Mahabarata

Abstract

Tucked away in the corner of Oakland's FLAX Art Supply store is a small makeshift space turned into the Ubuntu Theater.1 When you settle in, finding a seat among the two rows of chairs neatly arranged along the aisle, you notice a string above you, precariously holding a lotus upside down. On either end of the room, there are small stools holding cups of chai. Here, the great Indian epic of the Mahabharata is told—not over twelve days as the 100,000 slokas are traditionally narrated without a break, but over twelve minutes. Not in an imposing and opulent set (something South Asians growing up in South Asia might expect) but at a minimalist, intimate gathering of people separated by a shimmering aisle running through the length of the space, and a sequined, glittery fabric sky. Not by a multitude of cast members, as the eighteen-parva grand epic warrants, but by a single performer: Pankaj Jha, the story's itihasavid, the historian/storyteller/performer in the Sanskrit tradition, the one who has the knowledge of the past.Even before our self-proclaimed itihasavid collapses on the ground, breathless, bearing the weight of the epic to be narrated in twelve minutes, tracked with the help of a timer ticking in real time, the show begins with a set of rituals. Not having any visual markers, such as curtains or wings, to frame the performance and demarcate it from “nonperformance,” there are auditory markers traditionally associated with Hindu rituals—such as the sound of bells, the conch shell, and a disembodied voice chanting “Om” at least ten times. After offering cups of chai to some of the spectators, and rolling the dice to decide which story from the Mahabharata to narrate, Jha begins her one-performer show in a familiar South Asian tradition of oral storytelling: people gathered around a storyteller/narrator who embodies different characters and animates episodes of a story, each listener/audience member eventually becoming a part of the chain of oral transmission, therefore each complicit in its narrations and its erasures. Jha reinvokes the questions of historiography—who tells the story to whom and who arranges the story in what way. Introducing Vyasa as the “arranger” of the episodes of the epic, they question—“Who is going to stop me from arranging it my way? … Who is to say the Mahabharata is not to be told today in a place like this, to people like you, by a person like me?”While the arrangement of the stories seems to be dictated by the rolling of the dice, we are told that what story emerges is also prescribed by destiny, therefore playing on the concepts of not only agency and predetermination but also bearing a reference to a prescripted play—a reference of metatheatricality that surfaces repeatedly and intermittently throughout the performance. Jha, being a storyteller who shifts in and out of characters, embodies the characters without losing a third-person perspective of the narrative—in a way, they are both a performer and a spectator, both history and its observer/reader. The Itihasavid connects not only history with narrative but also how the stories are told and who tells them with ideas of agency, choice, and power dynamics.The story glides effortlessly between the past, present, and future. Jha embodies and enacts a fluidity of time and narration by transforming from a conflicted Kunti by the riverside, letting her first-born illegitimate son, Karna, float away, to a “man-ish woman princess” Chitrangada desiring Arjun, to an elegant and poised Draupadi judging the participants in her swayamvara (a competition for her suitors), and to the androgynous Shikhandini/Shikhandi, destined to avenge Bhishma's wrongdoings from her past life as Amba and fight in the Kurukshetra war for the Pandavas against the Kauravas. While narrating the stories of these (nonbinary) women characters from the epic, Jha points our attention to the notion of choices dwindling from “infinite possibilities to one to none.”Jha's energy on stage is palpable. The intimate setting of the performance allows the audience to watch the minute facial expressions, the slight bent brow, and the sweat that trickles down their hand, the slight tilt of their head, a wise smile, all contributing to the different levels and layers of the narration. Jha claims the space, transforming it from a shared space of casual (and even jocular) conversations with the audience to a charged space of Draupadi's vastraharan, the lotus dangling precariously from a string transforming into an endless stream of fabric from the heavens exhibiting exquisite theatrical precision and spectacle, to an energetic battlefield lasting for eighteen days, as and when the story demands.2With scattered metatheatrical interjections throughout the narration (addressing the purist so-called Uncles and Aunties, breaking out of character[s] and making reference to the 1980s TV series telecast in the early days of Indian television), the script by Geetha Reddy is clever, nuanced, humorous, and critical in examining the deep nexus among history, storytelling, agency, and the power in framing narratives. The program note from the artistic director and the director, Michael Socrates Moran, also confirms this emphasis—“This play also deals with what's happening now, for all of us here in the United States. Whose stories are retold and repeated? What stories are skipped over? Who gets to tell them? Who are we to be the author, claim authorship or be the authority? Who are we not to be?”What the show truly accomplishes is a dynamism achieved through its fluidity in various realms—a kind of in-betweenness of space, aesthetics, gender, and performance. While the show dismantles the preconceived notion of an epic to be told through a large-scale grandiose narration, it also manages to desacralize it while maintaining its philosophical and spiritual core. This fluidity also brings to light for the audience the sociopolitical and cultural fabric of the epic, some of which are quite intrinsically interwoven in the social structures even today, be it in India or the United States. Karla Hargrave's minimalistic set design adopts a “poor theater” aesthetic, Regina Evans's adaptable costumes and Stephanie Anne Johnson's strategic lighting design ensure that the audience remembers to pay as much attention to the metaphors as to the literal meaning of the stories. It is as if by freeing the piece from the external theatrical trappings, it achieves a higher level of freedom and flexibility, and the traditionally underrepresented stories—hidden away in the underbelly of this powerful epic centering around primarily the upper-caste, patriarchal, heteronormative royal families—are unsettled, troubled, and shown in new light.The predominant dilemma of the narrative that centers around the theme of a war against one's own family and questions of what constitutes victory and defeat seem to be resolved by Krishna's responses to Arjuna's questions, recorded in the Bhagavad Gita, an episode that is part of the epic itself. But returning to the themes of authorship, ownership, and the responsibility of spectatorship, Jha reminds us of the multiple layers of storytelling that Mahabharata is: Vyasa narrates the epic to Ganesha, Ganesha scribes it with his broken tusk, Sanjaya (with his divine vision, divya-drishti, a power granted to him by Vyasa, enabling him to see things from a distance) narrates the story of the Kurukshetra war to the blind Dhritarashtra, father of the Kauravas, and Krishna reveals the Gita to Arjuna. All these layers swirl in concentric circles of storytelling and spectatorship. Asserting the repeatability of these oral narrations and prophesizing the inevitability of its repetition, Jha ends (or, rather, pauses) the performance, by passing on the baton to us—“It is ours … we will make allowances, but we will not forget!”