Kutiyattam and Kathakali



Above: A demonstration of Kathakali eye movements.

Read Suresh Awasthi, “The Temple as Theatre” from Drama: The Gift of the Gods: Culture, Performance, and Communication in India (Tokyo: ILCAA, 1983), pages 19- 33 (especially pp. 23-29) (OCRA)

Read: The chapter ‘Indian Theatre Aesthetics’ by Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe in Theatre and Consciousness: Explanatory Scope and Future Potential available through OCRA. 

Reading Response: 1. If, in a production on a non-Indian play here in America, you were to use a dramaturgical principle or an approach to theatre inspired by contact with Indian traditions, what would it be and how would it be manifest in production?

Extra Credit response: Awasthi’s TDR manifesto, “Theatre of Roots,” became (with other writings) the basis for aggressive government support for projects that brought traditional Indian theatrical approaches to the modern post-colonial stage. What problems might you foresee in instituting and sustaining such a program? To do this read:  Suresh Awasthi, “’The Theatre of Roots’: Encounter with Tradition,” TDR  Vol. 33, No. 4 (Winter, 1989), Pages 48-69.

 There is a lot more you might want to explore. 
Further Kathakali Links:

Clip of Kathakali 1
Clip of Kathakali 2
Kathakali makeup


Recommended:  Phillip B. Zarrilli, Kathakali: Dance-Drama [bookstore or OCRA], pages 40-117 (this includes the play-text of Kottayam Tampuran’s, The Flower of Good Fortune [17th c. CE]).

Also Recommended: essay by Farley P. Richmond, “Kutiyattam,” in Indian Theatre: Traditions of Performance. Edited by Farley Richmond, et al. University of Hawaii Press, 1990. (OCRA) See also Richmond’s CD, Kutiyattam, Sanskrit Theatre of India (on reserve) -- Farley's CD has a great deal of  material on Kutiyattam, including several film clips.

For further reading on Continuities and Change in More Recent Indian Theatre,  see the following:


Christian DuComb, “Present-Day Kutiyattam: G. Venu's Radical and Reactionary Sanskrit Theatre,” TDR, Fall 2007, Vol. 51, No. 3 (T195), Pages 98-117

John Emigh: “The Use[s] of Adversity: Embodiments of Culture and Crisis in the Prahlada Nataka of Orissa” in Seagull Theatre Quarterly 31, Sept. 2001, Pages 33-52

Suresh Awasthi, Selection from Drama: the Gift of the Gods, Pages 83-89

Erin B. Mee, Theatre of Roots: Redirecting the Modern Indian Stage. 

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