Performing the Argument

This chapter elaborates on a predominantly oral performance tradition called Talamaddale which is linked to the popular traditional form of Yakshagana performed in the southern state of Karnataka, India. Unlike the song, dance, and spectacle of Yakshagana, Talamaddale is known for the improvisatory verbal skills of actors who engage in intricate debates around specific characters and situations from the Ramayana narrative and other puranas. Highlighting the performative aspects of Talamaddale, the chapter interrelates three layers of texts which are illustrated with vivid examples: the written prasaṅga or narrative; the songs from the prasanga sung by the bhāgawata or lead singer; and dialogues that are improvised between the actors in each performance. Focusing on the relationship between Talamaddale and the Ramayana narrative tradition, the chapter shows how episodes from the source texts are selected, elaborated, interpreted, and textured into argumentative performances in which different episodes from diverse versions of the Ramayana narrative come alive through debating techniques and verbal repartee.

Reflections on Ramayana in Kutiyattam

Set in Nepathya, a Kutiyattam performance training center in the village of Moozhikkulam, Kerala, this two-part interview focuses on conversations with Sanskrit scholar and Kutiyattam expert David Shulman, followed by another interaction with two of the leading Kutiyattam performers in India today, Madhu Margi Chakyar and Dr. Indu G. While the exchange with Shulman focuses primarily on the philosophical and literary resonances of Kutiyattam via Shaktibhadra’s play Āścaryacūḍāmaṇi, the conversation with Madhu Margi Chakyar and Indu. G. elaborates on the actual training process and rigor that go into performing Kutiyattam. Avoiding the binary of scholarship and practice, this two-part interview demonstrates how the knowledge surrounding Kutiyattam cannot be separated from what Shulman highlights as “extreme individualization” and the complexities of “temporality” in performing Kutiyattam. Conversely, Madhu Margi Chakyar and Indu G. reflect on how they position themselves as performers in relation to matters concerning textuality and the interpretation of āṭṭaprakārams (acting manuals), which constitute a form of knowledge in its own right.

The Night before Bhor Ārti

This chapter analyzes the nature and modes of audience participation in the month-long Ramlila of Ramnagar in Banaras. In contrast to the dominant scholarship that concentrates largely on the Ramlila’s singular dramaturgical structure, this chapter focuses on the everyday experiences of the līlā premīs (“lovers of the lila”) who negotiate and frequently subvert the phenomenology prescribed by the Ramlila’s ritual structure and protocols. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the chapter maps the multitude of playful or ludic practices that the pilgrims engage in during their attendance of the ritual, culminating in the long and playful night of waiting for the Bhor Ārti on the penultimate day of the Ramlila. Contextualizing its analysis within a broader culture of leisure and pleasure celebrated in Banaras as Banarasipan, the author argues that the Ramnagar Ramlila is an intensified experience and expression of Banarasipan.

The Ramayana Narrative Tradition as a Resource for Performance

This chapter examines case studies of Ramayana performances from different Indian regions and their relationships to diverse Ramayana texts, and provides a map of the volume. “Orientations and Beginnings” sets out an overview of intersections between Ramayana Studies and Performance Studies. “The Politics of Caste” deals with a Hindi poem and play scripts about the beheading of Shambuk, a Shudra character in the Ramayana tradition, linking them to Dalit demands for equality in 20th- and 21st-century India. “Interrogating the Anti-Hero” examines performances centered on Ravana as anti-hero or as dissident artist. “Performing Gender” analyzes two South Indian performances: a modern Tamil play critiquing patriarchal constructions of the Ramayana, and Nangyarkuttu, a pre-modern solo dance form in Kerala, whose reconstruction is infused with a woman’s contemporary sensibility. “Conversations and Arguments” highlights debates about Ramayana productions in Kutiyattam, Sattriya, and Talamaddale. “Beyond Enactment” examines effects of Ramayana performances on everyday life and society.

Revisiting “Being Ram”

This chapter is based on an autobiographical reassessment of the author as she recalls her complex and problematic experience of playing the leading role of Sri Ram for a period of twenty-five years in a modern dance-drama production titled Seeta Swayambara produced by the Uday Shankar India Culture Centre in Kolkata. Not only does the author deal with the challenge of playing a “male” role, which required her to capture the appropriate demeanor and gait of a Hindu Kshatriya prince, she also focuses on the more difficult proposition of being perceived as a “god” by a spectrum of viewers, particularly at a time when the image of Ram was being used for communal and fundamentalist purposes. Of critical importance here is the role of agency: Do dancers have any say in a critical representation of male gods? And do they have any freedom to decide where and for whom they should perform?

The Challenges Ahead

The concluding chapter focuses on the challenges that lie ahead in researching the multiple dynamics and contexts of performance in the Ramayana tradition. It highlights the need to prioritize the vocal and acoustic dimensions of Ramayana performance which tend to be undermined by the priority given to the visual aspects of movement, gesture, and spectacle. At an interpretive level, the essay calls attention to the ways in which specific codes and conventions of a particular performance tradition can be altered through individual performative choices. Calling attention to the challenge of translating the nuances of context-specific performance categories from different Indian languages, the chapter also highlights the need to research Ramayana performances as a means of livelihood for subaltern performers. The essay concludes by reflecting on the challenges posed by the political culture of the Hindu Right, which tends to oppose a pluralist affirmation of diverse renderings of the Ramayana narrative.

Writing Her “Self”

This chapter provides a historical perspective on the evolution and contemporary significance of Nangyarkuttu, the “female” derivative of Kutiyattam, which developed into an independent solo performance form by the late twentieth century. Against this background, the author focuses on the artistry and innovations of one of Nangyarkuttu’s leading performers, Usha Nangiar, who has succeeded over the years in recovering and reinstating several major female characters who had disappeared from the Kutiyattam stage. Calling attention to two marginalized female characters from the Ramayana repertoire, notably Mandodari and Ahalya, the essay delves deeply into Usha Nangiar’s process of research as she recreates performances around them, combining an approach that is both deeply subjective and scholarly. Through excerpts from a detailed interview with the artist, the author demonstrates how Usha Nangiar’s interpretations of these roles, while drawing primarily on the performative tradition of Kutiyattam, constitutes a radical revisioning of the same tradition.

Ravana as Dissident Artist

This three-part chapter combines the performance scripts of two contemporary productions—Vinay Kumar’s The Tenth Head and Maya Krishna Rao’s Ravanama—along with a general introduction and critical annotation of the scripts themselves. Both productions represent avant-garde experiments in retelling the story of Ramayana from the perspective of Ravana: While The Tenth Head focuses on the role of the nonconformist individual in the collective through a dramatization of Ravana’s tenth head, which does not quite fit into the uniformity of Ravana’s traditional iconography, Ravanama explores multiple retellings of an actor’s attempt to find different ways of representing Ravana through his relationship with Sita as daughter, drawing on folk narratives and Jain renderings of the Ramayana story. Fragmented through a collage of images rather than a linear dramaturgy, the texts of the two plays are annotated in detail, with attention to their disjunctive structures, gestures, movements, music, and multimedia inputs in the larger context of creative dissidence.

Thinking the Ramayana Tradition through Performance

This introductory chapter explores the role of performance in questioning, transforming, and subverting the Ramayana narrative tradition. Calling attention to diverse modes of enactment in which the story of the Ramayana gets interpreted through specific performative circumstances and techniques of psychophysical embodiment, it provides a dense vocabulary of different categories of performance in Indian languages in relation to acting, presenting, feeling, showing, exhibiting, transforming, and doing. Not only do these diverse epistemologies of performance shape the retelling of Ramayana at a structural level, they also contribute to the affective and spiritual dimensions of experiencing Ramayana at the level of the senses. Beyond enactment, the essay also provides a few examples of what happens to the Ramayana narrative when it gets performed outside the limits of the stage in the cultures of everyday life, where the politicization of the Ramayana places new demands on the agency and interpretive skills of actors.

Ravana Center Stage

Most dominant texts in the Ramayana tradition center on Rama as hero and Ravana as villain, but this chapter analyzes two innovative theatrical productions that have sympathetically represented Ravana’s life from his point of view. The oldest, a Kathakali work first staged in 1780, Rāvaṇodbhavam [Origins of Ravana], explores how Ravana’s determination to end his mother’s sorrow earned him rulership over the three worlds. The other, a Tamil mythological drama from the mid-1950s, Laṅkēswaraṉ [King of Lanka], concerns Ravana’s attempts to protect his daughter and begins in heaven, where he dwells after Rama slays him. Both plays illuminate phases of Ravana’s life absent from most devotional texts that glorify Rama; they were composed and first performed at a time of rupture in local political configurations, and point to other ideals of kingship than Rama’s reign.