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

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.