The Traditional Theatre of Kerala

Kutiyattam, Krishnattam, and Kathakali

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 selections from Bharata's Natyasastra (ed. Amrit Srivasanan). OCRA. 

Read selections from Phillip B. Zarrilli, Kathakali: Dance-Drama [bookstore and library and available as an "electronic resource" via Josiah], pages 40-117 (this includes the play-text of Kottayam Tampuran’s, The Flower of Good Fortune [17th c. CE]).

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 this material on Kutiyattam, including several film clips and is also available here.



Reading Response:
1. See if you can identify and analyze one difference between Kutiyattam and Kathakali that strikes you as important. Or, locate and identify the most striking difference between the practice Kathakali and any tradition in which you have been trained. What strikes you as important about that difference (which is to ask: what difference do you imagine that difference would make in performance)?

2. 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.


Further Kathakali Links:

Clip of Kathakali 1
Clip of Kathakali 2
Kathakali makeup
Kathakalil eye movements




We don't have time to go further on this topic but for further reading on Continuities and Change in More Recent Indian Theatre,  but if you want to research further, 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

Ramakrishna Deva Chhotarai, Prahlada Nataka (The Play of Prahlada), Pages 1-15

Farley Richmond, The Chhau Dance of Purulia, Pamphlet, Pages 1-5.

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

Erin B. Mee, Theatre of Roots: Redirecting the Modern Indian Stage (Calcutta, Seagull Books, 2008; on reserve) discusses in detail several of the productions featured in class. Also on reserve is the script for Vijay Tendulkar’s Gashiram Kotwal (1972).

Thanks to Professor John Emigh for all of this!! 



Image: kathakali performer, mudra of the lotus

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