Performance:

An offering in the Yagna of Ranga-Karma

(Searching for a new vocabulary in the contemporary theatre, 

Through the discipline of Natyashastra and other Indian Traditions)

Dr. Satyabrata Rout

Associate Professor University of Hyderabad

Visiting Professor at East 15 Acting School, University of Essex, England

A ritual from the play: Urubhangam, Indian Sanskrit drama, presented by-
East 15 Acting students, University of Essex, UK

Idea:

Sometimes I wonder how much Indian I am? How much I know my country; its custom, tradition, philosophy, culture and literature? And I claim to be an Indian!!! Here in London while teaching Indian theatre to the European students, I am searching for my identity, my root. Is it not looking bit funny that in a western Country I am in quest of Indian culture? I am becoming more Indian than I was in India!!! Why this thought never comes in our own soil to most of us and all on a sudden it stands before as a question of survival!!!!

Today is Sunday and here in Europe no one works in holidays. They enjoy... and wake up late. But as an early riser I got up at 4.30 morning. It was going to be dawn and the south end of the sea in England where I live was waking up to a clear morning after a nightlong rain and severing cold. All the houses in the lane were still in dark and sea was calm…. Utter silence engulfed the hamlet. In this calm atmosphere I opened my Bhagwat Gita (the book I always kept with me while on travel) and started reading some slokas as a usual practice. At one point in Karma Yoga my reading stopped… It was at the point when Lord Krishna narrates to the depressed Arjuna about the Karma; deeds:

“sva-dharme nidhanam sreyah… 
para-dharmo bhayavahah…”

Which means:

It is always better to adopt and stay constant in your self-prescribed duties (Karma) and die for that rather to adopt others’ deeds; however good and noble it is!

From the outer surface, it has nothing to do with theatre but somehow I stopped at this point. I have been never rigid to adopt any creative ideology and issues…. But not blindly…

This sloka seems to me has a great link with our contemporary theatre practice. In India we have almost forgotten the value of our Swadharma; especially in the field of art, literature and culture. Most of our theatre practitioners have nothing to do with Indian theatre and its discipline and what to say about our academicians!!! In every step of action, we the so-called authority of theatre look at the west, which reflects in every inch of our gesture. Slowly it became a fashion in the theatre world now. We have nothing to do with our root and yet we call us Indian!!! We have a great treasure of theatre discipline; Natyashastra and we have forgotten it!! Why don’t we create our contemporary theatre based on the treatise of Natyashastra and other deeply rooted cultural discipline? Why are we looking every time to west like Paradharma as narrated by Krishna in Geeta?

Duryodhan crawls on the ground after his theigh id shattered by Bhima (An episode from Mahabharata

Concept:

Indian culture and philosophy always attracts the scholars over the world and history witnesses how people from various walks of life came to India in different phases of time in the quest of knowledge and wisdom! I am not going to touch that issue… the area is too big to understand. But I must say about our Indian theatre. Forget about past, in the recent years, in 20^th century, theatre practitioners, scholars, theoreticians and academicians used to come to India to study our discipline and performance culture, which yet remain alien to most of us! Brecht, Perter Brook, Barba, Schechner, Tadashi Suzuki, Grotowski and many scholars over the world have adopted Oriental training system and most of them have travelled a long way to come here and learn Indian theatre and adopted the techniques for their methods based on Bharata’s Natyashastra and Ziami’s aesthetic principles.

What is there in Natyashastra that attracts the scholars over the world to reinterpret, redefine and exploring in many ways? While experimenting on a kind of training system from this Indian treatise with a group of western actors, I found the necessity of sharing some of my experiences and techniques we are adopting from Indian theatre discipline. I want to put forth the basic fundamental issues that made our Indian training system more viable among all the disciplines over the world.

Contemporary theatre over the world is undergoing an identity crisis after globalization. Be it western or Indian the problem remains the same everywhere. World theatre has already reached its maturity in the context of technology. But is the application of technology in various ways and means, called theatre? Is it ever remained as a major demand of presentation? Off course, it has helped to project us better, to communicate more meaningfully. But this is not the final goal of theatre. The final goal lies somewhere else. From the beginning of humanity, man tries to search his self-identity through the medium of theatre. The communion and human bond is not other than the theatre activity. Theatre taught us sharing… emotion, feeling, and knowledge. In this way it contributes to the age-old wisdom of mankind. But somehow our contemporary practice lacks all these essential elements that theatre offers. Either we have been trapped into the dark chamber of the showcase world or we have fallen into the dangerous pit of consumerism. The spirituality of theatre art; Satwika, has been faded away from our mind, which was once the driving force of Indian theatre

A scene from Nagamandala by East 15 students.... written by Girish Karnad

Nowhere in the world performance culture, priority has been given to the spiritual performance apart from Asian theatre, whose main stream of knowledge is based on Natyashastra. This priceless creation of Bharata never talks of acting; that we know in a general sense. It speaks of the Natyam; The performance. Here we perform the characters but not portray it in a representational manner, as is a common practice in the western theatre. We portray the characters; not as an incarnation, not as a representation of life… rather in a presentational style as an offering of the self to the karma, which is abstract, symbolic, metaphorical and poetic. Natyashastra levelled theatre as Drishya-Kavyam, which means a visual-poetry; a verse, which can be visible and audible in a given space and time. This discipline of knowledge can never be achieved through compartmental education system derived by western method, for which a tree is a tree, a bird is a bird and a house is a house. The system in west has been developed within their framework and it has its own aesthetics and presentation style. But for Indian theatre where is the tree and where is the house? And how we portray it? In an empty space, we perform. We never carry with us any external elements; set…props…mask… etc. Even no real character! We even can’t think of any additional elements except our physical presence in the form of a human body, which is to be offered in the yagyanan of rang-karma as a ritualistic practice. We are necked actors in an empty space. So metaphorically we create the whole world with the help of our physical and vocal expressions. And the irony of Indian Theatre is; it is formed in front of the spectators and dissolved in to emptiness according to the need and demand of the poetry. We create the drishya and wipe it out the and there in an empty space. But it has a great philosophical value, which can only be realised through an Indian sensibility. As Indian philosophy visualises everything as Maya; illusion, performance itself is a great illusion. Sometimes it becomes visible and in a fraction of second it vanishes and in the next moment it is realised in the imagination… in thoughts and becomes a concept. This concept of performance travels in many layers and in any many planes within a single moment of time and space. It can’t follow a linear journey; it is bound to be non-linear and is destined to cross all the barriers of logical human experiences. Finally it elevates the performers and the spectators in to the state of bliss where the spectator able to test of the rasa of the performance and enjoy. Then the Yagyan is fulfilled for the wellbeing of the society. It becomes a celebration of life. 

The Training:

The training process of Nagamandala based on Indian theatre Style.

To offer our-self into the holy fire of Yagynan to achieve spirituality, the performer is bound to go through a strenuous training process. Natyashastra prescribes four different disciplinary training system for the performance practice; Angika: performance through physical behaviour, Vachika: performance of voice, Aharya: performance through external elements such as costume, makeup etc. satwika: the spiritual performance.

As a contemporary theatre trainer my aim is not to pull once again to the convention of classical theatre but to develop a modern theatre training system which passes through the strong discipline of Natyashastra tradition and brings the flavours and fragrance of Indian theatre, which can connect the fragmented performances of actor’s body, voice, and other visual elements to the soul of the performers and views. Then only it would become a happening and celebrate life in its full content; as much modern and contemporary we may be.

To enter into this discipline of theatre one has to completely surrender him to the training process. In Sanskrit language it is called Samarpana; an offering of our body, mind and soul to the karma; our deed. Once a student enters into this activity, he has to obey and follow all the rituals without any kind of resistance from his side. In the extreme condition, he even is not allowed to question to the master, his guru, until the teacher asks him to say. All the activities are the rituals, which has to be performed by the disciple without hesitation and the student has to experience this rigorous process through his body, voice, mind and soul. Theatre, art is a practice of physical expressions over the world. The tactile experience is termed as Shariranubhuti; experience of the physical being. In this art form everything is indicated through the physical being of the actor. Until and unless he passes through the bodily experience, how can he be able to express the truth of life? That is the reason why in India a Gurukul training system was developed. The disciple has to spend the entire time with the teacher not only to be educated but to learn life as well. 

As modern theatre trainer it becomes our responsibility to motivate the students and guide them to pass through this training process. But it should start from the fundamental level. We have to orient our global students to understand the essence of the culture, tradition, discipline and life of an Indian (Indian in true sense). It may be difficult in the beginning but once they understand, they will love to do it with respect. While working with a bunch of European students I have also gone through a different experiences, which I never faced in India. But here in another part of the world, the culture is different. One can’t change the culture and that should not the purpose of the training. Here the responsibility of a teacher is more than the duty of a student; How to orient them towards the discipline of Indian theatre!

The western compartmental education system stands as a strong wall in front of us, which has to be cracked to understand the wholistic approach of Indian theatre. This makes a big difference between these two cultures;

·      Compartmental

·      Wholistic. 

European training system is based on specialized pedagogy. For each discipline there are specializations, which focus to definite subjects. For a student of west, his whole world encircles around his specialized area and finally he becomes expert in that. This leads to the concept of division of labour. Theatre pedagogy has also designed accordingly. The theatre of west has been segmented in many branches such as; Community theatre, Theatre for higher education, Management and technical theatre, Acting and stage combat, Physical theatre, World performance, Acting in Films, Acting for stage, Realistic Theatre, etc… This compartmental education system creates professionalism. But at the same time it develops one-dimensional approach. While in Indian system, one has to go through a wholistic training process. The process is like a ritual, where one activity follows the other in a systematic order. We don’t have the concept of physical actor, vocal actor, stylized actor or realistic actor. Our training system in Natyashastra starts with various foot movements, hand gestures, and exercises of neck, face, eyes and other smaller units of the body. There are many ways of voice exercises, which vibrates through different resonators in different emotions. The actor has to understand the performance techniques of costumes, ornaments, makeup, etc. And finally in the performance the performer connects all these fragmentation with soul. Indian performers always practice their own makeup, know the style of wearing costumes and learn to handle them in the performance. The audience as an integral part of the rituals, also able to understand the gestures and movements, though abstract they are. The audience also connects these abstract hasta mudras (Gestures) and chari (movements) with his constant association of life and visualizes an imaginary world. The process of performance becomes participation where both the group (audiences and actors) performs the rituals of performance. And the play continues in between them. This wholistic approach is the lifeline of Indian theatre upon which the entire world of performance pedagogy stands.

Satvikabhinaya:

The spiritual journey of Duryodhana to Heaven

The Union of physical being with the soul of the performer:

For the union of body, mind and soul, and to achieve appropriate expressions, the actor has to pass through a spiritual journey; a path that leads him to channelize everything to a single focus. His complete being has to be an offering for the great yagnyan of performance. In this state of mind; at the union of the soul with the physical expression, the performer is lifted to the level of blissful ambiance. The union between the soul and the physical being of the actor, transforms the performer into a big performance; a great yagnyan. The wall of resistance dissolves at this moment of time and the performance happens without any tension, anxiety, pain, hesitation, and resistance. The subconscious of the performer leads him to behave while his conscious watches him performing. Natyashastra defines it as Satwika-abhinaya or the spiritual performance. This is not a performance, rather a state of being; the absolute truth of the performance. By attaining this state, a performer keeps him in a level, where all components of his physical and mental being becomes relaxed so as his performance. The discipline of Indian theatre always indicates for this spiritual performance that makes Indian training system as one of the unique method in the pedagogy of world theatre.

While in the beginning stage a performer may not achieve this state but with concentration and regular practice he would be able to realize this state of performance. For an urban actor the training seems difficult but worthy enough to build discipline in him.

Some of the photographs of the plays on Indian theatre

Continued……..