The Performance Bases of Ancient India Theatre and Dance


  
Note: There are hundreds of forms that constitute “Indian Theatre” -- in this and the next class we will only graze the surface. Professor Emigh will be leading the class and will show many examples of performance on film.

READ:

1. Bharat-Muni, selections from the Natyasatra, translated by Manomohan Ghosh (Calcutta: Manisha, 1962), (Probably ca. 2nd  c. CE, though proposed dates range over thousands of years, including 600 BCE) pages 1-17, 102-127, 146-149  

2. John Emigh, Summary Notes on Bhava and Rasa

3.  The chapter "Introduction: the Natyashasatra and the Body in the Natyashastra"by Sreenath Nair in  Nair’s edited collection The Natyasastra and the Body in Performance: Essays on Indian Theories of Dance and Drama.’ 

Recommended:  Bharat Gupt, Dramatic Concepts, Greek and Indian: A Study of Poetics and Natyasastra (New Delhi: D. K. Print World, 1994) pp. 4-5, 93-102, 234-236. 


Reading Response:
1. What strikes you as important in the selection from the Natyasasatra? 

2. Devise a question that arises from the reading, pose it,  and answer it.

Further interest:  Kutiyattam and other Indian Theatre links of interest over next several classes.
*Sanskrit literature
*Review of Sakuntala from contemporary Kutiyattam festival
*The Lotus Flower and the Bee
*Kutiyattam demonstrated and discussed
*Stage Manager's Entrance in Kutiyattam
*Mudras diagram
*Mudras lesson
*Odissi dance -- notice the storytelling



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