Can a Kathakali (‘story-play’) hold a performance reading?

Abstract

The reformulation of the world heritage, on the one hand, and the discontinuity of contemporary art on the other congregate at the agency of the performing subject. Yet, the partitioning of synchronicity and diachronicity concur at new cultural sites and conjunctions of ethos to allow discursive stylization, giving ample scope for studying acts of performance in contact. In this perspective, the Kathakali Nāṭyōtpatti (‘birth of theatre’), a new production recently presented at the Kalamandalam Kūttampalam traditional theatre of Kerala, makes performance strategies visible enough to gain insight into the super roles densely packed into the work of art. The article seeks the story maker in the position of the story teller, especially in this presentation on the origins of dance where a young generation of theatre artists are underway to find more or less new paths in understanding what they perform. Judging from the small attendance, a mix of teachers, dance students and members of the local audience who gathered at the opening night of a puttiyakatha (‘new Kathakali story’), some scratching their heads, others peeping into their notes on the play in search of points of reference in the story, a sense of unfamiliarity pervaded the atmosphere at the presentation of Nāṭyōtpatti (‘The Birth of a Theatre/Dance/Music’) in Kerala. To the native audience, a Kathakali performance bearing upon the Nāṭyaśāstra, the Indian holy book on theatre, dance, music and the theatre arts, could be as exotic as a Kathakali Shakespeare. Kathakali has long been associated with the epics and the Pūraṇas. Dealing with the birth of dance through the medium of dance might appear auto-referential. But that gave the theatrical event an overlay to its aesthetic expression. And yet turning to the śāstra to go back to the origins of theatre and dance, the Kathakali dance theatre exposes itself as a mode of representation, and warrants a reflection on its formative years and the ongoing process of transformation involved in its narrative and dramatic devices.