, or that shamaness is a rarity hence the word must not be used to denote a generalised designation or role. While interviewing a yema, when this question was posed, she concurred that a yema (woman healer) is also a yeba (male healer) to indicate that even in spiritual vocabulary, the masculine denotative is all-encompassing while the feminine is used to denote the spiritual agency of women which is not distinctive but can be easily subsumed within the masculine.   As observed, women’s spiritual agencies and the complexities of their experiential language are often assimilated into a universalised masculine vocabulary or even ignored in cultural and literary discourses. It is possible and desirable to locate the poetic structures of writing as well as reading in women’s spiritual experiences and language matrices thereby facilitating a feminine poetics that recognises the psychoemotional vocabulary of women’s lives and words and paves the way for seeing the poet as “a mad shaman(ess), a Yema”. The recognition of validity of women’s spiritual experiences can serve two purposes which may not be mutually exclusive. Firstly, the vocabulary that emerges from this, such as Yemapoetics, will point to the significance and range of women’s spiritual lives, and secondly, it will enable a feminine-centered grammar of psychopoetics that will counter the marginalisation of women’s psychological and literary lives. The Yema will stand as a model for all indigenous poets who are trying to be healers and mediums for their ethnic communities, for their land and for all women (and men) who share in the collective spirit of a place.

Who Is Yema and What is Yemapoetics?

In Sikkim, Limboos is one of the indigenous tribes who have inhabited the region even before the Namgyal dynasty was established in 1642 (Sinha, 2005).   Though they are considered the earliest settler of Sikkim, having a distinctive linguistic and cultural identity, they have been denied and deprived of Indigenous rights and justice over centuries (Khamdhak, 2019). ‘Straddled between the two countries of Nepal and India, this fringe tribe has sustained fluid identity under the changing history. The flexibility of the geographical boundaries, battles of conquest, conspiracies and acquisition, and the theories of their originality have confused this community and has caused them to search for their identity. The onset of democracy has further marginalized them. The Limboos have been classified as Nepali linking this community with the later Nepali migrants in Sikkim, which the Limboos consider as a threat to their distinct identity’ (Subba, 2013).

Limboos are traditionally nature worshippers, animist and have their own religion – Yumaism and their literature in oral form – Mundhum. Mundhum is a broad umbrella term that incorporates legends, myths, folklore, prehistoric accounts, sermons and moral and philosophical exhortations in poetic language (Limbu, 2010). It encircles and enriches Limboo ontology, customs and rites are recited during rituals and ceremonies by the Limboo shamans/ shamanesses that are known as Phedangma, Samba, Yeba, Yema, Mangba or Ongsi.

‘Yemapoetics’ derives its epistemic framework from the figure of Yema, a Limboo shamaness who recites Mundhum while performing shamanic rituals to heal an individual or a community from certain diseases and the spells of evil spirits to restore health and harmony. This paradigm makes an attempt to reorient the study of indigenous literature with the intention to restore the poetic and philosophical dimensions of the writings themselves.  It is developed for the non-western analysis of indigenous poetry, spirituality and worldviews for putting our indigenous realities into perspective. As a new paradigm of reading poetry by indigenous poets, this approach sees the indigenous poet/poetess as a shamaness who acts as a transforming agent for her community and a transformed individual herself.

In 1964, Mircea Eliade published Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, a work that brought into academic focus the figure of the shaman as a healing spirit, a medium between this world and the other. Many poetic theories have since looked at the figure of the shaman as being similar to the figure of the poet, and have identified patterns of similarities in their roles and powers of communicating with the unseen, as it were (Henighan, 1979; Synder 1985; Rothenberg, 1985; Chung, 2005; Mortuza, 2013; Lima, 2014; Paneka, 2018). Referring to ‘late-modernist poetics’ as essentially curative, Shamsad Mortuza quotes Anthony Mellors:

The late modernist poets …write on the brink of the postmodernist abyss. Distinct, if not entirely separate from mid- to late twentieth-century poetries which are indebted to modernism but which return to highly, individualised, bardic modes of expressions, such as the neo-romantics of the 1940s, the Beats of the 1950s, and the counter-cultural visionaries of the 1960s, they continue to affirm a redemptive aesthetic that links poesis with the occult power while disowning the reactionary politics of high modernists such as Yeats, Eliot and Pound. Art remains the alternative order to rationalising and inevitably c-omprised political systems. (Mortuza, 2013, p. 7)

In this book A More Beautiful Question: The Spiritual in Poetry and Art (2011), Glen Hughes, drawing inspiration from the philosophies of Lonergan and Eric Voegelin, identifies the problem of modern times as a case of “imbalance in consciousness”. According to him, the fact that for many people, art continues to hold meaning because it is capable of keeping alive a sense of mystery, “an invitation to feel the unbounded surplus of meaning in the depths of reality in an age when both institutional religions and their materialist and atheist critics have become less and less effective in doing so” (p.130) Hughes categorizes kinds of imbalances, and points to the need of contemporary times to a balanced consciousness, one that retains the intimations of childhood along with the maturity of adulthood. Like Gadamer, Hughes also stresses the curative, balancing power of art, in taking individual consciousness closer to the realm of knowing the unknowable, of apprehending the infinite and supreme principle of consciousness. Indigenous literature and philosophy reorient us to recognizing the role of women’s spirituality as therapeutic, balancing and restorative. From the work of Paula Gunn Allen (1986) to that of Molly McGlennen (2014), indigenist feminist scholarship has recognized indigenous philosophies and trans-indigenous feminist solidarities as offering balancing epistemological discourses to the global urban and capitalist discourses. Native American, Aboriginal, Adivasi, African and other indigenous traditions are inviting us to locate feminist spirituality in literature, especially in poetry and associated rhythms and sound-based therapies that are also finding a place in the emerging field of narrative medicine. In the context of northeast India, there lies promising scope in exploring the spiritual-poetic contours of oral, ritualistic and even written audio-visual signs for identifying models of reconnection, restoration and regeneration that these texts provide. The Yema is an archetypal poet- one who has mastered the art of distancing, reconnecting, transcending and restoring the self with contemporary realities. This paper presents Yema as an archetypal figure of poetry and her specificities of spiritual experience outline a model for structured therapy, one that can be naturally applied to indigenous poetries from Northeast India. In this proposed theory, the poet(ess) is seen as a Yema, a medium through which ancestors communicate, a leader through whom the individual is able to retrace her/his steps to reconnecting with the ancestral traditions, to receive wisdom and to locate oneself in the community. Poets like Joy Harjo, Louise Erdrich, Jacinta Kerketta, Mamang Dai, Joram Yalam Nabam and many others who see their contemporary identities as primarily located in their indigeneity, have talked about the need to retrace one’s steps to one’s ancestral spirits. This retracing is also a reclaiming of history and identity, a healing of the wounds of colonial history. As a poetic framework, Yemapoetics identifies stages of poetic composition as well as reception, ranging from purification, possession, communication to catharsis. These stages encapsulate the spiritual journey of the poets as well as that of the readers, whose own fractured modern selves find ways of healing in the act of reading. The Yema, though specific, is being presented as a generic figure- an archetype of feminine spirituality, upholding a tradition wherein a woman becomes a community leader, keeper of memories, speaker for ancestors, and healer for the young. Yemapoetics is therefore a generic theory that can aid in recognising and situating the role of poets in any community by upholding the woman as a representative of the mediumship and catharsis as a challenge to the universalising vocabulary of men’s roles and experiences.

Purification

When Yema prepares herself to transpose from this world to the worlds of spirits, she detaches herself from the contemporary realities with the help of meditation, ritual objects and paraphernalia such as brass plates, Ya- Gay (small drums), Wasang (head dress decorated with bird feathers that acts a weapon to fight evil spirits), pona (necklace made of stones, beads, bones of birds and animals), Kaplak (Shell) and chanting of mundhums (Subba, 2021). The language of the Mundhum recited by Yema helps her to symbolically dislocate herself with a violent shivering of the body, her eyes closed and going into a trance. There is a fundamental link between the rhythm of language and the state of depersonalization: “The very language of the shaman, the music or the melody of it, can alone have healing properties. The music can put listeners, as poetry can put readers, into a state of trance, which is a pre-requisite for healing” (Panecka, 2018).

Similarly, a poet in the process of creating her poetic work dissociates from the contemporary, modern realities of this world and goes into a trance like state into the creative world that is her unconscious mind. She is symbolically displaced from this physical world and enters into an imaginative world. T.S Eliot’s theory of poetic creation asserts this process of displacement or depersonalisation of a poet.  To create poetry, a poet dissociates from this world- ‘continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality’ and journeys back to the past (tradition) to modify (heal) the present. A poet thus remains merely as a medium between poets’ present personal feelings and emotions and the impersonal elements i.e. knowledge and wisdom of the past in order to create a new thing i.e. a poem. Yishey Doma, an indigenous English language poet from Sikkim disconnects from this modern world of realities for “it only takes a whiff to get me there as I love climbing amidst your tranquillity” in her poem ‘Tashiding’. Tashiding also known as “Heart of Sikkim/ Denzong” is one of the oldest monasteries of Sikkim built in the mid seventeenth century known for its Bhumchu Ceremony that prophesize the events for Sikkim every year. “Every stone, every corner/ Every soul, everything, from your/ Four saintly course reflect gods/ The gods of Tashiding has come to me/ I want to proclaim it to all.”

Possession

Yema symbolically dissociates herself from this world and enters into a state of possession after chanting, dancing and beating drums and brass plates. R. L. Jones (1976) describes this spirit possession in Limboo shamans as altered state of consciousness where the spirit may be the soul of the departed individual, gods and goddesses, natural divinity, household or clan divinity or even souls of animal kingdom as the master spirit. She can communicate with spirits and ancestors retreating into the prophetic vision or ancestral calling.  She asks help from seven generations of ancestor spirits to fight against the evil spirits. The poets can be seen like the shamaness who with the help of their creative powers and poetic language help to transform us to greater conscious and integration, help us to go on an inner journey. They, like shamaness, can help the reader establish a contact with the spirits that are connected to the power of inner senses – a spiritual world that lies within us. Thus in the hands of shaman(ess)-poets, the oral text becomes the tool of prophecy and mediation (Dana, 2004) who use ancestor spirits, indigenous worldviews and cosmovision by transcribing them in her poems that play a significant role in the healing process in this present-day crisis.  With reference to Robin Ngangom’s views on the role of indigenous poets from Northeast India shared earlier in this essay, we can think about the poetry of Temsula Ao, an indigenous poet from Nagaland. Writing in English, Ao evokes ancestor spirits often in her poems: “Stone-people/ The worshippers/ Of unknown, unseen/ Spirits/ Of trees and forests, / Of stones and rivers, / Believers of soul/ And its varied forms, / Its sojourn here/ And passage across the water/ Into the hereafter” (‘Stone People from Lungterok’).

Sanjay Sawaden Subba is a young emerging indigenous poet from Sikkim who writes both in English and Limboo. His poem ‘Last Talk with Grandpa’, recalls his last conversation with his grandfather that ‘brought vigour to (his) sleepless eyes’ which he considers ‘the most precious frozen memories’ that gives ‘leisure to (his) stressful mind’. The indigenous poets composing poetry in different literary and linguistic traditions in Northeast India show that by reconnecting to one’s ancestors, tradition, culture and spiritual values can play an important role in the healing process.

Communication

The Mundhum contains rhythm, incantation, versification that is similar to poetry: “It is composed of couplets; the two lines having an identical rhythm with same number of syllables” (Khamdhak, 2021). Yema recites sogha (evil spirits of unnatural death) myth from the Mundhum (Limbu, 2010) along with her ritual instruments during a séance or shamanic rituals to ward off the evils/ diseases. The effect of rhythm and movement marked by the beating of brass plates, small drums, dancing, and chanting leads up to the state of trance or spirit possession to intercede with the spirit world on behalf of her community.

The poet too with her special language, metaphor, rhythm and imagery records the prophetic dreams/ visions in her poetry and transmits this knowledge to the readers through her poems. Therefore, we see how this special knowledge of healing is expanded from individuated consciousness to communal consciousness. Manprasad Subba, a well-known indigenous poet from Darjeeling writes how talking about our indigenous self and our way of life is vital because our thoughts and voices ‘Are colonized by wild cockroaches’ in ‘A Talk of Self’, a poem translated into English by the poet himself. He adds that now it’s time that we rise with our own voices by ‘overcoming others’ noises’ and finally ‘Self’s endless offspring sprout and spread/ From the earth’s womb wet with the heart’s fluid/ The oppressed self has now realized-/ Save self/ To save others.’

Healing

After the shamanic ritual/ séance are over, there is a sense of consolation and tranquillity that persists among the people of her community.  The evil spirits are warded off to restore health and harmony among the people of her community. Yema’s use of evocative language of the Mundhum during rituals and ceremonies to cure or heal her community can be compared to poets who with their creative power of language bring about new awareness among the readers.

The contemporary Native American poet Joy Harjo, a member of Muscogee Creek Nation writes for survival and continuance for her people, repairing and re-establishing their lost identity and redefining political, cultural and spiritual spaces for the restoration of the whole. In a transcript recorded by Jim Lehrer in PBS NEWS HOUR, Harjo asserts, “So when I began to listen to poetry, it’s when I began to listen to the stones, and I began to listen to what the clouds had to say, and I began to listen to others. And I think most importantly for all of us, and then you begin to learn to listen to the soul, the soul of yourself in here, which is also the soul of everyone else”. This kind of awareness/ consciousness gives rise to a deep confidence that we will survive any crisis we are facing in this modern world.

In the context of indigenous literature from this region, the poetry of Mamang Dai, an Adi poet from Arunachal Pradesh also reflects the trauma and negative experiences of historical and political influences and restrictions in the Northeast parts of India. By voicing her thoughts through her poetry, her writing acts as a healing process not only for herself but for her community as a whole. She provides an excellent example of this understanding in her poem ‘The Wind and the Rain’: “And our dreams have been stolen/ by the hunger of men travelling long distance,/ like bats in the dark./ Soft fruit, flesh, blood./ There is a war and directly now/ it must be about guns, metal, dust/ and the fear that climbs the trees every night/ when our names are written/ without will or favour in the present,/ watching the frailty of our lives/ spilled in the blood of these hills/ right before our disbelieving eyes”.

Manprasad Subba emphasizes the importance of re-establishing our indigenous selves in his poem ‘Mainstream and Me’. He makes an effort to give voice to his community who are still struggling for identity in one’s own land. He writes: “Now/ I don’t want to sing what the/Mainstream wants me to/ Until my own melody is not given/ A chord in its composition/ I won’t be mesmerized by its glittering words/ That usually come/ To benumb my own words”. This poem functions as healing object as it accentuates the strengths of his community. Further, the readers are transformed with this new awareness of no longer submitting to the ‘Mainstream’ but to strive for one’s own voice and identity.  He concludes the poem by saying, “No/ I no longer crave for mainstream/ Instead, mainstream should come/ Out of its own whirlpool/ To know and feel my face/ And heartbeat”.

Conclusion

In the context of indigenous literature in India, indigenous poetics offers an engagement with narrative and poetic complexities and a historiographical focus on literary criticism which can be a complimenting approach to ethnographic and archivist approaches. From Northeast India, numerous studies of ethnographic mapping, archival documentation and socio-political discourses of marginalization and violence have emerged. In these discourses, the intrinsic quality of writing, the philosophical and aesthetic dimensions of creative art, the psychoemotive dimensions of writing and reading and the deep links between spirituality, ritual, aesthetics and the written word do not find the adequate discussion. Literature tends to become case studies and social/political documents presented through ethnographic, folk and ecocritical lens while fundamental questions of poetic inspiration, metaphorical metaverse, transethnic dialogue, multigeneric intersections, aesthetic processes, affective stages of cognition and behaviour get sidelined or ignored. A major reason for this is the absence of a comprehensive and consolidated indigenous literary critical tradition. Yemapoetics is an intervention in indigenous literary criticism that aims to cover some of these lacunae by locating poetry in ethnopoetic paradigms with a psychospiritual feminist framework. In this paradigm, the ethnic knowledge traditions of the women shamans are recognised for the poetic coordinates of rhythm, chanting and transpersonal experiences leading ultimately to recovery and healing. In mapping spiritual experiences with poetry, understanding the stages of this process becomes significant to uphold the experiential episteme of the feminine and to understand the emotional, spiritual and psychological nuances of the process itself-both for the healer and the healed.

Further, Indigenous Spirituality offers a dynamic and progressive space for women. For instance, in the Mundhum Creation of Universe myth known as the Yehang Se:ma, the first human to come to life was the female idol named Tungutlisa Simbumasa created by various creator gods with the blessings of the Supreme Goddess Tagera Ningwaphuma. After the creation of the first woman, she was weighed by the god of faith and destiny on a weighing balance known as ‘ninduli pasanga’. When she weighed lesser than the first man that was created after her, the gods decked and decorated her with various gold, silver and other precious ornaments so that she weighed equal to the man (Subba, 2012). This myth validates that the indigenous women’s experiences are distinct from t the western feminist construction of universal female experiences. The western feminist contesting that woman are treated unjustly in the man-centred and dominant world is debunked in the Limboo creation mythology. Yemapoetics that emerge from this indigenous feminist spiritual cosmovision enables us to re-imagine the role of contemporary women as being vital and central in their community. It also upholds women’s psychospiritual agency keeping it at the centre for poetic theories in order to accord validity and applicability of feminist spirituality to indigenous literary theorisation. Further, this paradigm presents a model derived from engagement with Yemas as well as other indigenous shamans in the Rai community in Sikkim. The purification-possession-communication-healing model has been conceptualised from ground-up as an attempt to create indigenous poetic frameworks based on lived experiences of spirituality that are participatory, communal and integrated with everyday living, including the transitory processes of illness, death and other traumatic ruptures. This framework is not being theorised as exclusive to the Limboo or any other ethnic community, but is being presented as a theorisational model for indigenous and even non-indigenous poetry if it be of the nature of reconnection, regeneration and restoration. This model may serve to inspire other models of indigenous poetics in different parts of northeast India as well as other Adivasi regions in pedagogy in literature classrooms, research and deliberations at the University levels. This is in recognition of urgency in enlivening indigenist literary criticism so that students, scholars and researchers from northeast India do not continue to rely on borrowed and disjointed poetics when reading literature from the region itself. Such models as Yemapoetics should pave the way for integrating the poetic vocabularies of storytellers, clowns, riddle masters, magic women, trickster men, spirits, man-beasts, highland deities, herbologists, seers, fortune tellers and other spiritual role players in the communities inhabiting the mountains, hills, forests, plains and even the cities in Northeast India.  Finally, this paper concludes with the hope that the grammar of indigenous poetics will find its rightful place in the discourses on poetry and may even generate models for the reading of mainstream, non-indigenous, non-tribal poetry that has exhausted and transcended organised, compartmentalised and sanitised vocabularies of poetry itself.

Postscript[1]

As a Limboo indigenous woman scholar, exploring the paradigm of healing in indigenous poetry enabled me to contextualize my indigenous perspectives and experiences from my location- Sikkim. By reading and researching about the Mundhum and Limboo myths, I could reconnect with the ancestral tradition of my community that enabled me to understand my roots and cultural identity. It was a therapeutic experience for me to be cognizant of Limboo myths that acknowledge feminine goddess as the Supreme and recognize the role of women as equal to men. Yemapoetics apply this indigenous epistemology in the literary discourse of healing and recovery. The study of the non-western perception of female spirituality helped me re-establish and reassert my own indigenous spirituality.

To trace the psychospiritual process a Yema goes through, I got an opportunity to witness a community healing séance very recently on 27.11.2021 at Lingding, Gangtok, Sikkim.  I interviewed a Yema and Yeba (Limboo Shamans of the female and male gender respectively) to map their spiritual experiences with poetry that corroborated with the Yemapoetic theory proposed in this paper.

Declaration of Conflicts of Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest.

Funding
No funding has been received for the publication of this article. It is published free of any charge.

Acknowledgement 

Featured Image: “A waterfall in Sikkim” – Wikimedia Commons by Sujay25.

 Note

[1] This note is written by Swarnim Subba, the first author of this paper.

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Interviews and Community Participation:

Witnessed a séance (Community Healing) at Lingding (Gangtok, Sikkim) on 27.11.2021.

Interview with a Mangpa(name withheld) (Rai Shaman) at Lingding community healing and driving away the evil spirits on 27.11.2021 at 10.00 pm.

Interview with a Yema (name withheld) (LimbooShamaness) at Daragoan, Tadong, East Sikkim on 09.12.2021 at 4.00pm

Interview with Yeba (name withheld) on 16.12.2021 at 10 am at NurBahadur Bhandari College, Gangtok, Sikkim.

Swarnim Subba is a research scholar in the Department of English Literature and Cultural Studies at SRM University, Sikkim, and is an Assistant Professor, in the Departmetn of English at Sikkim Government College, Burtuk, Sikkim.  Presently she is working on a translation of Limboo book of poetry into English.  Her current research interests focus on Trans indigenous studies, Shamanistic poetics, indigenous spirituality and healing, and native poetics.

Dr. Namrata Chaturvedi teaches in the Department of English, Zakir Husain Delhi College, (University of Delhi). She has edited the book, Memory, Metaphor and Mysticism in K?lid?sa’s Abhijñ?na S?kuntalam London: Anthem Press, 2020). She is currently working on a book on the spiritual writings of women from north and north-eastern literary traditions in India. Her forthcoming book is a translation of an Indian Nepali novel into Hindi.

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