Kudiyattam Theatre and the Actor's Consciousness

Kudiyattam Theatre and the Actor’s Consciousness

Consciousness Liter ture the Arts

&

25 General Editor:

Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe Editorial Board:

Anna Bonshek, Per Brask, John Danvers, William S. Haney II, Amy Ione, Michael Mangan, Arthur Versluis, Christopher Webster, Ralph Yarrow

Kudiyattam Theatre and the Actor’s Consciousness

Arya Madhavan

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2010

Illustration cover: Damayanthi, Kerala Mural painting by Ranjith Vaidyamadhom. http://traditionalmurals.com. Reproduced with the courtesy of the artist. Cover design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-2798-5 ISSN: 1573-2193 E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-2799-2 E-book ISSN: 1879-6044 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2010 Printed in the Netherlands

To my first Guru My Father

Contents Acknowledgements

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Introduction

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Chapter One: The Actor’s Consciousness: Contemporary Western Approaches

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Chapter Two: The Actor’s Consciousness: Indian Approaches to Actor Training and Acting with Particular Reference to Kudiyattam

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Chapter Three: Natyasastra, Kudiyattam and Actor’s Consciousness

151

Conclusion

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Bibliography

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Acknowledgements I wish to thank Prof. Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe for the support that he generously extended in my academic career and also for being extremely patient with the process that I went through as a research student with him. I am extending my gratitude to the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies for funding my studies at the University of Aberystwyth. I also thank Prof. Ioan Williams and Mrs Margaret Williams for their help, support and kindness shown towards me while I studied at Aberystwyth. I thankfully acknowledge the comments, interviews and telephone conversations between Guru P.K Narayanan Nambyar, late Guru Ammannur Madhava Chakyar, Guru Margi Sathi and Usha Nangyar for sharing their thoughts with me. Nambyar was extremely helpful in clarifying many of my doubts over long telephone conversations between us. I would also like to thank Margi Madhu the Kudiyattam performer for sharing his thoughts with me. I am also thankfully remembering Prof. Ralph Yarrow who inspired and supported my academic career and extended sincere support in my personal life when I required it the most. I am also remembering some of my friends who supported at various points of my personal life, providing me strength and support to get me to the point where I now am. I am thanking Anil Kattumadam, K.M Rema, Sarah Joseph, Vaisakhan, Vinod, Venkitesh Ramakrishnan and students of School of Drama Trissur in particular. I am thankful to my father N.S Madhavan for insisting me (despite my resistance!) on learning Sanskrit language at my very young age which enormously helped me as a PhD student. I cannot thank enough Dr. Sreenath Nair, my friend and husband to be intellectually and emotionally supportive since we met. This book may not have seen light unless he continuously inspired and generously supported my attempts and ambitions. Finally, I would like to thank my daughter Pia for offering the most welcome distractions during the writing process which were sweet and refreshing.

Introduction Topic and Structure This book focuses on an enquiry into the consciousness of the actor. I intend to examine how actors alter their consciousness to higher levels during performance and how actor training systematically facilitates that alteration. Thus I direct my enquiry into analysing how (during performance) the actor’s physical actions alter his daily levels of consciousness. For the purposes of my argument, I take Kudiyattam, a form of Sanskrit theatre, as a model of performance primarily because I am a trained performer of Kudiyattam and have first-hand experience of its actor training and acting. The actor training of Kudiyattam is highly systematised and codified and its acting places much emphasis on sattvika abhinaya1, which offers a welcome opportunity to establish links between rasa2 and altered states of consciousness. In order to achieve those aims I need to explore a range of practical and theoretical aspects, both Indian and Western, related to the actor’s consciousness. I intend to examine the remits of consciousness studies in this respect, primarily to establish what my book is contributing to this field of research. In this enquiry I refer to the practical aspects of actor-training and acting in order to examine how physical actions alter the actor’s consciousness. I identify theoretical methodologies as the predominant approach in previous comparable studies. In contrast to those, in my study embark on a different app1

According to Nataysastra, the Sanskrit treatise on Indian theatre, there are four types of acting: angika, vachika, aharya and satvika. Angika is physical acting, vachika is verbal acting, aharya refers to costumes in acting and satvika is subtle emotional acting. 2 The Natyasastra describes rasa as the pleasure derived from watching a performance.

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Kudiyattam Theatre and Actor’s Consciousness

roach to studying the actor’s consciousness in so far as I directly apply the practical methodology of acting and actor-training. In particular, I am employing the acting and actor-training methods of Kudiyattam, which is an Indian form of performance relatively unexplored both in Indian and Western academic contexts. Current writings and research on Kudiyattam are largely limited to descriptive accounts of its performance or textual and historical aspects. I explore the performance and aesthetics of Kudiyattam by examining some of its acting principles; I assign particular importance to the analysis of pakarnnattam, a Kudiyattam acting technique from various perspectives—gender studies, consciousness studies, improvisational and imagination perspectives and Advaita theory from Indian philosophy. I look at the spaciotemporal significance of pakarnnattam and the actor who is performing in such a space and time in order to examine how his consciousness is altered in performance. The significance of my book is thus to be found on three distinct and related levels: it adds to the knowledge and understanding of acting and actor training, to the knowledge and understanding of Kudiyattam, and to the field of consciousness studies. In the context of my analysis of Kudiyattam, another significant contribution is my exploration of the deeper links between the breathing practices of Kudiyattam to Hatha Yoga by means of specific examples from Hatha Yoga and finding them in Kudiyattam practice. This is highly relevant to the deciphering of the methodology used by a Sanskrit scholar and master in Yoga, Kunjunni Tampuran, who trained two of the master teachers in Kudiyattam who are known for their subtle acting and expressing emotions through their eyes. I also present and discuss Abhinavagupta’s step by step approach to the rasa experience, which is not easily available from the English translations on Abhinavagupta. The whole book is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter I am exploring and analysing the existing debates in consciousness studies relating to acting and the actor’s consciousness, in the context of their contemporary, Western discourse. Issues of the actor’s consciousness have been relevant for several centuries among theatre theorists and practitioners, starting with Diderot, which more recently expanded through the work of twentieth century actor trainers such as

Introduction

13

Stanislavski, and Grotowski. Recent theoretical propositions by Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe, Ralph Yarrow and Peter Malekin in relation to consciousness and theatre have fore-grounded a non-Western perspective, while there are at least in-direct or implicit references to the relation of theatre and consciousness in the wider context of performance studies, particularly in the writings of Schechner and Barba. Given the context of current research on consciousness and theatre/performance I analyse the theoretical discourse under three broad headings: the actor’s consciousness from the perspective of consciousness studies, the actor’s consciousness from the perspective of performance studies and the actor’s consciousness from the perspective of theatre practitioners. In the context of my discussion of the actor’s consciousness from the perspective of consciousness studies, I look more closely at three issues: acting and pashyanti, acting and the Vedic model of consciousness and acting, consciousness and breath. Indian linguistics distinguishes four distinct levels of language: para, pashyanti, madhyama and vaikhari. In this hierarchy, pashyanti is the finest level of the cognitive manifestation, which is pre-verbal. Inspired by this aspect of Indian literary theory and Vedic tradition, Malekin and Yarrow discuss the concept of pashyanti in relation to consciousness and suggest training methods suitable to help actors to perform from a state of ‘neutral consciousness’, which corresponds to pashyanti, resulting in an enhanced level of spontaneity and intuition, or ‘holistic rhythm’. Next to acting and pashyanti I am exploring the theoretical proposition as argued and explained by Meyer-Dinkgräfe, who considers the actor’s consciousness from the standpoint of the Vedic Science model of consciousness. Vedic Science is a term coined by Maharshi Mahesh Yogi,3 as a result of his re-assessment of classical Vedic literature of India; it incorporates a total of 40 different texts or bodies of texts, including various distinct disciplines such as Ayurveda—traditional Indian medicine and Sthapatyaveda—architecture. This model proposes four higher levels of consciousness apart 3

Maharshi Mahesh Yogi is an Indian spiritual teacher who is today most well-known in the world as the founder of Transcendental Meditation.

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Kudiyattam Theatre and Actor’s Consciousness

from waking, dreaming and sleeping. Pure consciousness is the fourth state of human consciousness which is the state of total ‘awareness’. Beyond pure consciousness, Vedic Science describes three further higher states of consciousness: cosmic consciousness, refined cosmic consciousness and unity consciousness. Finally in this section I am discussing breath and consciousness. This is a further recent addition to the history of analysing the actor’s consciousness. Sreenath Nair discusses human breathing as a process that produces meaning; he brings South Indian Siddha Yoga tradition into the current debate on the actor’s consciousness. Breathing in this context is not to be understood in terms of ordinary human respiration; rather, Nair introduces what he calls Restoration of Breath: a method of breathing described and practised in the South Indian Siddha Yoga system of meditation. According to Nair, Siddha Yoga offers a distinct system of breathing by means of which its importance and dynamics in attaining higher states of consciousness can be established clearly. The majority of research and publication in the field of Performance Studies is not directly linked to the current theoretical discussions of consciousness studies; however, a deeper analysis of its discursive fields reveals definite links. Performance studies also draws heavily on Asian performance theories and practice; Schechner and Barba are important in the context of my book primarily because of their interest in some of the Indian themes and also because some of their basic arguments are closely linked with theories about consciousness. Performance is a very broad category to Schechner, which encompasses everyday human activities as well as theatre, dance or art. In this section I examine restoration of behaviour, liminality, transportation and transformation and Rasaesthetics. Barba’s Theatre Anthropology is a study of the pre-expressive scenic behaviour upon which different genres, styles and personal or collective traditions are based. From his analysis of the performances among cross-cultural traditions, Barba identified some of the ‘recurring principles’ common to performances across various cultures and disciplines and devised certain terminologies helpful in analysing performance. The terms that Barba coined are essentially related to the body and its physicality and he does not directly address the issues related to the actor’s conscious-

Introduction

15

ness. However, a second reading of some of his principles suggests subtler implications of such principles on the actor’s consciousness. In the final section of the first chapter, I examine actor training methods developed by Stanislavski and Grotowski, mainly because of their emphasis on taking acting to higher levels of consciousness. Stanislavski’s system is largely aimed at reaching the subconscious mind in order to tap the reservoir of our imagination. Stanislavski was interested in Indian philosophy and some of his exercises are important in the context of the specific enquiry of this book. Grotowski stripped theatre of all its richness such as sculpture, lighting, make-up and architecture and presented only the absolutely necessary: the actor and his body. Grotowski did not believe in teaching actors acting techniques, which he considered mere ‘bags of tricks’ that block the actor’s true expression. He appeals to his actors to be ‘holy’, a type of secular saint to accomplish an act of ‘selfpenetration’. His enquiry was directed to explore the extra-daily ‘spiritual’ dimensions for the actor and hence his approaches to acting are relevant in this chapter. In the second chapter of this book, I examine the traditional Indian approach to the actor’s consciousness as explained and argued by conventional Indian scholarship. Along with the theoretical discussion of traditional Indian scholarship in this context, I also examine the actor training and acting conventions of Kudiyattam by great detail in this chapter. The Natyasastra is a treatise on theatre written approximately two millennia ago by sage Bharata. The Natyasastra (NS) is not a theoretical discourse on Sanskrit theatre; rather it elaborately discusses across 36 chapters the entire range of drama and its performance. NS maintains that rasa is the outcome of a performance. Rasa is a term popular equally among traditional scholars of aesthetics and contemporary western and eastern scholars. Rasa is literally interpreted/translated as the ‘theatrical pleasure’ emerging from any performance experienced by the audience. Compared to the elaborate discussion that Bharata provides on the means of acting, Rasa theory is discussed only in a very few verses. Nevertheless this concept invited wide interest among the scholars of aesthetics, literature and of course theatre, both in India and abroad. I discuss Rasa in great detail in chapter two and examine how we experience it.

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Kudiyattam Theatre and Actor’s Consciousness

Parallel to the spectator’s experience of Rasa the actor’s Rasa experience is also discussed in detail here. Next in this chapter I introduce the treatise on Kudiyattam written by Mani Madhava Chakyar which I call the Kerala Natyasastra. This is followed by a very detailed discussion on the actor training of Kudiyattam and the significance of some of the theatre devices. I analyse a particular acting device called Pakarnnattam in the context of gender theories on female subjectivity and gaze. To explain this, insights about the body in the context of recent consciousness studies provide a highly complex and vivid spectrum of theoretical approaches, and lead to a variety of conclusions regarding the material and subjective status of the body. We see our body in relation to other objects around, through our perception and therefore, we simultaneously have both subjective experience and objective observations on our body. Awareness of our gender thus is a cognitive process – I am aware of my gender in relation to that of others. Here I strongly argue and prove it by means of examples that the theatrical techniques of Pakarnnattam alter the daily experience of consciousness through continuously constructing and dismantling gender categories: thus gender is a construct since it is not presented as a material reality and hence it is important in my book to understand the significance of a traditional performance technique like Pakarnnattam in addressing the current representational issues. In the third and final chapter of this book, I discuss the actor’s consciousness in Kudiyattam and precisely how actor training prepares the actor’s consciousness along with preparing his/her body for performance. This chapter is hence a more focused enquiry into the actor’s altered state of consciousness in Kudiyattam, particularly the various elements that contribute to such levels in performance. In this chapter I also closely examine Abhinavagupta’s interpretation of rasa theory in great detail and Bharata’s approach to the rasa. This chapter is divided into three sections a. Rasa and consciousness, b. Yoga and Kudiyattam, c. actor’s consciousness in Kudiyattam. In the first section, I am observing the nature of rasic consciousness particularly by examining Abhinavagupta’s perspective on rasa. I investigate Abhinavagupta’s understanding and his philosophical proposition in terms of the rasa theory. Also under this heading, I examine

Introduction

17

the actor’s consciousness as proposed by Natyasastra by undertaking a thorough investigation of its physical acting or angika abhinaya, since this may lead to the unfolding of a systematic approach to training the actor’s consciousness. Next in this chapter I analyse the philosophical links between Yoga and Kudiyattam. Studies that identify possible links between meditation and performance principles of Kudiyattam do not exist so far. Although I do not intend to undertake a comparative analysis of such connections in a highly descriptive manner, I analyse some of the philosophical and practical aspects of Yoga and find its reflections in Kudiyattam. Yoga comprises of eight limbs or eight organic parts (which is why it is called Ashtanga Yoga: ashta means eight and anga means organs). These limbs or parts are considered as the paths to reach samadhi. Similarly, Kudiyattam is aimed at the experience of rasa and I identify some of its parallels to the Yogic eight limbs. In the final section of this chapter I examine the connections between breathing techniques and Kudiyattam acting. I refer to my own experience as a student of Kudiyattam and some of the experiences shared by the performers of Kudiyattam. Moreover, I analyse the Kerala Natyasastra in detail in order to identify the traces of any breath-related instructions that might be hidden in the text. Next in this section I examine the information of breath available in Hatha Yoga and Siddha Yoga. Hatha Yoga mentions a series of exercises that are particularly helpful for a Yogi to attain laya, which is produced due to the blending between vayu (breath) and mind. I explain restoration of breath in great detail in this section and also examine the practical relevance of it for Kudiyattam. I also explain the workshops I undertook with Nair in order to examine certain performance principles. In the last section of this chapter, I examine various aspects of Pakarnnattam to examine how an actor cuts across the daily consciousness to access the altered states of consciousness. I am examining imagination in Pakarnnattam, rasa in Pakarnnattam, time in Pakarnnattam and Advaita Vedanta and Pakarnnattam in this section.

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Kudiyattam Theatre and Actor’s Consciousness

As Kudiyattam is central to this book, I now provide a critical introduction to Kudiyattam, its history and origin as far as these can be reconstructed, the plays used for its performance, acting manuals, acting families, the temple theatres known as Kuthampalam, the plays used in the performance and the music and musical instruments used in the performance. I refer to a relevant cross section of available material on Kudiyattam accessed through various sources in order to provide a coherent introduction to Kudiyattam in this section and later analysis of its actor training in the second and third chapters. There are a few books including an unpublished thesis which gives an authentic account of the history and performance of Kudiyattam; however most of these books are written in Malayalam which is the local language of Kerala. In my enquiry, the most comprehensive account of Kudiyattam written in English is by John Steven Sowle, who wrote a PhD thesis (University of California, Berkeley) on Kudiyattam in 1982—it remains unpublished to date. This material is not easily accessible even from libraries in Britain—I obtained a copy of this thesis from an American scholar who happened to have it. I also refer to an anthology of essays on Kudiyattam edited by Ayyappa Panicker (Sangeet Natak: 1995), which comprises of considerable scholarly contributions by master performers of Kudiyattam written in English. The following section on the history and performance principles of Kudiyattam owes largely to books written in Malayalam, particularly to those written by the noted Kudiyattam historian K.G Poulose. These materials are helpful in tracing the history and evolution of Kudiyattam; I have been careful here to sieve out facts from fiction by referring to various books on Kudiyattam and assimilating and presenting them as accurately as possible. What I provide in the next section is predominantly descriptive, thus following a model of scholarship that is indebted to traditional Indian practice. I apply it intentionally here so that I will be able to give a coherent account of Kudiyattam to a reader who is new to Kudiyattam.

Introduction

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Kudiyattam Kudiyattam is a form of Sanskrit theatre that is performed in Kerala; it is considered as the oldest existing Sanskrit theatre in India and also perhaps the oldest of the still existing theatre forms of the world. Its origin is dated back to the 2nd century BC; thus Kudiyattam could easily claim more than 2000 years of continued existence. Kudiyattam is unique owing to many of its typical features that define the nature of this performance. To explain this further, Kudiyattam is performed only in very special temple theatres earmarked only for its performance known as Kuthampalam, literally the ‘performance temple’, built within the temple complexes. It is performed only by specific communities known as Chakyar and Nambyar. P.K Narayanan Nambyar, a noted Mizhavu percussionist and a Kudiyattam scholar explains how the old village structure of Kerala contributed to the preservation of Kudiyattam. Kerala, in the olden times were divided into thirty two villages out of which eighteen were important. These were Sukapuram, Peruvanam, Irinjalakkuda, Panniyoor, Karikkadu, Trissivaperur, Perinchellur, Venganadu, Alathiyur, Tiruvalla, Kumaranallur, Kidangur, Paravur, Muzhikkulam, Aavittattur, Easanamangalam, Payyannur and Kuzhur. In each village there were one Chakyar family and one Nambyar family involved in the performance of Kudiyattam. Thus eighteen actor families known as Chakyar and eighteen drummer families known as Nambyar existed. The female members of Nambyar caste are known as Nangyar who performed female roles in Kudiyattam. The Chakyar family and the Nambyar family of these eighteen villages were attached to the temples of that particular village and they worked together in the performances.4 The plays are never completed on any single night. Performance of any single act could take up to eleven nights. These are just a few examples to suggest the unique nature of its performance which are examined in detail in the following sections. I will now look at the history and origin of Kudiyattam because it is important to understand how it developed through time to reach its current status.

4

P.K Narayan Nambyar, Mizhavu, Nambyarude Kramadeepika, Killikkurussimangalam: Mni Madhava Chakyar Smaraka Gurukulam, 2005, p. 231.

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Kudiyattam Theatre and Actor’s Consciousness

The origins and history of Kudiyattam The approximate date of origin of drama in ancient India is obscure, although there are several and varied references to the existence of drama as found in Rig Veda, dated as early as c.3000 BC5 or the Mahabharata and the Ramayana both dated around c.1500 BC. The Indian historian V Raghavan mentions a 4th century BC play called Vasavadatta Natyadhara which is conceived as a play having “acts-within-acts, where the actors of one act being the spectators of the next” demonstrating that the well-developed state of dramatic art was open to experiments such as these6. However, the golden age of Sanskrit theatre as considered by K.G Poulose, a historian of Kudiyattam, is 500 BC to 500 AD. Renowned playwrights like Kalidasa and Bhasa lived during this time. The following five centuries is the period when Sanskrit theatre disintegrated. During this period the focus shifted from performance to the text, which paved way for the development of literary and aesthetic theories. The dhvani theory (theory of resonance) of Anandavardhana, for example, was developed during this period. From 1100 AD onwards we can see the total disappearance of Sanskrit theatre from India, especially in the way it existed.7 One of the major reasons behind this is the Muslim invasions of India which had a very big impact on the performance tradition of India. According to Farley Richmond “the emergence of Islam as the state religion in much of India meant that theatre was no longer encouraged or condoned at court. With royal patronage waning, performance took to the road catering to the less sophisticated tastes of rural audiences. Performers survived as story-tellers, jugglers, acrobats and singers”.8 The exact period of origin of Kudiyattam is obscure though the earliest reference of the term Chakkayyan, a term that is now widely understood to be synonymous to Chakyar (the traditional male 5

V.Raghavan, “Sanskrit Drama in Performance”, in Richard Van M.Baumer and James R.Brandon, eds., Sanskrit Drama in performance, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1993, p. 10. 6 Ibid., p. 12. 7 K.G. Poulose, Kudiyattam: Abhinayathinte Tudarchayum Valarchayu, Trippunithura: International Centre for Kudiyattam, 2001, p. 60-1. 8 Farely Richmond “South Asian Theatres” in John Russell Brown ed., Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre. USA: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 449.

Introduction

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actors of Kudiyattam), is found in the 2nd century BC epic of South India named as Chilappathikaram, written in Tamil. The epic describes the actor’s or chakkayyan’s astonishing capacity to depict two different emotions in two eyes. This is now considered by Kudiyattam historians as a near origin date of Kudiyattam. In this sense, Kudiyattam may only have originated in Kerala during the golden age of Sanskrit theatre in India. According to Poulose the first Sanskrit drama written in Kerala is Ascharyachudamani (The Wondrous Crest Jewel) by Saktibhadra in 8th century9. Some historical evidence is also available for the active restructuring of Kudiyattam during the period of King Kulasekhara, who ruled some parts of Kerala during the 11th century AD. He wrote two plays himself, Subhadra Dhananjaya (The Wedding of Arjuna and Subhadra) and Tapati Samvarana (About Tapati and Samvarana). His greatest contribution to Kudiyattam is believed to be laying the foundation stones to the development of a very important acting convention called Pakarnnattam, literally the ‘play of multiple transcendences’. When talking about the re-modelling of Kudiyattam, the name of Tolan, who is believed to be an 11th century poet and that of Paravur, a Chakyar from a central Keralan province is also relevant. Chakyars believe that Tolan worked hand in hand with the King to create the unique acting pattern of Kudiyattam and to develop the role of Jester. However, there is no historical evidence for these claims. Kulasekhara is also assigned with the glory of creating a single female performance form of Kudiyattam, the Nangyar-Kuthu. He is believed to have authored the first text on Nangyar-Kuthu called Srikrishna Charitam Nangaramma Kuthu (Stories of God Krishna). A 1027 AD royal document, which mentions the name of a person who contributed a portion of his land to the temple for paying a Nangyar for performing an episode from Krishna’s story is an important supporting document to justify the existence of Nangyar-Kuthu during this period. The two centuries following Kulasekhara’s reign are a significant transformational period of Kudiyattam. This period saw an 9

K.G. Poulose, Kudiyattam: Abhinayathinte Tudarchayum Valarchayu, Trippunithura: International Centre for Kudiyattam, 2001, p. 61.

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Kudiyattam Theatre and Actor’s Consciousness

emerging Brahmanism in Kerala when the Brahmins of Kerala gained the intellectual and social upper hand over all other castes.10 Temples became the new power centres. Kudiyattam started drifting to the theatres within the temples. In the further development of Kudiyattam there was a total transformation mainly in terms of the addition of various ritualistic aspects to its performance structure. Between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries Kudiyattam is thought to have evolved in its current form; it became also largely confined to Kuthampalam or temple theatres. Most of the temple theatres were constructed during this period.11 Kudiyattam started declining during the 19th and early 20th centuries. There were several factors that led to this development of which the most important is thought to be the evolution of Kathakali. The performance right of Kudiyattam was always vested with the Chakyar caste and the viewership was restricted to the members of the high caste society. Kathakali in contrast did not have any such restrictions and welcomed members of any castes to watch and even perform it. Moreover, the very popular entertainment form of Ottan Tullal12 also emerged before this period. Its satire and the depiction of the life of the common man impressed masses. Moreover, it was also easily accessible to all the castes. 10 The caste system of Kerala is a complicated one and it marks stark distinctions to the prevalent system of four castes in the rest of India. Brahmanism started reigning in Kerala very late and they came to Kerala only around 7 or 8th century. The castes in Kerala largely existed in relation to their caste rites. The Brahmins of Kerala are known as Namboodiri. Nair or Menon caste are considered equivalent to Kshatriya or the warrior caste. There is no evident Vaisya caste or business class in Kerala since the wealth and land were vested mostly with Namboodiris or Nairs. However, there are a large variety of intermediary castes and a range of outcastes. Chakyars and Nambyars are just examples of such intermediary castes. The barbers known as Vilakkithala or washermen known as Veluthedathu are two examples of outcastes. During the reign of Brahmanism extending from 14th to 20th centruries the outcastes which made a large section of Kerala population had no right to enter the temples. They were also deprived of several humanitarian rights such as wearing the dress of their choice or even covering the breasts. They fought for equal rights and were permitted entry to temples in 1936 owing to the Temple Entry proclamation made by a King of Travancore (in the south Kerala) Raja Chittira Thirunal Balarama Varma. 11 K.G. Poulose, Kudiyattam: Abhinayathinte Tudarchayum Valarchayum. Trippunithura: International Centre for Kudiyattam, 2001, pp. 64-6. 12 Ottan Thullal is a satirical performance which evolved in 18 AD and was created by a poet and percussionist called Kunchan Nambyar.

Introduction

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Kudiyattam was first performed outside the temple in 1949 by the renowned master teacher, the late Painkulam Rama Chakyar; in the sixties, Mani Madhava Chakyar also started performing at venues outside Kerala. In 1965 members from other castes were allowed to its training. Kalamandalam13, under the guidance of Painkulam Rama Chakyar took the pioneering step in this direction. In this sense, he is the ‘father of contemporary Kudiyattam,’ whose contribution to Kudiyattam is invaluable. It was under his guidance that Kudiyattam made its first performance tour outside India. John Steven Sowle (who wrote a thesis on the acting of Kudiyattam in 1982) and Clifford Jones (who wrote his thesis on the theatre of Kudiyattam in 1967) both visited Kalamandalam when he was the head of the Kudiyattam section. The late master teacher Mani Madhava Chakyar is another important name in Kudiyattam. He wrote the only existing performance manual of Kudiyattam, Natyakalpadrumam. The contributions made by the late D. Appukkuttan Nair are also very important in this context. He established and developed the Margi Kudiyattam School, which offered wide opportunities for well trained artists by conducting regular Kudiyattam shows and opening doors to a wide range of national and international audiences. The next important name in the history of Kudiyattam is that of the late Ammannur Madhava Chakyar (1917 - 2008), who was the senior-most master teacher performed extensively both within and outside India. Kudiyattam was recognised by UNESCO in 2001 as a ‘masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage of humanity’. They decided to fund a 10 year project aimed at helping the reinstatement of its past glory. The project was proposed by the Margi School in coordination with other Kudiyattam schools. This is expected to generate audiences and produce new play productions. 13

The Kerala Kalamandalam is a world-renowned performing arts institution devoted to provide training and promoting Kathakali, Kudiyattam, and various other performing art forms of Kerala. Prior to its establishment students were trained by teachers who were established performers. With the establishment of the Kalamandalam the training in performance arts became highly organised and systematised. A proper syllabus was fixed and also a year-by-year progression plan as in an academic course. Institutionalisation of arts under the leadership of the Kalamandalam had a big and lasting impact on the art forms of Kerala. Later, various other performing art centres were established on the model of the Kalamandalam.

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Kudiyattam Theatre and Actor’s Consciousness

The performance structure The performance structure of Kudiyattam is of a unique nature. Plays are never completed in one single night. The norm is for an act of a play taking at least eleven nights, which means that a normal three hours long play is elaborated to at least forty five or more hours. The story of the play up to the beginning of that particular act is enacted by means of nirvahanam. Any single act would be ideally divided into three to five days and each day focus on the elaborate acting of a single song/verse or a line of a single character. The actors enrich such lines or verses by drawing stories from Indian folk traditions, myths and even local beliefs and practices. They write their own performance texts known as Attaprakaram based on the play and directorial notes known as kramadeepika, which include detailed descriptions of scene blocking, entrances and exits of all the characters and their costume and make-up. The plays are also further prolonged by the performance of the vidushaka or the jester who is normally the friend and close confidante of the hero. Typically, more than half of an 11 nights of an act of a play consists of the verbal narration known as chakyarkuthu (literally the performance of a Chakyar) by the Chakyar. Chakyarkuthu exists as a separate genre and requires excellent command of language and in-depth knowledge of Sanskrit. The performance known as Prabandhakuthu or purusharthakuthu, which is the one-man verbal narration form by the Chakyar is very popular. This is a forty one days long narration of four important karmas of a human life such as dharma, which is one’s own duty and responsibility, artha, which is what one should earn – money or knowledge, kama, which is the desires and moksha, the liberation from worldly ties. However, this narration is also a depiction of a range of social problems that existed in society (such as prostitution for instance). Nangyar-Kuthu (The solo woman performance) Nangyar-Kuthu is the solo female performance, which tells the story of God Krishna taking 41 nights. Though it enjoys an independent status it is only an offshoot of Kudiyattam because of various reasons. Nangyar-Kuthu is in the form of a nirvahanam by a

Introduction

25

nangyar who enacts the stories of Krishna and takes the roles of all the characters appearing in the story. The performance style in terms of histrionics and rendering of verses is similar to that of Kudiyattam. The story behind the origin of Nangyar-Kuthu is very interesting. King Kulaseshara had a wife who was a very talented actress, but she was not respected by his other queens because she was a Nangyar and not a member of warrior caste. The King, who loved his wife who was an actress decided to assign importance to her by creating a solo woman performance in the form of nirvahanam. He added a nirvahanam in order to enact the stories of Krishna to the second act of his own play Subhadradhananjayam. The whole palace recognised the talents of his wife and from then on it was performed regularly. The authenticity of this story is debatable since there is no evidence to support this. However, a 1029 AD document stating that a Nangyar was paid for her performance of an episode from Krishna’s story is available which proves the continued existence of Nangyar-Kuthu for the last century. Recently, in the year 2000 Margi Sathi wrote her own Nangyar-Kuthu on Rama’s story, which is an excerpt from the Sanskrit play Uttararamacharitham (Later life of Rama). There was a gap of a long thousand years between Krishna’s stories and Rama’s stories. In this sense, Sathi’s work deserves recognition and it is also an important event in the history of Nangyar-Kuthu. Following this new work, there have been various attempts by Kudiyattam actresses to come up with their own pieces of works. Plays and playwrights In Kudiyattam plays are rarely known by their original names; Kudiyattam actors mention only the names of the acts because the focus is on acting of any single act or even a verse and not on the end result of the play. One night’s performance deals only with a couple of verses and their detailed attam or performance. These are examples of some of the playwrights and their plays taken for Kudiyattam.

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Kudiyattam Theatre and Actor’s Consciousness

x

Bhasa Bhasa is one of the most significant dramatists in ancient India, credited with the authorship of thirteen plays, who is believed to have lived between the 2nd century BC and the 3rd century AD. He has written and experimented with most of the dramatic forms mentioned in the Natyasastra and has drawn widely from the epics Ramayana and the Mahabharata. His plays are mainly political in nature and also keen on representing the complexities of the human drama. The vision of Vasavadatta (Svapnavasavadattam) is widely accepted by the scholars to be the finest of his works. These are some of his plays taken by the Kudiyattam performers: a. Abhisheka Nataka (The Coronation Play) - Act 1 Balivadhankam (Killing of Bali), Act II Hanumaddoothankam (Hanuman the Messenger), Act III Thoranayuddhankam (The War at the Flag Post) and the Act IV Samudrataranankam (Crossing the Sea). b. Svapnavasavadattam (The Vision of Vasavadatta) Act V Svapnankam (The Dream) c. Pratijya-Yougandharayanam (Yougandharayana’s Vow) - Act III Mantrankam (The Secret)

x

Saktibhadra Ascharyachudamani (The Wondrous Crest Jewel) written by Saktibhadra in the 8th century AD is the most successful play performed by Kudiyattam actors. This play is based on the epic Ramayana, is believed to be the first Sanskrit play from Kerala. Seven acts of this play such as Act I Parnasalankam (The Hermitage), Act II Soorpanakhankam (Soorpanakha), Act III Mayasithankam (The Unreal Sitha), Act IV Jatayuvadhankam (Killing Jatayu), Act V Asokavanikankam (The Garden Asoka), Act VI Anguleeyankam (The Ring) and the Act VII Agnipravesankam (The Jumping into the Fire) are performed these days.

Introduction

x

27

Kulasekhara Kulasekhara, the 10th century ruler of the Chera dynasty (who ruled some of the provinces of Kerala), is generally believed to be the mastermind behind bestowing Kudiyattam with its current dramatic structure. He is also thought to be the creator of Nangyar-Kuthu, the female monodrama and offshoot of Kudiyattam. He wrote two plays, Subhadra Dhananjayam (The Wedding of Subhadra and Arjuna) and Tapati Samvaranam (The Story of Tapati and Samvarana). The first and second acts of Subhadra Dhananjayam and the first act of Tapati Samvaranam are performed these days.

Costume and Make-up The beginning of any Kudiyattam performance is equally ritualistic as the performance itself. After the performer purifies himself / herself by taking a bath, he lights the lamp in the green room and then ties choppu tuni, literally a red cloth just above the forehead. This narrow piece of cloth which is about one inch wide is made by stitching two narrow pieces of red cloth above and below a black colour cloth that is in the middle. This ritual transfers the performer’s daily self into that of the character that he/she is about to play. Then s/he applies ghee and make-up material on five spots on the face, which are the forehead, nose, chin and two cheeks. The actor pays respects to gods, guru and nature (such as the Sun and the planets) by verbally referring to them during the application of ghee on the face. The confidence that this ritual gives to a performer is remarkable. There are five classifications in terms of costume and make-up for the characters in Kudiyattam which are: 1. Pacha is mainly used for noble type characters (eg: Rama in the epic Ramayana). Pacha means green because these characters paint their face with green colour made out of a mixture of a natural substance from soil (which is also used for making gun powder!) called manayola, which is yellow in colour and blue colour mixed with clarified butter. Eyes and eyebrows are painted black and a tiny piece of the dried seed of the egg plant is put inside the eyes, inside the lower eyelids

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Kudiyattam Theatre and Actor’s Consciousness

to give red colour to the eyes. Medically, it is very important to put this seed in the eyes because it will ease off the heat produced by manayola applied on the face. The face is bordered with chutti, which is made of rice paste in about one to two inches width around the face. The legs are painted with rice paste and a white cloth worn around the waist is suspended down only in the front to cover the legs (tattu). The actors also wear white cloth folded (in layers) thickly on a long cotton string made to the shape of a pillow (mattu) which is worn on the waist. The torso is covered with a jacket called kuppayam. The actors wear head gear and ornaments such as bangles, shoulder bands or chains. 2. Kathi is the costume used for high-born, but evil-natured characters (eg: the demon Ravana in Ramayana). The face is still painted green with the only difference that there are additional chutti on the cheeks and another chutti made in the shape of a flower on the nose. The rest of the costume is similar to pacha with the only exception of head gear which is a bit bigger and more beautiful. 3. Tadi is mainly used to depict monkey characters in the epic Ramayana and Sages in all the plays. Tadi literally means the beard. Monkey king Bali has to wear a red beard and his brother Sugreeva wears black. However, there is also a white colour beard worn by Hanuman. The face paint also varies; Bali’s is a red and green face and that of Sugreeva and Hanuman a red face. There are differences also in the colour and type of head gear which helps to identify the character easily. Sugreeva’s head gear is black in colour, Hanuman’s white for example. 4. Minukku: Female characters invariably use minukku (perhaps with the exception of some Goddess characters. This is to give a special status for such characters). The face is painted with manayola with a slight tint of saffron colour to give an impact of pazuhkka or orange-red colour. Eyes and eyebrows are painted black and a seed of the egg plant is put inside the lower eyelids. The head gear is smaller but contains a snake

Introduction

29

hood at the front of it. Lots of ornaments are also worn which mainly consist of bangles, chains, and ear rings. The actresses also wear a long wig, which is more than a metre long, called pedari. The costume consists of a long piece of white cotton worn around the waist and a blouse to cover the chest. 5. Pazhukka is the costume for denoting a face painted with bright orange-red colour. Some special characters like Kapali in the play Mattavilasa Prahasana, Bhima in Mahabharata for example use this face paint. The face is mostly orange-red which resembles the colour of the ripe areca nut husk. Pazhukka used to be the face paint worn by the actresses, however, this has now mostly been replaced by minukku. I believe this is due to the influence on Kathakali on Kudiyattam. 6. Ghee make-up is a different category, which is different from the major five categories described above. Characters such as the Sutradhara apply only ghee on the face. They do not paint their faces with the exception of eyes, eyebrows and lips, but only apply ghee instead of red or green colours. They also put a seed of the egg plant inside the eyelids. These characters also wear all the other parts of the costume with the exception of headgear. There is also another costume used for ninam which can not be grouped among any of the categories listed above. Ninam literally means blood; it is a transformation of the demoness Surpanakha (in the epic Ramayana) whose breasts and nose were mutilated by Lakshmana who is Rama’s brother. Surpanakha approaches her brother Ravana to avenge the brutality that she was subjected to. It is here that ninam is used. This is a very scary spectacle and the character is drenched in blood. The ‘blood’ is prepared by mixing lime stone with turmeric. Pieces of tender coconut are also put to give an illusion of pieces of flesh. The actor applies this mixture all over his body and the entry is accompanied by fire and loud cries.

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Kudiyattam Theatre and Actor’s Consciousness

Musical instruments The major musical instrument used in Kudiyattam is a big pot drum made of copper called mizhavu. There are two types of mizhavu shape-wise, the round one and the egg-shaped one; these could be in three categories of big, medium and the small. Mizhavu is considered equivalent to an unmarried Brahmin (widely understood by the term brahmachari) and deserves all the birth and death rites of a Brahmin. Before a mizhavu is used for the first time it needs to undergo the sacred thread ceremony which is typical for a Brahmin boy. This ceremony marks the re-birth of a Brahmin boy and similarly a mizhavu is qualified to be an instrument used in Kudiyattam only after this ceremony. Similarly if a mizhavu is damaged it should not be reused but instead it needs to be cremated in a proper death ceremony. Mizhavu has only one narrow mouth and it is covered either with the skin of a calf which is naturally dead before it reaches the age of six months or with the skin of a black monkey. The preparation of the skin to make it suitable for using takes a long time and much effort. The other instruments used in Kudiyattam are itakka, which is a cylinder shaped drum, sankhu or a conch, kurumkuzhal, which is a wind instrument, a pair of cymbals to keep the rhythm and timila, which is again another cylindrical drum. Kurmkuzhal is very rarely used these days but the rest of the instruments are used in a Kudiyattam performance. Timila is a new addition to the Kudiyattam stage by the Margi school. All these instruments except cymbals are placed at the rear of the stage. The Nangyar playing cymbals sits at the right hand side of the stage.

Introduction

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Kuthambalam, the temple theatre of Kerala A Kuthambalam forms part of the temple complex of Kerala, built on the right hand side of Sanctum Sanctorum, situated in the outer circle. The word meaning of Kuthu is performance and that of Ambalam is the temple and hence Kuthambalam means the ‘performance temple’ or the theatre structure within the temple complex where the performance is worshipped. According to the findings of late D. Appukkuttan Nair (the founder director of Margi school at Trivandrum, Kerala who was also an architect credited with the construction of the Kuthampalam in Kalamandalam School), nineteen Kuthampalams are still remaining in Kerala, the biggest of them being the one inside Vadakkumnathan temple worshipping God Shiva, at Trichur in north Kerala which is sized 23.5 meters in length and 17.5 metres in width. Many of them are decorated with fine wood carvings such as the one at Kidangur in South Kerala. The stage or the performance area is to be constructed at the back of the Kuthambalam. Most Kuthampalam are rectangular in shape, though an oval-shaped structure is also found in the southern Kerala district of Chengannur. The stage is also rectangular in shape, ranging from 6.25 square metres as in Vadakkumnathan to 3.6 square meters as that of the one in Guruvayur temple (in north Kerala in Trichur District). The structural specifications cited in the Sanskrit texts on architecture such as Tantra Samuchaya of Narayana which is datable to the 15th century and Silparatna of Sri Kumara written in 16th century forms the base of the architecture of Kuthambalam. L.S Rajagopalan, the renowned Kudiyattam scholar and the writer of several scholarly works on this subject cites that the specifications of Tantra Samuchaya have been strictly adhered to in their construction. It is amazing how Kudiyattam was preserved by the Chakyar and Nambyar community through performing it as part of their caste rites. This is a very important preservation technique which helped the survival of this performance against the odds of time. Each Chakyar was assigned to each Nambyar family and these actor-musician families worked as a team for centuries. Such actor-musician families

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Kudiyattam Theatre and Actor’s Consciousness

were also connected to specific temples. They equally shared the remuneration from a performance. Together with the strict religious beliefs and a strong conviction of one’s own dharma Chakyars and Nambyars continued to perform Kudiyattam and ensured its existence and preserved its unique performance structure for the new generation. Though it was transformed with the recurrent social changes in the Kerala society it still exists and is still being performed, not only by Chakyar or Nambyar communities but by members of other castes as well. We know Greek theatre only through the remnants of its theatre structure. There is no trace of Sanskrit theatre in the rest of India either in the form of theatre structure or acting patterns. Kudiyattam, which originated at least two millennia ago, still exist with us as the only available and living model of Indian Sanskrit theatre. In the following chapters I examine its actor training and acting patterns in a detailed manner in the context of consciousness studies.

Chapter One The Actor’s Consciousness: Contemporary Western Approaches What is the nature of an actor’s consciousness? Is it possible to decipher a significant and potent sphere of consciousness specific to theatre? Is there a significant difference between consciousness in theatre performance and consciousness in meditation? Would it be possible to understand and enquire into theatrical consciousness from within theatre praxis rather than assessing and interpreting an actor’s consciousness by borrowing methodological tools from the philosophical discourse on consciousness? These are some of the major questions I address in this chapter; I am looking at the existing debates in consciousness studies relating to acting and the actor’s consciousness, in the context of their contemporary, Western discourse. During the period of the last ten years there has been seen an emerging interest in Western academia in the field of consciousness studies, reflected across a wide range of disciplines from neuroscience and physics to philosophy. In the specific context of theatre, the issue of the actor’s consciousness has been relevant for several decades particularly among theatre practitioners. The concerns shared by Stanislavski and Grotowski in respect of the actor’s state of consciousness and his pre-expressive state of mind and body channelled their enquiries beyond the confines of Western theatre. These developments in theatre practice are matched, albeit later, in emerging theoretical propositions in relation to consciousness and theatre, particularly from a non-Western perspective as reflected in the writings of MeyerDinkgräfe, Yarrow, and Malekin, and, from the perspective of performance studies, in the writings of Schechner and Barba. In the light of

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Kudiyattam Theatre and Actor’s Consciousness

those approaches to the actor’s consciousness, I intend to divide this chapter into the following three subsections: The actor’s consciousness from the perspective of consciousness studies The actor’s consciousness from the perspective of performance studies The actor’s consciousness from the perspective of theatre practitioners. The actor’s consciousness from the perspective of consciousness studies Consciousness studies is relatively new discipline and we find a growing interest in it from the early 1990’s. Yarrow and Malekin were the pioneers in researching consciousness in theatre, an enquiry carried forward by Meyer Dinkgräfe, William Demastes, Jade McCutcheon, Sreenath Nair, and others 1 . This enquiry into the actor’s consciousness is a new stream of thought and an emerging subject of discussion. I shall analyse the theoretical writings on consciousness and theatre under three subsections as Acting and pashyanti (Malekin and Yarrow) Acting and the Vedic model of consciousness (Meyer-Dinkgräfe) Acting, consciousness and breath (Nair) Broadly speaking these are the three distinct consciousnessrelated strands of discourse I identified in my research. Though there is an attempt by McCutcheon to analyse and relate ritual in terms of altered states of consciousness, this analysis fails to propose a feasible practical method or sound theoretical base. In this sense McCutcheon’s discussions exists mainly as an elementary thought 2 . The three strands mentioned above, on the other hand, are important and highly significant in my analysis of actor’s consciousness. Chronologically, it is the Vedic Science model of consciousness that methodically ap1

Materials contained in the electronic journal Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/users/dmeyerdinkgrafe/index.htm and in the book series Consciousness Literature and Arts, published by Rodopi. 2 Jade McCutcheon, Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/users/dmeyerdinkgrafe/archive/mccutcheon.html.

Actor’s Consciousness: Contemporary Western Approaches

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proached actor’s consciousness first, however, a systematic thought in the direction of formulating pashyanti model of consciousness was initiated by Yarrow as early as 1986 (Neutral Consciousness in the experience of theatre: 1986). Therefore I am beginning my enquiry with the analysis of the pashyanti model of consciousness. Acting and Pashyanti Inspired by the Indian literary theory and Vedic tradition, Malekin and Yarrow discuss the concept of pashyanti in relation to consciousness and suggest training methods suitable to help actors to perform from a state of ‘neutral consciousness’ resulting in an enhanced level of spontaneity and intuition, or ‘holistic rhythm’. The aim thus is to get the subtle energy flow of the performer to “arise spontaneously out of immediate cognition, from of the pashyanti level of mind”. What is pashyanti? Indian linguistics distinguishes four distinct levels of language: para, pashyanti, madhyama and vaikhari. While vaikhari is the audible speech uttered by the speaker, para is the fully unmanifest level of language. In between these lie the inner mental state represented as thoughts or the inward speech (madhyama) and the finest level of the cognitive manifestation, pashyanti, which is pre-verbal. This level is devoid of any sense of space and time and represents meaning in its fullness within the mind of the speaker. It is a liminal state of between-ness, between the unmanifest and the beginning of any manifestation. This is also the subtle cognitive space of creativity prior to the formation of its expression. According to Malekin and Yarrow, this is closer to the experience of knowing what we want to say, not having words to put it in, searching for words, rejecting trial formulations as “not what I want to say” and eventually hitting on a satisfactory formulation, or even wrenching language into new shapes and modes so that formulation shall be satisfactory. … In its fullness pashyanti is nearer the eureka experience, the “got it” of a whole new conceptualisation instantaneously present, the sort of thing that for instance composers can experience, when a whole work or movement is instantaneously present to their minds, becoming sequential when written down. 3

3

Peter Malekin and Ralph Yarrow, The Pashyanti Project, Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, vol.1 no.2, July 2000, http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/users/dmeyerdinkgrafe/archive/pash.html.

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Pashyanti is thus a level of pre-utterence, pre-thought and hence pre-expression. It is the state where meaning exists in unison with the sensation or the spark of any such meaning, prior to its separation to form thoughts and speech. Pashyanti could be described as the primary flash of insight which is the spring of any idea before it fully develops into expression in terms of thought and words. This theory of four-fold manifestation of language was put forward by grammarian Bhartrihari in the 6th century CE. Malekin and Yarrow postulate that any performance from the pashyanti level of cognition would be free and beyond “egoic and category-bound experience” when the “dramatic time ceases to be self enclosed, self-defining, whether or not there is a narrative or emotional closure” 4 . When a performance, though containing its precise and structured temporal sequence and its progression, emanates thus from the pashyanti level, what remains are moments that are experienced by actor and / or spectator, at least in retrospect, as long periods of timelessness. In a performance during which the actors experience the pashyanti level of consciousness, these actors will have maximum spontaneity and capacity to transmit their energies to the spectators. Such energy transfer in turn is part of the spectators’ total and undivided involvement in the performance. This creates the illusion of a lapse in the temporal progression of the narrative. Such a performance thus cuts across the boundaries of structured, narrative time and rather replaces them with potential moments that foster an illusion of timelessness. The narrative becomes immaterial; what matters here will be the total theatrical experience. On an experiential level, the actor and the spectator’s physical breathing, as in samadhi or the yogic experience of pure consciousness, is thought to have come to a complete halt; the normal breathing returns when the actors return to normal activity from samadhi. We sometimes use the term ‘breath-taking’ in order to describe the deep impact of any event. A typical example would be mesmerising physical skills of an acrobat or ballerina or even the incredible speed of a race car. This phrase thus implies that when we experience anything that is sublimating our breath is ‘taken’, which gives us a sense of timelessness. Thus,

4

Ibid.

Actor’s Consciousness: Contemporary Western Approaches

37

the daily sense of time disappears when breath, which is the basic temporal metre of human cognition, is manipulated. What Malekin and Yarrow call the “pashyanti project” thus aims to build and add “understandings of physiological and mental functioning at generative levels” so that actors and directors can access the pashyanti level leading to “holistic rhythm” not only in the overall performance but also the way drama is conceived by the director in the first instance. Pashyanti can thus be applied to all levels of theatre production including the director, the actors and backstage artists. Malekin and Yarrow also propose means by which actors could be trained to access pashyanti. The first step in this direction is to “… bring performers… to access a state of “neutrality” where habit and familiar patterns are suspended, where both the everyday self and its forms are roles, and any easily adopted “actorly” personae, are put aside”. 5 This state is explained as a state of “waiting without expectation”, when the actor becomes a mere “readiness”. Yarrow describes ‘neutrality’ of consciousness or ‘witnessing’ as a highly potential sphere of awareness which brings a sense of completeness. The neutral state of consciousness becomes a fourth state of awareness where “silence and activity co-exist” and leads to further states of consciousness where witnessing opens up wider and subtler perceptions. 6 This level of consciousness could be attained in several ways, including neutral mask work, Yoga asanas, rhythmic movement or shamanistic chanting. Any of these, Malekin and Yarrow propose, would help actors to escape temporarily from the daily, everyday self. The next stage is to trace the ‘nexus of relationship’, which could be the subtext or the underlying rhythm, pattern or a mood. They can be developed to increase the flexibility of mind by several kinds of 5

Peter Malekin and Ralph Yarrow, The Pashyanti Project, Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, vol.1 no.2, July 2000, http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/users/dmeyerdinkgrafe/archive/pash.html. 6 Ralph Yarrow, “Neutral” Consciousness in the Experience of Theater. Mosaic, Part II (XIX/4). Summer 1986.

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visualisations. However, Malekin and Yarrow suggest that prolonged training in Yoga would enable the mind to access pashyanti effortlessly. Malekin and Yarrow further state that such methods require both time and seclusion. Malekin and Yarrow briefly touch upon the ways mind and body function in the state of consciousness characterised by the experience of pashyanti. According to them: That which experiences pashyanti is the mind, and the mind is more flexible than the body, so that it is easier to move the mind to pashyanti by using the mind itself through language, thus affecting the body also, than to work primarily on body awareness to induce a mental state of pashyanti. Since the two factors, while not identical, are closely identified, it is not a question of one or the other, both are needed. But mind should not be overshadowed in the process by the body. Indeed one effect of proper body training is that the body should present no impediment to the mind, the two should move as one….

Here Malekin and Yarrow are discussing one of the many serious theoretical problems in the process of developing actor training on the basis of the concept of pashyanti. For them the mind is superior to the body in so far as it is ‘more flexible’; pashyanti is experienced by the mind and hence it is easier to ‘move the mind’ which in turn affects the body. For them this approach is far more effective than reaching the mind through the body though: they insist that it is not a question of one or the other. However, the mind should not be allowed to be overshadowed by the body. Malekin and Yarrow are not indulging in a prolonged conceptual investigation of the concept of pashyanti in relation to mind and body but only briefly outline their proposition, adding a new dimension to the theoretical speculation on the mind-body problem, leaving much room for further discussion. The pashyanti project is an ambitious endeavour in the direction of initiating a possible model of actor training in relation to consciousness (studies). Though the project is in its very initial stages, I believe that the following questions are relevant: Malekin and Yarrow assume that utilising the concept of pashyanti for actor training would generate a new genre of performance practice which provides a heightened theatrical experience, both to the actors and the spectators.

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This actor training is devised for helping the actors to be spontaneous and reach the state of heightened self-awareness by making them ‘ready’ (a “blank screen” in their own words) and exploring their pashyanti level or their whirlpool of creative potential. Performance is thus expected to originate from this source. If this is the case, does this project expect the pashyanti level in the performers to cease its function after the training/rehearsal process? If not, how do they expect a theatrical production to accommodate spontaneity? If they expect the actors to be spontaneous through the performance as well, what happens if they improvise during the performance? If pashyanti is to continue through all stages of a drama production then the possibility of instant spontaneity during on stage performance cannot be dismissed. If every team member including the back stage members are functioning from the pashyanti level of consciousness, instant spontaneity could be achieved easily. Think about a structured play production where every movement and every dialogue is carefully designed to light and music cues. If the actors are mere readiness, they could still improvise, which would affect the rest of the structure. Cues could be missed and co-actors could be confused. However, there are performance forms that would accommodate such levels of freedom: Kathakali is one example. After every segment of structured performance, Kathakali actors take the liberty to exhibit their improvising skills—the technical term is manodharmam (the word is a composite of mano—mind; dharmam—principles; thus ‘principles of mind’). Expertise in manodharmam is the ultimate aim of a student in Kathakali because what he enacts should be appropriate to the situation and to his character. I am not sure if the pashyanti project aims to be in line with the kind of performance structure of Kathakali. I will look at this issue in detail later in this book because this question is highly significant for discussing the practice of theatre. An analysis on these will be included in the conclusion of this book on the basis of the arguments that I make in the following chapters of this book. It is not clear as to how Malekin and Yarrow approach the issues related to the mind-body divide. How do they account for a more flexible mind and a less flexible body in effecting the spontaneous flow of mind (or body or both?) in pashyanti. Though they are aware that both should co-exist and the body should not overshadow the mind, what precisely are they arguing? For example, a Yogi is

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required to sit in Yoga asana for long periods of time to experience the samadhi level of cognition; to sit effortlessly in a complicated sitting posture is very important for him: any distraction resulting from this sitting posture would not allow him to set the mind free. Moreover, certain physical techniques, including the sitting posture in this instance, also alter the breathing pattern, thus facilitating easy access of higher cognitive levels. Here, the mind is reached through the body. The mind-body problem occupied a serious status in the development of various genres of humanities, philosophy and theatre for instance. There are actor training traditions which aim to train the consciousness of the actor by training the body. The very intention of this book is to find how certain physical disciplines could in a way train the consciousness of the actor as well. Certain yogic traditions, for example, assume that the flow of breath is also the flow of mind. In the following chapters of this book I will be examining how the actor training of Kudiyattam is effective in preparing the actor to alter his consciousness during the performance. The Pashyanti project is a very important discussion in the enquiry of this book on the actor’s consciousness because it puts forward a sound theoretical base (in terms of Sanskrit linguistics) and initiates a practical method based on the same, all aimed to create a performance that springs from pashyanti. Though some of the arguments made by Malekin and Yarrow are debatable, the content of their thesis is intellectually profound and promising. If the pashayanti project is theoretically based on Sanskrit linguistics, the Vedic model of consciousness is firmly grounded in the Indian philosophical discourse compiled by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (see below) and collecttively termed Vedic Science. I am examining below the theoretical approach of Vedic Science to actor’s consciousness as discussed by Meyer-Dinkgräfe. Acting and the Vedic Model of Consciousness Meyer-Dinkgräfe discusses the actor’s consciousness from the standpoint of the Vedic Science model of consciousness. Vedic

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Science is a term coined by Maharshi Mahesh Yogi, 7 as a result of his re-assessment of classical Vedic literature of India. In his own words: Veda means knowledge. Therefore, my Vedic Science, the science of Veda, is the science of complete knowledge. Knowledge results from the coming together of the knower, the process of knowing, and the object of knowing-knowledge blossoms in the togetherness of knower, process of knowing, and known. Therefore, knowledge is the Unified Field of knower, process of knowing, and known; therefore, my Vedic Science, the science of knowledge, is the science of the Unified Field of knower, process of knowing, and known. 8

Vedic Science incorporates a total of 40 different texts or bodies of texts, including various distinct disciplines such as Ayurveda— traditional Indian medicine and Sthapatyaveda—architecture. Meyer-Dinkgräfe Vedic Science model of consciousness proposes four higher levels of consciousness apart from waking, dreaming and sleeping. Pure consciousness is the fourth state of human consciousness. This level of consciousness is a state of complete awareness and at the basis of creation; it is beyond any perception and time and space. To quote Meyer-Dinkgräfe: “in parallel to the unified field described in quantum physics, it is timeless, unbounded, omnipresent and source of all diversification”. 9 Pure consciousness as described by Meyer-Dinkgräfe shows parallels to the pashyanti state of consciousness in terms of Malekin and Yarrow. Both in the Vedic Science and the pashyanti models of consciousness, this is the finest level of manifestation from where all creativity springs. Meyer-Dinkgräfe further clarifies that the knowledge attained from this level is direct: without any mediation of senses or mind. Thus, Vedic Science proposes pure consciousness as the basis of more expressed levels of awareness. Beyond pure consciousness, Vedic Science describes three further higher states of consciousness: cosmic consciousness, refined 7

Maharshi Mahesh Yogi is an Indian Sanyasin who has taken the lead in spreading traditional Indian knowledge across the world. He is best known in the West for introducing and teaching Transcendental Meditation. 8 http://www.maharishi.org/overview/vedic_science.html 9 Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe, Consciousness and the Actor. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1996, p. 126.

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cosmic consciousness and unity consciousness. Cosmic consciousness is characterised by the co-existence of waking or dreaming or sleeping with pure consciousness; in this state of consciousness, pure consciousness witnesses the activities of waking, dreaming and sleeping. Meyer-Dinkgräfe provides descriptions of the experience when pure consciousness co-exists with waking, dreaming or sleeping. For example, tennis champion Billie Jean King describes her experience during a tennis match. I can almost feel it coming. It usually happens on one of those days when everything is just right. (…) It almost seems as though I’m able to transport myself beyond the turmoil of he court to some place of total peace and calm. Perfect shots extend into perfect matches. (…) I appreciate what my opponent is doing in a detached abstract way. Like an observer in the next room. (…) It is a perfect combination of [intense] action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquillity. When it happens I want to stop the match and grab the microphone and shout that’s what it’s all about, because it is. It’s not the big prize I’m going to win at the end of the match or anything else. It’s just having done something that’s totally pure and having experienced the perfect emotion. 10

I can relate many of my own experiences during performances to that of that report above. I remember a most recent experience that I had during my Kudiyattam performance in May 2005 at Aberystwyth, Wales. I was performing a Kudiyattam piece entitled ‘Poothanamoksham’ illustrating the story of God Krishna as an infant killing the demoness Poothana. Though Poothana was on her mission to kill baby Krishna, when she saw him, all kinds of motherly affection were aroused in her. The moment which was being enacted was Poothana’s first sight of baby Krishna; I always enacted this in a stunned stillness followed by expressing wonder with the face. This was also rehearsed time after time for the girls who accompanied me because one of them was providing running commentary to my performance. On that day, I altered the way Poothana saw baby Krishna by adding an element of devotion to it. I moved my hands to form a bowing gesture to baby Krishna in great devotion and shook myself as if in a dream to come to my real self (or the self of the character) before my hands completed that gesture. To my surprise all of this was involuntary action, which was totally unplanned and unrehearsed. When this was 10

Ibid., p. 132.

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being performed, I was watching myself performing but could not stop myself from proceeding with this. When I think of this moment, it was as if somebody was directing me to perform the ‘incomplete gesture’ to add more intensity and meaning to the sequences which followed. I was not thinking what to act but knew very well what followed next and had fullest confidence in myself though whatever I did was unrehearsed and totally spontaneous. I was completely appreciating myself and happy about this improvisation because it was undoubtedly appropriate to the progression of that performance piece. After the performance was over, the girl who was commentating the performance, and who had no idea of my experiences of improvisation, asked me why I made such a ‘mistake’ in spite of extensive rehearsal. The next higher state of consciousness after cosmic consciousness is refined cosmic consciousness where the experience of cosmic consciousness is maintained while perception reaches its most sublime level. Unity consciousness is the highest and final level of human consciousness where the subject/object divide disappears; a state where the knower becomes the sweetness (knowledge) itself rather than knowing the sweetness of sugar. The Bhagavat Gita describes unity consciousness thus: “The Yogi who is united in identity with the all pervading, infinite Consciousness, and sees unity everywhere, beholds the Self present in all beings, and all beings as assumed in the self”. 11 The duality between self (atman) and the absolute (brahman) thus dissolves, what remains is Unity (para-brahmam). Higher states of consciousness are also referred to, in Vedic Science, as enlightenment, or moksha. In terms of Bhartrihari, para is the ultimate, unmanifest level and pashyanti is the finest and subtlest state of any manifestation (which is liminal and hence always betwixt and between). Similarly, if pure consciousness resembles pashyanti and unity consciousness para, cosmic consciousness and refined cosmic consciousness could be considered as transition stages between para and pashyanti or the way in which para becomes pashyanti in the human cognitive process. 11

Ibid., p. 133.

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Meyer-Dinkgräfe further describes the qualities of an enlightened actor. The enlightened actor will be emotionally detached while acting and the actor will witness his own activities. However, an actor attains a ‘fully concentrated mind’ only in unity consciousness and such concentration will enable the actor to fully understand, appreciate and feel the emotions the character is supposed to be feeling. Meyer-Dinkgräfe further clarifies that an “actor, while completely appreciating the dramatist’s intentions, may go even beyond those intentions.” This means that the actor in a state of unity consciousness would explore the unexplored and implied meanings in the texts, thus adding to the original text of the dramatist. This observation is interesting since this argument is highly relevant and true to Indian performances, since actors normally improvise on the stage, which will be totally unrehearsed and unplanned. I have explained above one such experience in my own performance. Meyer-Dinkgräfe compares the acting techniques as described in the Natyashastra to yogic techniques: both are aimed at developing human mental potential. He suggests that Hatha Yoga techniques could be employed to gain the state of pure consciousness and eventually cosmic consciousness. He also mentions that the techniques of histrionic representation described in the Natyasastra are similar to Hatha Yoga: “through physical exercise, the actor’s nervous system is trained in a specific way to give rise to higher states of consciousness. It is only in such higher states of consciousness that the actor will be able to efficiently and fully represent the temperamental states (sattvika bhava).” 12 He suggests that Yoga helps an actor attain the quality of sattva in acting. Sattva means the ‘true essence’ or the ‘absolute entity’ where sat is the absolute sense of being, Brahman for instance. This is equivalent to unity consciousness, which is prior to the self’s division to duality. Asanas or the yogic physical exercises and pranayama or the yogic breathing exercises are related to angika abhinaya in the Natyasastra. Angika Abhinaya is the histrionic representation as prescribed by the Natyasastra. Meyer-Dinkgräfe also states that when an actor acts from the state of cosmic consciousness, the “apparent paradox of spontaneity and discipline disappears”. There are some very interesting observations made by Meyer12

Ibid., p. 152.

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Dinkgräfe which are highly relevant in the total argument in this book. I will be particularly looking at his views on spontaneity and discipline in the conclusion of this book. Acting, consciousness and breath The consideration of consciousness and breath in relation to acting is the most recent addition to the history of analysing the actor’s consciousness. Sreenath Nair in his book entitled Restoration of breath, Consciousness and Performance discusses human breathing as a category which produces meaning; he brings South Indian Siddha Yoga tradition into the current debate on the actor’s consciousness. Nair proposes that breathing is instrumental in attaining higher levels of consciousness. However, breathing in this context is not to be understood in terms of ordinary human respiration; rather, Nair introduces what he calls Restoration of Breath: a method of breathing described and practised in the South Indian Siddha Yoga system of meditation. According to Nair, Siddha Yoga offers a distinct system of breathing by means of which its importance and dynamics in attaining higher states of consciousness could be clearly established. Siddha Yoga as defined by Nair is “a combination of Saivite spirituality and the practical knowledge of yogic breathing techniques of ancient India passed down through a lineage of Siddhas”. 13 Saivism as a philosophical system developed during the Indus valley civilization is a pre-Vedic body of spiritual thought and practice that permeates into later, philosophical strands such as Vedas and Upanishads, aesthetic theories, religion, meditation practice, Tantric Yoga and even Buddhism. Worshipping Shiva in the form of a phallic symbol is central to Saivism. The South Indian Siddha tradition is an offshoot of the Indian Saivite tradition and part of Tantric-Yoga movement that spread throughout South Asia, extending from Tibet to Sri Lanka. The distinctive element that makes Siddha Yoga different from other schools of Yoga is its focus on breath-related practice. 14

13 Sreenath Nair, Restoration of Breath: Consciousness and performance. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007, p. 179. 14 Ibid., pp. 101-2.

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Nair further explains the basic principles and understanding of breathing according to the Siddha Yoga tradition. The human respiratory system operates through three paths: left, right and intermittent middle path; at any one time breath flows predominantly only through one of the nostrils. The operating nostril changes intermittently from left to right and from right to left and stays in the middle path in each changeover. This pattern has an impact on the human psychophysicality and hence the proper manipulation of breath offers perfect control over the entire psycho-physical functioning. Nair has also provided elaborate details of the ways in which each nostril is connected to the functioning of various secretions, its apparent interaction with the brain and the autonomous nervous system. Similar understanding of breath is also found in Hatha Yoga, which maintains that a ‘movement’ in breath will cause a similar ‘movement’ in the mind; if breath does not ‘move’, then the mind does not move either. A Yogi thus reaches the being of Siva (eternal or infinitude; in other words beyond the natural human patterns of birth and death) and hence breath needs to be restrained. 15

A disturbing movement of breath causes a disturbance of the mind and hence the manipulation and control of breathing (which in turn controls the mind) is what is cardinal to the meditation practice. The underlying meaning of this passage confirms the philosophical practice that Siddha Yoga maintains and proposes. Concerning to the middle path breathing, Nair explains that it naturally occurs in the human body apart from the changeovers of breath from left to right and vice versa during sexual intercourse, when a person is in deep sleep and also in the process of dying. While all these are involuntary functions of our breathing body, there are ways in which breath can be restrained or internalised in its middle path in order cut across the boundaries of daily consciousness and hence the daily self. This state of breath is what Nair calls Restoration of breath. As he explains this: Restoration of breath is an approach to breath. It denotes a particular system of breathing. It invokes an upward and downward movement of breath within the internal channels without any outward trace: the two nostril modes, the left and the right are absent when you re-store breath. There is a constant flow 15

Balananda Swamikal, HathaYogavidhi. Kollam: S.T Reddyar and Sons, 1930, p. 6.

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of air within the internal system, but it is not perceptible to the sensory perceptions of an observer. In this sense, you cannot feel and measure the outer flow of the air when restoration of breath is in operation. 16

Nair explores the subtlest of human physical manifestations which plays a pivotal role in transforming daily human consciousness to the higher levels of extra-daily consciousness. The perceptive awareness of daily self functions when breath flows through nostrils; constant flow of breath is the thread which connects self to the world or the other. When the outer breath disappears or is restored, the divisions between self and the other disappear; the daily consciousness alters and gives way to higher levels of consciousness. To quote Nair, “Restoration of breath as a technique uses the middle path breathing to internalise breathing intentionally to achieve Samadhi, a state of pure consciousness… Middle path breathing destroys the individual consciousness of daily modes of time while extending it into time-less infinite”. 17 Nair here links breath, time and consciousness. If ordinary human breathing forms the base of temporality, its restoring will cause the ordinary sense of time to disappear. The divisions between self and other exist only in the daily, cognitive levels of spatio-temporal awareness which is metered by the repetitive sequences of in-breath and out-breath; when this sequential pattern disappears and breath is channelled into the middle path, the daily sense of time disappears and is replaced with a different sense of time: Restoration of breath is a movement upward and downward through the middle path which incorporates or unifies the other two modes, left and right, to create a timeless sense of infinitude and a field of vital energy within. This act of internalisation creates a shift in the individual perception of ordinary time by incorporating left and right nostril modes. In other words, the disappearance of left and right nostril modes brings a crucial shift in the individual’s sense of time. 18

Nair further explains twenty-four patterns of sequential breathing known as Gati, literally directions “consisting mostly of sounds of birds and animals, which vibrate at different parts of the body”. Eighteen of these movements are to be performed in a sitting posture 16

Sreenath Nair, Restoration of Breath: Consciousness and performance. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007, p. 182. 17 Ibid., p. 182. 18 Ibid., pp. 184-5.

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and the remaining six are to be combined with physical movements. Time and hours for practising each of these are also strictly specified. The sequence which combines breath and physical movements is called nadanam, literally dance. During this process breath is focussed and properly internalised. Nothing more is mentioned about this system in this book though it is very interesting information from a practical point of view. Nair also brings a fund of information on breath-related theories and practice available in various philosophical traditions across Asia and introduces several texts containing valuable information on the links between breath, body and consciousness. Moreover, he also links Sankara’s Advaita Vedanta philosophy and Abhinavagupta’s interpretation of rasa theory from the standpoint of Kashmiri Saivism. However, a major drawback of this thesis is the absence of any performance technique which incorporates the practice of Restoration of breath into its performance structure. Restoration of breath as a system is valid in performance only if its practical application is positively tested and successfully employed by actors. There are also other relevant questions such as how breath could be restored when delivering lines in a play. It would be interesting to see how this ageold and specific meditation practice adapts to suit the requirements of performers of today. Nair mentions nadanam, which is a skilful combination of meditation practice and physical movements. This assures the fact that restoration of breath is possible and could be integrated in physical movements. But again another significant problem in this context is whether a performer needs to be trained like a Siddha yogi to master this technique; this poses further important questions such as how far it would be possible to relate and understand performance in terms of meditative techniques – in other words, would it be possible to isolate potential meeting points between meditative practice and performance practice. In this context it also worth considering whether a performer should necessarily undertake the training of a yogi to perform some yogic techniques. Nair briefly mentions that Kudiyattam could be a possible system which has integrated restoration of breath in its performance body, but he has not examined any of its performance techniques to prove this point. I will be examining some

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of the Kudiyattam techniques in the light of restoration of breath later in my book. I have so far examined the arguments in terms of consciousness as explained and argued by Yarrow and Malekin, Meyer-Dinkgräfe and Nair. We find intimate influences of Indian philosophy in these arguments, though Nair draws heavily on the practical aspects of Siddha Yoga in forming his arguments. What is lacking here is a practical method, a theatre practice for example which one could examine as an example. Malekin and Yarrow are trying to propose a practical method which represents their philosophy of practice and MeyerDinkgräfe makes references to the Natyasastra and few Indian performances when forming his arguments. Nair’s arguments are of course based on the principles of Yoga, nevertheless there is no theatre or dance form that he mentions as a precise example of his method – here I am not forgetting that he argues Kudiyattam as a possible performance that is important in this context. Performance studies on the other hand is approaching actor’s consciousness indirectly. Schechner and Barba have undertaken important pioneering works in this discipline. I am examining some of their arguments in the following section. The actor’s consciousness from the perspective of performance studies Performance studies is not directly linked to the current theoretical discussions of consciousness studies; however, a deeper analysis of its discursive fields reveal definite links between both. Performance studies also draws heavily on Asian performance theories and practice, the Natyasastra and Zeami for instance, in formulating some of its basic principles along with borrowing anthropological and philosophical terms. Schechner and Barba, who were among the pioneers in developing performance studies are important in the context of my book primarily because of their interest in some of the Indian themes and also because some of their basic arguments are closely linked with the consciousness theories.

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Richard Schechner In his enquiry into defining ‘performativity’, Schechner has described some important terms which are necessarily central in analysing performance. Approaching the issue of performance from the standpoint of anthropology, he draws a wide spectrum of activities which could be defined or understood as performance. Schechner maintains performances occur in at least the following fields of life: in every day life – cooking, socialising, “just living” in the arts in sports and other popular entertainments in business in technology in sex in ritual – sacred and secular in play. 19

However, he also warns performance researchers against any kind of generalisations that might creep into this discipline since as embodied practices each and every performance is specific and different from each other. He takes the example of wrestling as practised in Japan and America and states that the conventions and culture governing these two systems of wrestling are different; he applies this example generally to all other kinds of performances: Both sumo and what occurs under the banner of the World Wrestling Federation are “wrestling”; each enacts the values of its particular culture. What is true of wrestling is also true of the performing arts, political demonstrations, the roles of everyday life (doctor, mother, cop etc.) and all other performances. 20

Performance thus is a very broad category to Schechner, which encompasses everyday human activities as well as theatre, dance or art. Moving on to some of his arguments, I shall examine the following terms closely in this section basically because they are largely consciousness-related.

19

Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 25. 20 Ibid., p. 30.

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a. Restoration of behaviour b. Liminality c. Transportation/transformation and d. Rasaesthetics. Restoration of behaviour Schechner argues that most of the human actions are ‘twice behaved behaviours’: we are only repeating those actions that are culturally grounded and expected and contextually correct. To be precise, ‘restored behaviour’ is a human behaviour either “as I am told to do” or “as I have learned”. 21 Schechner further explains that restored behaviour could be the combination of one or several ‘strips of life’, ranging from a specific ritual (marriage ceremony, death rites etc…) to an everyday action of waving goodbye. Restoration of behaviour thus displaces any originality of human actions that we normally claim since a pre-existant original life strip can possibly be traced back to any individual human action. He further states that there are multiple selves within any individual self and the ways one’s selves behave are connected to the ways people perform others in dramas, dances and rituals and also: … if people did not ordinarily come into contact with their multiple selves, the art of acting and the experience of trance possession would not be possible…. Rituals, games, and the performances in everyday life are authored by the collective “Anonymous” or the “Tradition”. Individuals given credit for inventing rituals or games usually turn out to be synthesizers, recombiners, compliers or editors of already practised actions. 22

Similarly in the specific context of performance, actors are transforming the various forms of social behaviour – strips of life – onto the stage. “Performance in the restored behaviour sense means never for the first time, always for the second to the nth time: twicebehaved behaviour”. 23 Schechner, though not directly addressing the issues of stylized theatre in terms of restored behaviour, also mentions that “it could be actions marked off by aesthetic conventions as in theatre, dance and music”. In this sense, “restored behaviour can bring 21

Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., p. 28. 23 Ibid., p. 29. 22

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into play non-ordinary reality as in the Balinese trance-dance enacting the struggle between the demoness Rangda and the Lion-god Barong”. 24 Schechner scantily addresses the problems relating to restored behaviour in relation to stylistic theatre such as Kudiyattam or Kathakali. It is not clear how his theory of restored behaviour is applicable to the complex levels of the actor’s consciousness at least in the specific context of Kudiyattam. Kudiyattam actors learn specific performance techniques such as shaking the eyebrows, movement of eyes and several other elements of histrionic representation. The whole body (and mind) is set to behave in a very specific, stylized pattern in order to displace any realistic expressions. Of course, the expressions represented are necessarily every-day emotions such as sadness or anger or shyness. But it needs to be closely analysed if they fall in line with the restoration of behaviour as it is generally understood. Restoration of behaviour as a theory is firmly based on the assumption that any social behaviour in the everyday life is ‘twice behaved behaviour’ because it is culture-specific and encoded deeply within our consciousness. In the case of realistic theatre acting we can find that these actions maintain closer allegiance to the natural behaviours that we exhibit in our daily lives. This is because of the histrionics which are largely realistic in nature. Stylized theatre on the other hand is essentially based on stylized physical, speech and acting techniques that are normally acquired by actors by subjecting themselves to long years of training. Though Schechner briefly touches upon the aesthetic conventions and stylized theatres such as Balinese trace-dance I am doubtful about the relevance of restoration of behaviour in their practical principles. I will now look at a specific example from Kudiyattam to analyse this further. Kudiyattam students learn a whole range of physical movements including facial, eye, hand, and leg movements during their long years of apprenticeship. All these movements are also used in Kudiyattam performances. A student is instructed to gently shake his eyebrows, move his eyes in circular motion culm24

Ibid., p. 28.

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inating in a side glance, and bend down the head slightly to enact female erotic love. They learn to aesthetically co-ordinate these complicated physical movements by practising them for several years. They further learn these movements by carefully observing the performances of established performers. Shyness is also socially acceptable and customary to Indian women; hence these movements will contribute and justify one’s own perception and understanding of shyness associated with female erotic love. Students practise this in such detail that the very reference to female erotic love will stimulate these movements in performance. Here the movements are restored in the sense that it is the restoration of the restored that is in a way taking place. Stylized body techniques as described above may be considered as twice behaved behaviours since the actors are repeating actions which are mastered by years of perseverance. In the next sub-section I will examine Barba and his arguments in terms of the actors’ extradaily actions, which continuously adhere to the physical principles of stylized theatre (consistent inconsistency). He discerns a second nature in the performers. In this sense, the actors could be considered as restoring their learned behaviours, which become part of their daily personae. On the other hand many of these highly stylized movements are informed by the social codes of behaviour: in India shyness is naturally associated to the nature of women. However, the histrionic representation of female shyness does not comply with the daily ‘strip of life’ even that of an Indian. Although restoration of behaviour in this sense may be partially applicable to stylized theatre like Kudiyattam, I am not fully able to justify its significance in the stylized theatre traditions because of their delineation in terms of representation. There is a real potential for a very long discussion on the Restoration of behaviour here which also opens the requirement of redefining and clarifying the term stylization and stylized theatre. However, I am not entering into such prolonged discussion since that in itself could be another book; however, this is an area which I would pursue in future. Moving further with the analysis of Schechner’s arguments I proceed to the concept of liminality.

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Liminality Liminality as a term is borrowed into performance studies from Victor Turner’s approach to anthropology. Here, liminality is a transformational phase in the life of a person, which is ‘between and betwixt’. It is a stage of life in which people pass from one stage to another, such as birth, puberty, marriage, parenthood, and death. Each of these passages of time consist of three phases – pre-liminal, liminal and post liminal and out of these three, the key phase in liminal – “a period of time when a person is betwixt and between social categories and personal identities” 25 During the liminal phase, the actual work of rites of passage takes place. At this time, specially marked spaces, transitions and transformations occur…. Persons are stripped of their social world; they enter a time-place where they are not-this-not-that, neither here nor there, in the midst of a journey from one social self to another… during the liminal phase, persons are inscribed with their new identities and initiated into their new powers. 26

In another words, liminal moments are the turning points in one’s life, a point which transforms the realities of life permanently. The practices and life style of that particular person are changed for ever when he/she has gone through that unique phase in life. Schechner is not extending this term into the theatre discourse in his writings. However, liminality is highly relevant in the life of a Kudiyattam performer both male and female. According to the accounts of Margi Madhu, a leading Kudiyattam actor, a male performer, Chakyar becomes a Chakyar only after making his debut performance, which needs to be followed by a ceremonial sacred thread ritual. Similarly, a female performer in Kudiyattam, known as Nangyar, is a Nangyar only after wearing a long piece of cotton cloth around her waist in a typical manner on the night of her debut performance. Both these rituals mark the rebirth of an ordinary human to be qualified to perform their caste roles. The in-between state is what the actor experiences during and prior to the performance. The actor at the same time being a character is also ‘not-not’ a character. The actor’s consciousness is not a daily 25 26

Ibid., p. 58. Ibid., p. 58.

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consciousness since he is halfway between himself and the character. The physical actions complete the process of characterisation but they have not begun yet. He is a mere ready-ness which is clearly liminal. The actor is betwixt and between daily consciousness and extra-daily consciousness – this is a transitional stage. Pre-expression is characteristically marked by the between-ness since the actor is ready for action but has not yet begun it. During the performance the actor experiences the witnessing self which appreciates and oversees all his actions. He is also in a liminal state since there are different selves participating in a performance – witnessing self, performing self and finally the character’s self. Related to this is Schechner’s theory of transportation and transformation. Transformation/Transportation Schechner formulates the theories of transportation and transformation as an extension of liminality. His major argument in relation to these two terms is that transformation occurs in a liminal state as in a ritual, and that in a performative process, it is the transportation that is taking place. According to Schechner From a spectator’s point of view, one enters into the experience, is “moved” or “touched” and is then dropped off about where she or he entered. For performers, the situation is more complex and long-lived. 27

A transformative experience is a kind of process where a performer becomes a Chakyar, for example. This is a transformational experience which impacts his/her cognitive process and identity for ever. In this sense, transformation is to be understood as a permanent change whereas transportation as a kind of journey or a short trip starting from a particular location coming back to the very same location: after taking a short sight-seeing trip, towards the end of the trip, the traveller reaches back to the same spot where he/she started that journey. Schechner takes an example of a tribe called Gahuku in New Guinea to justify his point, describing how a young boy was initiated to become a Gahuku man, describing the days’-long initiation rituals 27

Ibid., p. 63.

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which the boy had to pass through and how the boy was transformed into a Gahuku man in the end. A further example Schechner provides is of how people are affected by trance for a short duration and come back to the ordinary life after the short period of being in trance. He then applies this to performance and says Actors, athletes, dancers, shamans, entertainers, classical musicians – all train, practice, and/or rehearse in order to temporarily “leave themselves” and be fully in” whatever they are performing…. A theatrical performance takes place between “not me… (and) not not me”. 28

Schechner argues that transportation is what occurs to both spectators and performers in a performance. Schechner observes that actors and spectators are not quite transforming during a performance as a Gahuku man for instance. He also argues that both actors and spectators get dropped off at the same point where they began their journeys from. If this is the case, Barba’s consistent inconsistency theory is not applicable. If the performance principles are observed as becoming the second nature of an actor he can not be assumed to be totally unaffected by a performance. As far as Schechner is concerned, transportation starts only from the point when a performer starts his performance. If this is the case, how does he account for pre-expressivity? The trance possession of a shaman is also considered as transportation. If this is the case, how do we distinguish between the trance-possession of the member of particular community who went through a transformation process (eg: Gahuku men) and another person who has not been subjected to such a process? These are valid questions, which problematize Schechner’s theory of transportation/transformation. Being an actor myself I cannot confirm that my self stays completely unaffected after a performance and I come back to the same point I was at prior to my performance (or even before I start the dressing up). Rasaesthetics Inspired by the concept of rasa, Schechner developed what he terms rasaesthetics. According to Schechner it represents an approach 28

Ibid., p. 64.

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in performance studies that goes beyond performance art. In his search for a more than just visual experience that of theatre – something more of a sublime sort – he directs his enquiry into an experience of a rasic, or a spectator engaging with a spectacle from a different level of consciousness: What NS [the Natyasastra] supplies are the concrete details of that style, which at its core is not literary but theatrical, not plot-dominated or driven. Indian classical theatre and dance does not emphasize clear beginnings, middles and ends but favours more “open narration”, a menu of many delectables – offshoots, side-tracks, pleasurable digressions – not all of which can be savored at a sitting. 29

Schechner here stresses the importance that Indian theatre or dance assign to theatrical pleasure or the experience of rasa. Moving on further, Schechner mentions that a rasic performer, during the course of a performance “opens a liminal space to allow further play – improvisation, variation and enjoyment”. 30 Here the performer is the first spectator herself – the performing self and the observing self, all in one. The performer thus does not become affected by the character but remains a ‘partaker’ in this process. The performer, like other partakers, appreciates the emotions of the character that she is playing along with being moved by her own feeling towards those emotions. Thus, the spectators are empathizing with the performer rather than with the plot unlike responding sympathetically to the character and the plot in Western theatre. This powerful, liminal space of immense freedom created mainly by the performer, is at the core of Schechner’s Rasaesthetics, in other words the experience of rasa. Schechner’s argument parallels the concept of ‘enlightened actor’ who witnesses his own actions at the same time as appreciating it as proposed by Meyer-Dinkgräfe. Though Schechner and MeyerDinkgräfe approach the same issue from the perspectives of two different disciplines, the enquiry is basically consciousness related in nature. 29 Richard Schechner, Performance Theory. London and New York: Routledge, 2003, p. 345. 30 Ibid., p. 356.

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Eugenio Barba Eugenio Barba’s “Theatre Anthropology is the study of the pre-expressive scenic behaviour upon which different genres, styles, roles and personal or collective traditions are all based”. 31 The term ‘anthropology’ is not used in the sense of cultural anthropology but refers to a “field of investigation” into the “pre-expressive behaviour of the human being” in performance. From his analysis of the performances among cross-cultural traditions, Barba identified some of the ‘recurring principles’ common to performances across various cultures and disciplines and devised certain terminologies helpful in analysing performance. He divided performers into two categories, North Pole performers and South Pole performers and then identified the relevant performance characteristics for both. The terms that Barba coined are essentially related to physique and its physicality and he does not directly address the issues related to actor’s consciousness. However, a second reading of some of his principles suggests subtler implications of such principles on the actor’s consciousness. I am here also examining any traces of suggestions in line with altered state of consciousness in Barba’s findings since that is the specific enquiry of this book. Daily and extra daily Daily and extra-daily is the first theory that Barba postulates in his effort to analyse performance; the rest of the principles he proposes as governing performance are based on this fundamental principle. His observation of the North Pole performers, dancers, mimes of the Decroux school and also those from Asian tradition reveals that they possess a quality of energy that draws the spectators towards them, even when they are involved in “giving a cold, technical demonstration”. As he explains: The body is used in a substantially different way in daily life than in performance situations. In the daily context, body technique is conditioned by culture, social status, profession. But in performance, there exists a different 31 Eugenio Barba, The paper canoe. Tr. Richard Fowler. London and New York: Routledge, 2003, p. 9.

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body technique. It is therefore possible to distinguish between a daily technique and an extra-daily technique. 32

He explains that daily techniques are rather unconscious and functional and that the extra-daily techniques “do not respect the habitual conditionings of the use of the body” 33 . Also, the daily body techniques generally follow the “principle of minimum effort that is obtaining a maximum result with a minimum expenditure of energy”. 34 Extra-daily techniques, on the other hand, are based on the ‘wasting of energy’. Daily techniques may be culturally specific, whether people walk with or without shoes or whether they kiss with their nose or lips for instance. Different from the ‘incredible body’ of an acrobat, extra-daily techniques “literally put the body into form, rendering it artificial/artistic but believable”. 35 It is noticeable here that Barba in fact does not define extradaily, all he says is that it is neither daily nor acrobatic. Then what is extra-daily? Barba says that he derived this dichotomy of daily and extra-daily from two words that the Indian dancer Sanjukta Panigrahi said him, lokadharmi and natyadharmi. As she explained this to him, lokadharmi means daily life and natyadharmi means behaviour in dance. These two terms are found in the Natyasastra when Bharata, the author of this text explains rasa. As he says “ Lokadharmi and Natyadharmi, there are two dharmi’s as remembered.” 36 Later in the NS Bharata details what LD and ND are. LD is the natya that represents a. only normal or ordinary activities of our lives; b. that which is devoid of any ‘beautification of physical actions’ (the series of physical movements as normally found in Indian performances) c. expressing only the performer’s own thoughts and not those of a character and 32

Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 15. 34 Ibid., p. 16. 35 Ibid., p. 16. 36 Bharatamuni, Natyasastra, tr. K.P.Narayana Pisharodi. Kerala Sahitya Akademi: Trichur. 1987, p. 243. 33

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d. the theatre that has a mixing of various men and women. 37 ND refers to elements of dance, music and percussion, imitation and representation of the words and emotions of others and superhuman actions. I have only given a summary of what Bharata wrote about LD and ND; there is however, a prolonged discussion in the later sections of NS that further explains how and why ND is significant in natya. Bharata’s above explanation does not seem to demarcate LD and ND in line with their common interpretation of realistic and stylized. However, the most common translation and interpretation of these two terms are realistic versus stylized or daily versus extra-daily (as in Barba). What is the importance of stylization (if at all ND is meant to be interpreted as stylization) in acting? I will be exploring this area in my next chapter which mainly discusses Indian approaches to the actor’s consciousness. Consistent inconsistency Consistent inconsistency is an extension of stylization. Barba identifies risks of two errors in limiting ourselves to stylization: ignoring their kinaesthetic effectiveness and losing one’s own ability to marvel at and be curious about watching a performance from another performance tradition. It is interesting to observe how some performers abandon the techniques of daily behaviour even when they have to carry out simple actions (standing up, sitting down, walking, looking, speaking, touching, taking). But even more interesting is the fact that this inconsistency, or initial lack of adherence to the economy of daily practice, is then organized into a new, systematic consistency. The puzzling artificiality that is the characteristic of the extra-daily techniques elaborated by North Pole performers leads to another quality of energy. The performer, through long practice and continued training, fixes this ‘inconsistency’ by a process of innovations, develops new neuro-muscular reflexes which result in a renewed body culture, a ‘second nature’, a new consistency, artificial but marked with bios… 37

This is my own translation of a Malayalam version of NS as interpreted by a well known scholar of NS known as K. P. Narayana Pisharodi.

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When their craftsmanship is of high quality, they transform a codified system into a ‘second nature’, whose logic is equivalent to the logic of organic life. 38 Barba here is not directly addressing actor’s consciousness, though this observation is highly relevant from a consciousness studies point of view. I argue this because some of the body postures and some specific muscular movements are known to create a different kind of consciousness in actors. For example, standing in the bent-knee posture (explained in the second chapter), creates various muscular tensions along with generating preparedness, and a total ‘charging’ of the body. What it does is to create a different breathing pattern. Thus, a well- trained performer who is systematically trained in maintaining the ‘bent knee posture’ will be capable of adhering to the physical principles of this posture while undertaking day-to-day activities like cooking or walking. During such daily activities the actor need not maintain the posture since he would have attained skills in adhering to the physical principles without maintaining the posture. There is a definite shift of consciousness which is necessarily associated with such behaviours. Thus what Barba argues with reference to consistent inconsistency is true of actor’s body as well as consciousness. Pre-expressivity and presence “Theatre anthropology postulates that there exists a basic level of organisation common to all performers and defines this level as pre-expressive”. 39 Barba’s enquiry throughout his research was bound to the pre-expressivity of a performer. As the word itself suggests, it is a state before expression but not merely a state of body or mind but a very pragmatic field of action. If so then how is the preexpressive defined? The level that deals with how to render the actor’s energy, scenically alive, that is, with how the actor can become a presence which immediately attracts 38

Ibid., p. 26. Eugenio Barba, Nicola Savarese, Ed.Richard Gough, Tr. Richard Fowler A dictionary of theatre anthropology: The secret art of the performer. London and New York: Routledge, 1999, p. 187

39

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Kudiyattam Theatre and Actor’s Consciousness the spectator’s attention, is the pre-expressive level …. The pre-expressive level, thought of in this way is therefore an operative level: not a level which can be separated from expression, but a pragmatic category, a praxis, the aim of which, during the process, is to strengthen the performer’s scenic bios. 40

Barba maintains that pre-expressivity is that quality which utilises principles for the acquisition of presence during performance. It is understood as an active agent in expression, which is contained by the performer in its totality; a quality which he gains also by means of regular and rigorous practice of his performance. Barba explains it also as a state of readiness or ability to act and as a life ready to be transformed into precise actions and reactions. However, he does not try to explain how a performer reaches this state or what moulds a performer to this state and also if the pre-expressive is alike to all the performers or if there are variations. However, for Barba, there are some common principles governing pre-expressivity of which a ‘fictive body’ and a ‘decided body’ are important. Such principles of the pre-expressive are normally found in codified genres where the technique which puts the body in form is codified independently of the result/meaning. As he says Fictive body means an intermediate state of body between action and preaction, a condition of mind (and body) immediately preceding the entry to stage to perform for instance. He is performing his absence since the daily self has given way to the expressive self, however, not yet expressing – a very liminal state of mind. This is a “‘fictive zone’ which does not perform a fiction but which simulates a kind of transformation of the daily body at the pre-expressive level”. 41

A ‘decided body’ is a codified body. Any basic posture of a performance is a decided body which is ready to leap to action. Barba mentions a study of the relation between martial arts and personality which found that the learning of a martial art by means of the constant repetition of physical actions leads students to a change of their awareness of themselves and the use of their bodies: One objective of martial arts is to learn to be present at the very moment of an action. This type of presence is extremely important for performers who wish

40 41

Ibid., p. 188. Ibid., p. 195.

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to be able to recreate, every night, that quality of energy which makes them alive in the spectator’s eyes. 42

The concept of presence is found over and over in Barba’s writings. Though he does not clearly describe what presence is, it can be understood as a quality of the performer’s body that is charged with energy. Presence is also used to denote the readiness of the performer or that quality in him which makes a marking impact on the audience. Barba’s findings, though from the perspective of an onlooker, are highly significant for various reasons. Primarily these were the first of their kind in the genre of performance studies. Secondly most of these are derived from his close interaction with Eastern performers. But most importantly these are closely related to the questions addressed by consciousness studies in terms of the actor and his consciousness. Barba often leaves some of his terms inadequately explained – presence and pre-expressivity for instance. Barba’s terms sometimes are parallel to those of Schechner’s; pre-expressivity, for instance is the actor’s liminal phase where he is betwixt and between. But at the same time Barba’s terms mark a stark difference to that of Schechner; Schechner is based firmly in the methodology of cultural anthropology, especially due to Victor Turner’s influence. Barba’s methodology, though anthropological in nature does not borrow terminology from anthropology; on the other hand it is necessarily performance based. Finally in this section I examine the approach to actor’s consciousness particularly from the perspective of theatre practitioners: Stanislavski and Grotowski. Artaud is another name that is important from a consciousness studies perspective but he has not developed any actor training method comparable to Stanislavski and Grotowski and hence this section focuses on how these two approached the actor’s consciousness.

42

Ibid., p. 197.

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The actor’s consciousness from the perspective of theatre practitioners In this section I am looking at the actor training methods developed by Stanislavski and Grotowski, mainly because of their emphasis on taking acting to higher levels of consciousness. Stanislavski Stanislavski’s system is largely aimed at reaching the subconscious mind in order to tap the reservoir of our imagination. 43 This is to allow the actor to feel and live the character as fully as possible every time he/she portrays the character. Stanislavski is not aware of or concerned with the higher levels of consciousness in acting. However, Sharon Marie Carnicke argues that Stanislavski, influenced by his knowledge of Yoga, imagines communication as the transmitting and receiving of rays of energy, much like psychic radio waves. Our breathing puts us in touch with these rays. With every exhalation, we send rays out into the environment, and with every inhalation we receive energy back into our bodies. 44 Note the stress on the relation between breathing and rays of energy. Later, Artaud considered theatre as a frightful transfer of forces from body to body. 45 Stanislavski argues in the context of the non-verbal communication of the subtext (described as anything that a character thinks or feels but can not put into words) and states very clearly that actors communicate subtext through body language, the cast of eyes, intonations and pauses. Stanislavski appeals to his actors to improvise on situations that involve naturally silent moments in their effort to refine the nonverbal communication. The importance here is on the meditative quality an actor should develop that contributes to his preexpressivity, a transitory level which is beyond the subconscious 43

Constantin Stanislavski, Tr. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood, An actor prepares. London: Methuen, 1988, pp. 13-16. 44 Sharon Marie Carnicke, “Stanislavsky’s System”, in, ed. Alison Hodge, Twentieth Century Actor Training. London and New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 21-22. 45 Antonin Artaud, Theatre and its Double, tr. Victor Corti. London: Calder & Boyars, 1970, p. 30.

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mind. Stanislavski also maintains that actors should incorporate words only after grounding firmly on non-verbal means. Stanislavski also prescribes a step by step method to manipulate the rays of energy: 1.

2.

3.

4.

Close your eyes, relax, and feel your breath moving through your body. Visualise the breath as warm, yellow sunlight, energising you. As you inhale, the light is travelling from the top of your head down to your toes; as you exhale, reverse the direction of the breath. Close your eyes, relax, and feel your breath moving through your body. As you inhale, breathe the energy in from the surrounding room; as you exhale, send the energy back out into the furthest corner. Stand apart from the group, hands held with palms outward. Radiate energy from your hands to someone else in the room. Does anyone in the room feel a transmission? One actor stands behind another in a single file. The person behind concentrates on a simple command (open the door, sit down, shake my hand), then radiates it to the person in front, who carries out the command. 46

The focus here is on the basic energy levels that could be reached through manipulating the breathing patterns. Not a lot is known of Stanislavski’s awareness about or enquiry into altered levels of consciousness in performance. However, his reference to, and training of manipulating rays of energy, and his emphasis on the silent moments in non-verbal acting of the subtext mark clear distinctions from his other methods. Grotowski Grotowski’s ‘poor theatre’, in the words of Peter Brook, is the only “avant-garde theatre whose poverty is not a drawback, where shortage of money is not an excuse for inadequate means which automatically undermine the experiments”. 47 Grotowski stripped of theatre of all its richness such as sculpture, lighting, make-up and architecture and presented only the absolutely necessary: the actor and his body. Grotowski believed that rich theatre depended on ‘artistic kleptomania’ which drew richly on other disciplines to construct hybrid-

46

Sharon Marie Carnicke, “Stanislavsky’s System”, in, ed. Alison Hodge, Twentieth Century Actor Training. London and New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 22. 47 Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor theatre, London: Methuen Drama, 1991, p. 11.

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spectacles. Poor theatre, he believes, delivers ‘pure impulse’ in theatre. Grotowski did not believe in teaching actors acting techniques, which he considered mere ‘bags of tricks’ that block the actor’s true expression. Poor Theatre, also known as via negativa, aims to eradicate the blocks. Rather, Grotowski demands that the actor sacrifices himself completely to the theatre. Grotowski considers this as the integration of all the actor’s psychic and bodily powers which emerge from the most intimate layers of his being and his instinct, springing forth in a sort of “translumination”. 48

Grotowski’s theatre laboratory considered the core of the theatre to be the personal and scenic techniques of the actor. He believed that theatre existed in the direct communication or flux between actor and spectator. Spectators sometimes were included in the performance by subjecting them to a sense of pressure and limitation of space or by deliberately playing among the spectators. This avoiding of dichotomy was a very important aspect of Grotowski’s productions. Theatre was necessarily a journey into one’s own self, into the truth of life and a process in which “what is dark in us slowly becomes transparent” – in terms of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 49 tamasoma jyotir gamaya, leads towards light from darkness. All these positions imply a ‘sacred’ element in Grotowski’s theatre. He appeals to his actors to be ‘holy’, a type of secular saint to accomplish an act of ‘self-penetration’. Spectators, for Grotowski were equally part of the process; he expected them to have spiritual needs and expected them to always analyse themselves through the performance. In this sense spectators also were expected to be ‘holy’. According to Meyer-Dinkgräfe, Grotowski’s ultimate goal for both

48

Ibid., p. 16. The Sanskrit term Upanishad means sitting down beside. Upanishads are a collection of Hindu philosophical discourse which are generally considered as interpretations of Vedas. There are over 200 Upanishads, of which Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya are the oldest, dating back to the 8th century BC. 49

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actor and spectator was a transcendental state of consciousness 50 where the acting and reception originated from the very same intentions – satisfying the spiritual needs. Grotowski asserts that the term ‘holy’ is not to be understood from a religious perspective; it only implies that the actor eliminates any disturbing elements so as to overstep every conceivable limit. Being true to oneself and to one’s own actions is what Grotowski expects ‘holy’ actors to do; he believed that the prerequisite for the actor is to be able to give oneself to theatre totally as one gives oneself in love. This act, according to Grotowski cannot be achieved by means of technical skills which serve only as a ‘bag of tricks’. According to Lisa Wolford, what is central to Grotoswki’s conception of performance was the ‘total act’ which is “a culminating moment in the actor’s role in which s/he is able to transcend the performance score and the technical demands of the part, revealing a truth that is paradoxically both personal and universal”. 51 Grotowski believed that the elimination of any blocks brings forth the true nature of the actor and he will be able to perform the total act which transcends the performance to higher spiritual levels. Grotowski further states that The actor who in the special process of discipline and self-sacrifice, self penetration and moulding, is not afraid to go beyond all normally acceptable limits, attains a kind of inner harmony and peace of mind52 .

Here the utmost importance is assigned to sacrifice, pain and the satisfaction attained as a result of this which very much echo the Christian values. Though Grotowski does not use ‘holy’ in a religious sense the word carries an underlying religious fervour. 53 He discards any material benefits assigned to actors in theatre, such as success or fame. Unlike Stanislavski’s actors who were concerned with the 50 Daniel Meyer-Dinkgrafe, Consciousness and the Actor. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1996, p. 45. 51 Lisa Wolford, “Grotowski’s vision of the actor”, in, ed. Alison Hodge, Twentieth Century Actor Training. London and New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 197. 52 Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor theatre, London: Methuen Drama, 1991, p. 45. 53 Jennifer Lavy, Theoretical foundation of Grotowski’s Via Negativa and Conjunctio Oppositorum in The Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol4, No.2, Fall 2005. http://www.rtjournal.org/vol_4/no_2/lavy2.html

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character, feeling and role, Grotowski’s actors were only concerned with sacrifice, truth or pain. Within these parameters, Grotowski describes what he means by training. Grotowski considers an untrained actor who has difficulty in opening his/her larynx consciously while breathing. He/she will be blocked because of his/her incapacity to do this properly and effecttively. Grotowski further says: If an actor is conscious of his body, he can not penetrate and reveal himself. The body must be freed from all resistance. The body must virtually cease to exist… He must learn to perform all this unconsciously in the culminating phases of his acting and this, in its turn, is something which demands a new series of exercises. 54

Grotowski maintains that the exercises that he devised are not techniques in themselves but only a set of exercises which are aimed at eliminating the blocks. However, every exercise necessarily is a technique, which has a set pattern to be followed in strict discipline. Though Grotowski dismisses the prevalence of any technique in his actor training, a reading of his actor training patterns confirms the use of various techniques for attaining perfection in certain body kinetics. For instance: … the type of training for the facial musculature used by the actor from the classical Indian theatre, Kathakali is appropriate and useful. This training aims to control every muscle of the face, thus transcending stereotyped mimicry. It involves a consciousness and use of every single one of the actor’s facial muscles. It is very important to be able to set in motion simultaneously, but at different rhythms, the various muscles of the face. 55

Grotowski acknowledges the essential benefits of using some of the techniques of Kathakali face exercise for his actors, especially in attaining flexibility of every single facial muscle. He also notices that such techniques could create a specific consciousness in the actor. Being a trained performer myself in all of these techniques, I can understand and possibly try to explain what Grotowski means here. Quivering the eyebrows very swiftly is effective in creating a joy, 54 55

Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor theatre, London: Methuen Drama, 1991, p. 36. Ibid., pp. 113-4.

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similarly, shrinking the eyebrows combined with lowering the tips of the lips create sorrow in the actor. On regular practice of such physical techniques, an actor can instantly tune to a different state of consciousness easily during performance. In the previous quotation, Grotowski also articulates that an actor should learn to use all these techniques unconsciously, implying that the practice of these techniques should be thorough enough to make them one’s ‘second nature’. What Grotowski says in the context of Kathakali facial exercises is true for many other techniques as well. Grotowski’s dismissal of techniques needs to be understood in relation to an actor using the techniques without properly mastering them, a feature possibly true of many eclectic approaches to actor training. Grotowski has also used a large amount of material from Yoga. However, he believes that the pacification effect characteristic to Yoga is not for actors. He, at the same time maintains that certain Yoga postures are very good for actors because they help in relaxing the spine and several other body parts. To sum up, Grotowski’s quest was towards a spiritual theatre comprising holy actors and spectators who performed and watched from an altered state of consciousness. He was deeply influenced by various Asian performance traditions and employed them in his Laboratory. His actors excelled in his direction, nevertheless lacked success with other directors. However, his efforts are important in the history of actor training and mark a notable drift in its aesthetics. Conclusion There is not a great deal of discussion and hence available information on the actor’s consciousness until now, except for the writings and observations of the consciousness theorists. Apart from the three distinct approaches to the actor’s consciousness that I described in the beginning of this chapter, what we have are some related discourses which could be interpreted to this effect. Although Schechner and Barba are not directly addressing the actor’s consciousness in performance, there are clear indications that their inferences lead us to the

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analysis of the possible factors that could result in altered state of consciousness in performance. What we lack here is a precise and useful, practical methodology, a tangible performance which clarifies some of the theoretical and practical problems as identified in this chapter. We also find a considerable interest in putting Asian performances and aesthetic theories into close analysis in this enquiry as prominently found in practitioners or the number of theorists referred in this chapter. It is central at this point to subject a performance form to further enquiry and analyse some of the aesthetic theories governing Indian performances such as the Natyasastra for instance.

In the next chapter, I examine the actor-training and acting conventions and techniques of Kudiyattam; in addition I provide a thorough enquiry into some of the Indian aesthetic theories important to its performance. Kudiyattam is the Keralan theatre which is perhaps the oldest existing theatre form in the world.

Chapter Two The Actor’s Consciousness: Indian Approaches to Actor Training and Acting with Particular Reference to Kudiyattam Introduction In the previous chapter, I have discussed and analysed the various approaches to actor’s consciousness from a Western perspective; I found a range of philosophical and theoretical approaches but consideration of practical aspects was limited. Parallel to this, the traditional Indian approach to actor’s consciousness as explained and argued by conventional Indian scholarship also needs to be examined here in order to get a complete picture of this complex enquiry. Along with the theoretical discussion of traditional Indian scholarship in this context, I am also examining the actor-training and acting conventions of Kudiyattam to a great detail in this chapter. The Natyasastra, written by sage Bharata, which is dated back to between 2nd century B.C and 2nd century AD, inaugurated an extensive scholarly discussion on the actor’s consciousness by focusing on rasa. Rasa is a term popular equally among both traditional scholars of aesthetics and contemporary western and eastern scholars. Rasa is literally interpreted/translated as the ‘theatrical pleasure’ emerging from any performance experienced by the audience. Though rasa as a term was used first in the theatrical context, it has later deeply impacted on, and been widely applied to all other aesthetic disciplines. Rasa theory is also extended to the doctrine of dhvani, literally, the implied meaning or suggestion in poetry. Dhvani is defined by

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Dvanyaloka, a treatise on dhvani, as the resonance of a (metal) bell which follows its main peal. As the noted Sanskrit scholar K Kunjunni Raja mentions, “there is no conflict between the theory of dhvani and the theory of rasa; the former stresses the method of treatment, whereas the latter deals with the ultimate effect”. 1 Dhvani is here considered as a step towards the attainment of rasa. The Natyasastra has also been subjected to several later interpretations, for example by Bhattalollata, Srisankuka, and Abhinavagupta. Among these the contributions made by Abhinavagupta stand apart mainly owing to his remarkable efforts in linking the Natyasastra with Saivism and the Advaita theory of monism. He also discusses extensively in his treatise Abhinavabharati the debates and arguments proposed by his predecessors (Bhattalollata and Srisankuka) around the issues of the experience of rasa, precisely by whom and how rasa is experienced, whether the actor or the spectator; he also puts his own proposition in this lengthy intellectual debate and extends it further. This phenomenological approach to rasa has largely informed and influenced the later, contemporary interpretations of the Natyasastra. Interestingly, Abhinavagupta also mentions that he writes his treatise as an answer to some of the important performancerelated questions raised by a few actors from Kerala. This being the general background of the enquiry undertaken in this chapter, I also endeavour to examine the performance aspects of Kudiyattam and its actor training. Enquiring into the acting principles of Kudiyattam is particularly important in my enquiry into the actor’s consciousness in performance because it is the only existing model of Sanskrit theatre in India, its actor training method is highly systematic and I have first hand knowledge in its performance. Based on the various factors described so far I will divide this chapter into the following sections and subsections: The Actor’s Consciousness: The Traditional Indian Approach a. The Actor’s consciousness and the Natyasastra b. An introduction to the ‘Kerala Natyasastra’ 1

K. Kunjunni Raja, Indian theories of meaning. Chennai: The Theosophical Society, 2000, p. 285.

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Actor Training in Kudiyattam a.Physical training b.Nityakriya c.Rasa training and Rehearsal d. Acting devices in Kudiyattam The Actor’s Consciousness: The Traditional Indian Approach The Actor’s consciousness and the Natyasastra The Natyasastra is not a theoretical discourse on Sanskrit theatre; rather it elaborately discusses, by means of 36 chapters the histrionics of drama. It says how an actor should move his hands, face or limbs to produce a bhava or emotion. It also categorizes all elements of theatre such as emotional acting and dance, music and percussion, vocal rendering and literary aspects, including scenography and theatre structure. However, Bharata does not mention anything at all about text or illustrate even a single textual example in the Natyasastra though he mentions the various qualities of text that are central to a play text. Rasa as a term is used in Taitareya-Upanishad to define the sublime pleasure or ananda that is attained. It says “(that cognition) is rasic in nature. One who knows rasa knows ananda”. 2 Here it is possible to see that rasa is essentially understood in direct progression to ananda. Though rasa as a term was identified with ananda in philosophical discourse, the term gained popularity in the theatrical context when placed by Bharata in the Natyasastra. Bharata illustrates the rasa theory in the sixth chapter of the Natyasastra. He explains rasa in the form a sutra, a short passage as vibhava anubhava vyabhichari samyogat rasanishpattih. Vibhava in Sanskrit means ‘determinants’, anubhava means ‘consequents’, vyabhichari (bhava) means ‘transitory emotions’, samyogat means ‘ in combination’ and finally rasanishpattih, which is a combination of two words, rasa and nishpattih meaning ‘squeezed out’ or produced in this particular

2

K. Bhaskaran Nair, Upanishad Deepti. Thiruvananthapuram: Kalpaka Printers, 1977, p. 76.

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context. To put this in a sensible sentence order, rasa is produced by the combination of determinants, consequents and transitory states. Bharata says: rasa means enjoyable. Bharata also clarifies the interlinking importance between sthayi-bhava and rasa in order to explain how rasa evolves from sthayi-bhava. Sthayi-bhava is the dormant or underlying or the basic emotional state. He says that “an actor is producing the theatrical pleasure, rasa by expressing various acting techniques; hence they (the expressions) are called bhava… without bhava there is no rasa and vice-versa… it is as if a tree growing from a seed and flowers and seeds from a tree”. K.P Narayana Pisharodi, a noted Sanskrit scholar and translator of the Natyasastra into Malayalam, interprets these verses thus: “Sthayibhava and rasa are in fact same. They are called different when the mental states are different. When you are enjoying, it is rasa; when you are not it is sthayi”. 3 Bharata argues that sthayi-bhava, which itself is a combination of various emotions, is manifested as rasa. As Pisharodi interprets them, when we are enjoying it is rasa and sthayi-bhava when otherwise. As interpreted by Lollata, Sthayi-bhava are the dormant but basic emotions which are evoked by the determinants, consequents and transitory emotions: sthayi-bhava is reflected upon by the actor by means of consequents and nourished or enriched by means of transitory emotions. 4 Lollata even re-structures the verse that explains the rasa theory thus: rasa is produced by the combination of determinants, consequents and transitory emotions to the sthayibhava. Given the explanation of rasa, the next question is how does anyone enjoy it? It is in the combination of determinants, consequents and transitory states that rasa is experienced. This can be explained by means of an example that Bharata explains in relation to the ‘erotic rasa in union’ (between the hero and heroine) which is termed as sambhoga-srungara. 3

K.P. Narayana Pisharodi, Bharata Muniyude Natyasastram, vol.I. Trichur: Kerala Kalamandalam, 1987, pp. 247-48. 4 Vedabandhu, Abhinavaguptante rasasidhantham. Trivnadrum: State Institute of Languages Kerala, 1986, p. 22.

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The determinants of this rasa are the appropriate season, flowers, anointments such as oils and sandal-wood paste, jewellery, entertainment …. experience/hearing/sight of a garden, water-sports and dallying acts… the consequents are the histrionic representation of erotic srungara by means of (sensuous) looks, (inviting) eye-brow movements, sensuous physical movements and sweet words. 5

There are thirty three transitory emotions as prescribed by the Natyasastra out of which thirty are suggested to provide complete impact of erotic rasa. Some of the thirty prescribed emotions here are apprehension, pride, callousness, anger, and happiness. When enacting erotic love it is possible to feel the subtle reflections of some of the transitory emotions; when I reflect on some of my training sessions, I remember being instructed to show anticipation, fear, shyness, happiness and sensuousness to express erotic love in its complete perfection. If this is the way in which rasa needs to be perfected in acting, what does the spectator experience? Bharata describes a genuine spectator as a person “who can see well, hear well, distinguish between good and evil (in other words, holding moral values), can distance himself from worldly emotions such as love and hatred, and also someone who is interested in theatre arts”. 6 The spectator is someone who is educated, moralistic and spiritually elevated from mere worldly pleasures. He is genuinely interested in theatre and wishes to ‘sympathise’ with the emotions expressed by the actor. Bharata thus places the consciousness of a spectator at a different plane. Note that he is required to be detached from worldly pleasures or pains and hold a genuine interest in theatre. He also needs to feel joy when joy is expressed and feel sadness when it is expressed, thus sympathising with the actor’s emotions, in other words, enacting himself or acting by reflecting upon the emotions expressed by the actor. How does he appreciate the erotic love as described above? He perceives and is delighted by the determinants and consequents. He is also watching the various transitory emotions expressed by the actor. All the various elements of erotic love are transferred to the spectator 5

Ibid., pp. 250-51. K.P. Narayana Pisharodi, Bharata Muniyude Natyasastram, vol.II. Trichur: Kerala Kalamandalam, 1987, pp. 211-12.

6

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by the actor. The spectator has received the total experience of erotic love and feels the pleasure, rasa of the stayi-bhava. Now the important question here is how the actor experiences rasa. If there is a potent and active sphere of actor-spectator interaction as described above there are, naturally, his own histrionics associated to his expressions. The actor here is the spectator, not by perceiving directly but by sensing the subtle reactions from the spectator. The actor on the stage experiences rasa by reflecting upon the ‘acting’ or responses from the spectator. Actor responds to the spectator’s feedback by means of ingenious improvisations newly created for the rasic spectator. Both the actor and the spectator experience rasa in this highly interactive and vibrant flux, both of them being actor and spectator at the same time. Both the actor and the spectator are in the active, perceptive level of extra-daily consciousness – the rasic consciousness, one supporting and contributing the other. A closer examination of this process reveals that the actor also experiences rasa by means of determinants (play house, ideal spectator and an inspiring play) and consequents/transitory emotions (histrionics by the spectator) although their boundaries are too vague to be identified precisely. The determinants, consequents and transitory states are combined together to give way to create rasa within both the actor and the spectator. Determinants, consequents and transitory emotions mediate the rasa experience in both of them. The only thing that remains after the performance (and of course during the course of performance as well) is rasa; it is neither the determinants nor the consequents nor the transitory states. Parallel discourses to actor-spectator interactions as I described above can be found both in Western phenomenology and Sanskrit literary theory. In his phenomenology of reading, Wolfgand Iser explores similar interactions between the reader and the text. He systematically explains the process of reading which culminates in the synthesis which is neither manifested in the printed text, nor produced solely by the reader’s imagination, and the projects of which they consist are themselves of a dual

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nature: they emerge from the reader, but they are also guided by signals which project themselves in to him. 7

According to Iser, the successful reader-text communication results in the text controlling the reading. Similarly, the ‘readerresponse criticism’ considers literature as performing art where every individual reader creates their own unique text-related performance. 8 The 9th century Saivite philosopher Abhinavagupta interpreted various stages of rasa experience detailing the conditions attached to the proper appreciation of the performance. All these arguments suggest the presence of an active phenomenological level of extra-daily consciousness within the theatrical communication shared by the actor and the spectators. Bharata outlined the theoretical ground of the Natyasastra in his rasa theory, which is only a concise condensation of a significant aesthetic argument. He remains silent on theory for the rest of his treatise and speaks only about the histrionics, music or rhythm. I find his approach to be very interesting. Bharata speaks in volumes about the minute details of histrionics – nine types of movements for eyelids, seven types of eyebrow movements for instance and also includes various hand movements, gestures, and hundred and eight body postures known as karana. He also describes in detail the spectator, the theatre building and scenography. One cannot find a further explanation of rasa theory anywhere later in the Natyasastra. For Bharata, rasa is deeply rooted in the theatre practice, both being closely attached and absolutely inseparable. If the practice is proper, the experience will naturally follow. Therefore, the Natyasastra is concerned mainly with practice. I have analysed the Natyasastra’s vision on acting in the above sections. Before I move on to the description of the actor training of Kudiyattam it is important to examine a treatise written on Kudiyattam acting and actor-training which I call the Kerala Natyasastra. This is the only available comprehensive treatise on Kudiyattam. I am not forgetting a manual on hand gestures followed by Kudiyattam 7

Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: The theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978, p. 135. 8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reader-response_criticism

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performers known as Hasta-lakshana-deepika here. However, this treatise, as far as known, deals only with hand gestures. Also there are several palm-leaf manuscripts followed by Kudiyattam families, but the access to these is restricted to a limited number of family members since they are treated as family property of Chakyar or Nambyar families. The Kerala Natyasastra in this sense remains as a unique manual on Kudiyattam. An Introduction to the Kerala Natyasastra Guru Mani Madhava Chakyar was a master of Kudiyattam who lived from 1899 to 1990. He wrote the Natyakalpadrumam, a treatise on Kudiyattam with a comprehensive description of the Kudiyattam acting, actor-training and acting manuals spread over eight chapters. By his sixtieth birthday Chakyar had become upset by not finding a suitable student to whom he wanted to bestow his deep knowledge and performance experience that he gained over long years of his acting career. He deeply regretted that his knowledge would die with him without allowing it to be transferred. He expressed his concerns to his Guru, Pareekshit Tampuran, who also was a noted Sanskrit scholar. He recommended to Chakyar to write a treatise to share his knowledge with the world. As a result, the Natyakalpadrumam, or the Kerala Natyasastra was written; it was published in 1974. The Kerala Natyasastra was written in Malayalam and to date there is no English translations. It contains invaluable information about Kudiyattam acting, which is mainly informed by Chakyar’s own training as a student, performer and teacher. As a norm the Chakyar community pass the actor training notes on from generation to generation in the form of sloka – four lined Sanskrit verses and acting manuals preserved in the form of palm leaf manuscripts. Each Chakyar family has their own unique texts or performance technique (parakkum kuthu or ‘the flying’ is one such technique where the actor is treated as a marionette and brought down to the stage by means of one thousand strings tied to his body and controlled by the accompanying Nambyar who is trained in how and where each string is

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attached) which is only passed strictly to the next generation within their immediate family circle 9 . Mani Madhava Chakyar compiled these invaluable resources which were restricted to the Chakyar community until then in his Kerala Natyasastra and made them accessible to the actors and scholars outside the community. This is the real significance of his work. The information available in this book represents the Mani school of acting which is slightly different from the Painkulam or Ammannur (Also spelt as Ammannoor) schools (who take their names from the Kudiyattam gurus Painkulam Rama Chakyar and Ammannur Madhava Chakyar). Such differences are largely maintained in the usage of hand gestures, the style of voice rendering and significantly in the acting manuals. The late Kudiyattam Guru Painkulam Rama Chakyar criticised Mani Madhava Chakyar for summing up the total number of swara 10 in Kudiyattam as only twenty. According to him there are twenty-four swara in total which could be clearly and easily identified and he finds twelve further points of departure from the Kerala Nataysastra in terms of voice rendering patterns. I have not found any other written material criticising the Kerala Natyasastra; Kudiyattam actors consider the material available in this text as authentic. Most importantly there is no similar text that compiles the acting principles of Kudiyattam. Mani Madhava Chakyar is known as the one ‘who gave eyes to Kathakali’ because of two reasons – a. Chakyar himself possessed surprising mastery over his own eye movements and their expressiveness b. he taught eye-exercises to some of the Kathakali masters who decided to include the detailed eye-exercises of the Kudiyattam style in Kathakali training. K.P.Narayana Pisharodi wrote about him at his death in a local magazine (Mathrubhumi Azhchapatippu: Feb 1990) thus “the eyes of Kudiyattam have closed (for ever)… the great 9

The technique of Parakum Kuthu is dormant now and has not been performed for several centuries. Some of the Chakyar families possess the attaprakaram for its performance but even they are unaware of how a single Nambyar could have manipulated these thousand strings at the same time and how these strings are attached to the actor’s body. 10 Swara is the emotive music used in Kudiyattam. I am explaining this in detail in the further sections of this chapter.

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lineage of Sanskrit theatre is adversely hit by the loss of this genius”. He was known for his expertise to act with his eyes and was referred as the greatest eye-wizard of the world. Also a scholar of Sanskrit, he mastered the Natyasastra along with a range of Sanskrit literary and aesthetic manuals. He was honoured by the government of India on various occasions and was awarded several fellowships. I will now examine the actor-training of Kudiyattam and also some of its acting devices. In this I refer to the Kerala Natyasastra at various points—all such references are my own translations from the original Malayalam. Actor Training in Kudiyattam The practice of starting physical training at a very early age is a unique feature of most of the Indian performance forms and martial arts traditions. Early years of any person is thought to be ideal for beginning any performance training since ardent and focused training with perseverance and concentration for long years is required for training the body of a performer for being able to perform vigorous movements requiring physical stamina and emotional concentration. Moreover, it is easier to mould a performer to the required level of proficiency if the apprenticeship is started at a young age basically because this is the age when students are quick in learning new skills though they might cultivate a deeper understanding of them only at a later age. The characteristics of a performing body are thus inscribed in the physique of an Indian performer in a highly systematic way at a very early age. Kudiyattam training is also started at a very young age. Traditionally, a Chakyar boy and a Nangyar girl are initiated to training at the very early age of 7 or 8 and an actor becomes an actor by birth in the sense that they are not offered a choice to decide otherwise; according to the duties and rites of their caste, acting is thought to be mandatory or dharma 11 for them. The story of the senior 11

Dharma is a term that could be translated as ‘way of life’. But the word carries much more depth than that. Hinduism describes dharma as the natural universal laws whose observance enables humans to be contented and happy, and to save themselves from degradation and suffering. Dharma is the moral law combined with spiritual

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most maestro of Kudiyattam, Ammannur Madhava Chakyar (19172008) who decided to go to school and learn English at a very young age is relevant in this context. When he expressed his ambition to learn English to his maternal uncle who was his traditional Kudiyattam Guru and the head of his family, the uncle was very upset and did not give consent for the boy to do so. When Ammannur’s uncle broke this information to the other members of his family, everybody, especially his mother feared termination of their centuries-old family tradition and caste dharma and advised him against his decision. Ammannur finally decided not to go to school and continue the caste rite of acting after much persuasion and prayers. Although an actor is traditionally initiated at the very young age of seven or eight he may start performing independently only by as late as forty. However, a student who joins the Kalamandalam at the age of twelve makes his debut performance three years later—at the age of fifteen. The students are encouraged to take up small roles in performances thereafter and are provided with regular performances both within and outside the Kalamandalam. A talented student these days starts performing professionally between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-five. In this sense it takes between ten to twelve years for an actor to master Kudiyattam acting. Although an actor professionally takes to his career by twenty-five, he/she need not be sufficiently prepared to write their own attaprakaram. It may still take several years of experience and maturity in his profession before actors write their own performance texts. Kudiyattam masters used to insist that Nangyars make their debut performance before reaching puberty. Traditionally, the young students were initiated by their Guru who was ideally a close relative discipline that guides one's life. Hindus consider dharma the very foundation of life. Atharva Veda which is last of the series of four holy texts of Hinduism known as veda describes dharma symbolically: Prithivim dharmana dhritam, that is, ‘this world is upheld by dharma’. Dharma is also the first of the four objects of life as per the Hindu philosophy, the others being, artha, money/meaning, kama, pleasure and moksha or salvation or unison with the supreme soul (which could also be defined as God) of being liberated from the cycles of birth and death.

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and undertook eight to ten years of training coupled with occasional performance opportunities. Though this was the practice commonly followed by Kudiyattam actors until recently, from the time students from other castes were permitted to its learning this is not found applicable except for those from the community itself. Moreover, institutionalisation of art forms also helped to change this system though the practice of apprenticeship still continues very strictly and the devotion towards one’s own Guru is also central to Kudiyattam training; the art is learned and further understood by the continued assistance offered to/from his/her Guru for long years. The initiation begins when the student prostrates him/herself in front of the teacher facing east, touching his/her feet and presenting three betel leaves and an areca nut split into half (this ritual is known as dakshina vakkuka). A token fee and some times cotton clothing will also be given along with it—a white or off white cotton cloth, about two metres long and one and a half metres wide, known as mundu, was the traditional dress of the high caste men in Kerala. Women wear mundu and an upper garment known as veshti, which is another piece of cotton cloth which is about two and a half metres long and a metre wide. Now, mundu for men and mundu & veshti for women is the national dress of Kerala. Silk is not a traditional Keralan dress material, but only occasionally used by the ruling class. Moreover, there is significant difference in the dress code followed by the people in Northern Kerala and Southern Kerala. White or off-white cotton cloth also forms an integral part of the costume of classical performances like Kathakali, Kudiyattam, Mohiniyattam or Krishnattam and folk forms like Mudiyettu or Teyyam. The priests in temples also wear mundu during the temple rituals. An integral part of Hindu marriage ritual in Kerala is a ceremony named pudava kodukkal or presenting clothing, or mundu & veshti to the bride performed by the groom (as a term pudava kodukkal is denoting the marriage ceremony of the Nair caste. Most of the castes in Kerala except Brahmins follow this ceremony. Among the Brahmin caste both the groom and the bride give mundu to each other). The guru admits the student as his disciple by accepting the fee and blessing him. The classes are normally begun after the student pays respect to various gods and goddesses by repeating the names of

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each god or goddess upon the instruction of the teacher. Following this, the basic stance, mudra and sometimes swara is taught. The initiation need not necessarily be in the early morning hours when the classes are normally taken. On the other hand, the initiation is always started at an astrologically auspicious time on an auspicious day. However, the regular classes are continued from the very next day onwards. Kudiyattam training is unique in several respects and it shares several aspects of actor-training which are common to most of the Indian performance styles. There is no concept of warm-up in Indian training or performances and almost all the physical training or voice training are employed directly in the performance and they do not remain merely as exercises. To explain this further: contemporary (Western) theatre training is used to a series of warm-up exercises which are performed prior to any training session; such a warm-up may take up to half an hour depending on the capability of the group. None of those exercises are later found to be employed in a production. They merely serve the purpose of moving the body prior to the physical work that is part of the performance. Warm-ups are performed even before the production, after putting the costume on. In contrast, in Indian performances in general and Kudiyattam in particular, the concept of warm-up is totally unheard-of and completely absent. Actors get up early in the morning and learn the posture for approximately an hour which is followed by jumping high up a hundred times. As John Steven Sowle rightly puts it, no director in his right mind would let his actors do this without a long session of physical warm-up. There is also no warm-up prior to the performance, but any classical Indian performer takes a long time for make-up and dressing up and there is normally a silent interval between dressing up and entering the stage. Teachers normally advise their students to take complete rest on the day of performance, not making it hectic with activities, but only enough sleep, food and rest. The second noticeable aspect is in relation to the training. The techniques learnt in the course of training do not remain as exercises, but most of them find their way to the performance. To make this clearer, the elements of physical exercises such as postures or eye training are employed in the performance and they are not independent of the performance. In fact, students are not taught any movements which are not directly emp-

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loyed in the performance. This is very unlike contemporary (Western) theatre since most of the exercises remain only as exercises and are not used in performance. They are mainly intended to provide flexibility to the body. Physical Training Kudiyattam training begins as early as four in the early morning hours. As such there is no specific reason assigned to this practice by the masters, all they say is that before and after sunrise and sunset are suitable times for physical and eye training since the body is more supple. The students start their daily exercises after ‘washing hands and feet’ (implying excreting, brushing their teeth and washing face, hands and feet). 12 Though the early hours of training are insisted by all the teachers, these days the sessions do not start until five or half past five. The morning sessions, which normally finish at eight in the morning comprise of eye training, physical training, posture training and voice training except in the traditional Chakyar ways of teaching which is mainly followed at Ammannur Madhava Chakyar’s training centre. The institutionalisation of art forms under the initiative of the Kalamandalam has paved the way to introducing uniformity in performance training in accordance with the modern school system. This has led to delaying the starting of training hours along with several other changes that have affected the total discipline of the training. In the Kalamandalam, the students also undertake a regular school curriculum every day during the afternoon, which has also made an impact on the concentration in their training. This difference is obvious when it comes to the performances of recent graduates from the Kalamandalam and those from older times who used to dedicate all their time on training. The quality of performers from the older generation of the Kalamandalam is higher, compared to those who started combining both school curriculum and training in performing arts. This is mainly owing to the undivided attention that those students of the older generation were giving to their training.

12

Mani Madhava Chakyar, Natyakalpadrumam. Cheruturuthi: Kerala Kalamandalam. 1973, p. 134.

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Prior to the starting of the Kalamandalam and also during the early years of its existence, a student used to undertake training for about eight to nine hours a day. This is the number of hours that a student is expected to dedicate on training on any single day. In fact it is the teacher who decides the number of hours that a student should work; the student does not have any right to voice his opinion regarding the number of hours that he must dedicate to his training, nor can he demand rest periods during the sessions. In fact it is not the norm for the teacher to offer rest periods in between sessions. However, the students will be allowed to rest a couple of minutes in between when they are repeating specific eye or eyebrow movements or rotating the wrists for example. According to the strict rules of Guru-Shishya 13 system, which is meticulously adhered to in conventional training of Indian performers, students exercise no right or discretion regarding the nature of hours or years of training once they have submitted to the tutorship of their Guru. Moreover, the students will also assist their teachers in dressing up for a performance, travel with them and also sometimes perform small roles. This practice continues for a long time or until the time the teacher decides that the student is mature enough to be independent. Such discipline has obvious advantages since the student will be watching the performances of his teacher, assisting him in dressing up and travelling with him to various locations and meeting with the organisers of the performances. In this way the teachers introduce their students to their careers as performers. Moreover, performing a small role along with their own teacher on a stage gives a lot of confidence. This is also a good method to deal with stage fright since the students will be convinced that the person who taught them the performance is there to support them during their performance. The teacher is normally a person related to the student, usually the father or uncle. This is an added reassurance. In this way, a student gains considerable on-the-job training and learns all aspects of elaborate

13

This is the traditional name given to the apprenticeship undertaken by the student with his teacher. The student is expected to stay with the teacher’s family, serve him and learn from him along with learning a way of life. Students still take internships in the dance institutions like Kalamandalam in Kerala or Kalaksetra in Tamil Nadu and stay in their institutions away from their families. These students are supported by the institution by providing a small sum of stipend.

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make-up and dressing up. He is also introduced to various venues which might offer him future performances as well. During the monsoon season, massage known as chavutti thirummal (massage with the feet) and stomping exercises are also given to students. These massages are performed as early as half past four in the morning and continued for about an hour. According to Dr. T.S Madhavankutty Varier, who is an acclaimed Ayurvedic physician based at Trivandrum in Kerala, the monsoon season is ideal for rigorous massage offered to performers because it is a season that offers the perfect physical condition for such massage. In Kerala, the monsoon follows a very warm summer season and cools the body down, which is warm due to scorching heat during summer. According to Varier, the body would not be prepared to accept the rigorous nature of chavutti thirummal (CT) during summer because the energy in the body needs to be channelled to protect itself from the heat. During the Keralan winter (which is nothing like the winter in the west, and the temperature drops only to a minimum of 17 or 18 degree Celsius) the metabolism of the body increases due to the increase in a dosha called Pitta. 14 This is a natural action of the body to ward off the adverse effects of the cold weather. CT during this time would create a malfunction in the body and create an imbalance of its equilibrium. Hence, the rainy season, which is neither too hot nor too cold offers an ideal physical condition for CT; the body will be more prepared to accept the rigorous CT. If this is performed during early morning hours, one would be assured of continued rain and colder atmosphere because during the monsoon season in Kerala it normally rains during the early morning hours. Traditionally massage and stomping exercises were not part of Kudiyattam training sessions but a later addition to Kudiyattam by Mani Parameswara Chakyar, the uncle of Mani Madhava Chakyar in 14

In Ayurveda the diagnosis of disease and individual constitutions is in terms of three dosha or elements called Vata, which is a combination of space and air element, Pitta or a combination of the fire and water element and Kapha or the combination of water and earth element. Each person’s psycho-physical constitution can be described in terms of one or a combination of these doshas. When these doshas are in balance, a person enjoys good mental, physical and spiritual health. A person becomes unhealthy when there is an imbalance in these elements which needs to be treated.

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the early 20th century; the first Kudiyattam performer to have received this training was Mani Madhava Chakyar. 15 During the morning sessions Kudiyattam students are also trained in nityakriya or the daily exercises. They learn chari (stylized movements used for detailed descriptions of living and non-living objects such as a mountain, tree, woman, preparation for a war etc.) and various other choreographic movements that are fixed according to the nature of each character also in the early morning hours. Students then break for bath and breakfast. When the sessions resume at late morning hours they learn plays and Attaprakaram. Nothing is taught during the afternoon and the students take a rest. Sessions resume after teatime and they continue with learning Sanskrit or literature. Any teaching is normally avoided during sunset. After sunset, eye movements are again practised, as well as the wrist and finger exercises. Hand gestures and singing verses are also learned during these hours. Each of these aspects of training are explained in the sections below. Eye training The importance of eyes in the Kudiyattam performance can not be over-emphasised. Without expressive eyes, Kudiyattam acting is lifeless. There are sequences where the actor uses only his eyes for detailed descriptions like that of a mountain where the eyes are not expected to blink for more than ten to fifteen minutes (known as Kailasodharanam) or the portrayal of flies falling into fire and flying back unhurt (known as sikhini-salabham). Eyes give life to the hand gestures and give a bigger than normal feeling to the physical movements. Hence, eye exercises in Kudiyattam are intended to train the pupils to move freely and create patterns that give the effect of drawing with the eyes. The effect of these exercises is the immense capability of the performer to produce very subtle expressions through the eyes.

15

Das Bhargavinilayam, Manimadhaveeyam. Thiruvananthapuram, Department of Cultural Publications, Government of Kerala, 1999, p. 69.

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There are also two exercises which act as forerunners to the eye exercises; their purpose is to enable the student to bring vayu or breath to the eyes and make the eyeballs protrude. These exercises are repeated before starting the eye exercises proper and continued for several months. According to MMC, presence of breath in the eyes is the secret of rasa acting. Unless a student is trained well to push breath into the eyes, he cannot be successful in acting. His success in acting also depends on the skills of the teacher. 16 Learning to protrude the eyeballs is the first step in bringing breath into the eyes. Continuing those preliminary exercises for a few months initiates the student into the process of bringing breath into the eyes. Once he has learned how this can be done he will not need to practice these preliminary exercises any longer. During the beginning of training, bringing breath to the eyes will be extremely difficult for a student because he will not only be ignorant of the technique, but the concept or idea itself will be unfamiliar to the student: there is no trace of systematic breath training in Kudiyattam. The teacher would not advise how to bring breath into eyes and it is highly unlikely that the teacher would know how breath is brought into eyes because of the absence of a systematic methodology to explain this. However, the result of such training assures a strong presence of breath in the eyes. These exercises are as follows: a. Take a full breath in. Then closing all the holes in the face (two nostrils, mouth and two ears) except the eyes the student has to exhale through the eyes. This will result in a watering in the eyes and protruding of the eyeballs. b. The next one is a rather advanced exercise. Both the student and the teacher sit face to face, both of them in the cross legged posture. The student is asked to look far away, as far as possible and then to look closer, and alternate constantly between the two for some time. Interestingly, the student looks far and close into the palm of the teacher when the teacher moves his palm far from and close to the student’s face. This means that the student cannot look physically far away when asked to do so, but technically, he is learning to make 16

Mani Madhava Chakyar, Natyakalpadrumam. Cheruturuthi: Kerala Kalamandalam, 1973, pp. 137-38.

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the eyeballs protrude. The effect of these exercises on bringing vayu (the Sanskrit term for breath) to the eyes is really commendable. The eyes will water and the illusion of a farness is created in the eyes. In my personal experience, this exercise helps me to get a clearer vision without the use of spectacles and helps to ease tired eyes. Eye exercises are always performed in a cross legged sitting posture. Masters say that one has to observe the spinal principle of arakku vayu koduthu tanu nilkkal, literally translated from Malayalam as ‘bent knee posture by applying breath on the spine’ when sitting or standing in a Kudiyattam performance. Arakku means ‘on spine’ vayu means breath koduthu means ‘by applying’ tanu means ‘bent (knee)’ nilkkal means standing. Application of ‘breath on the spine’ is the basic and most important feature in Kudiyattam. This will be described in detail below. Eye exercises are done by lifting the eyebrows up, to the maximum extent and opening the eyes widely. When the students start they apply ghee or purified butter to the eyes and massage lengthwise. They are also asked to hold their eyelids with the thumb and the index finger so as to keep them wide open. Once the eyes are wide enough, fingers are not used for keeping the eyelids open. The asan (in Malayalam the Guru is called Asan) or Guru sits in front of the student with his right hand out stretched and palm down, holding the index finger and ring finger in a ‘v’ position and guides them through various movements by drawing them in the air. It is always insisted that the student look at the direction of his fingers and not at the fingers themselves because there are physical limits where his hand could go, whereas eyes can go as far as the vision reaches. While giving training in this manner, special care is taken not to produce a “serpent eye” (when the pupils of both eyes become pointed and eyes positioned as in squinting). This is a common problem when learning eye exercises for the first time. “Serpent eye” could also be caused due to lack of proper attention from the part of the student or increase in the speed of movements. Students in the early stages of learning are advised not to practice eye exercises in the absence of their Guru because students would not be able to correct themselves when they accidentally produce “serpent eye”. If this become a practice, it would be incredibly difficult for the Guru to correct them and could prove to be detrimental to their acting skills in future.

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As far as eye exercises are concerned, there are twenty-one patterns of eye exercises out of which seven are very important and basic. These seven patterns are 1. horizontal

2. semicircle a.

3. semicircle b.

4. clockwise and anticlockwise circles

5. two diagonal movements

6. figure of eight



7. vertical.

The other patterns are 8. train eyes like ‘ǐ’ 9. reverse of the previous one which is like ‘m’ 10. write a big ‘3’ with the eyes 11. the reverse of the previous one 12. draw ‘V’ with the eyes 13. draw the reverse of this which would be like a reverse ‘v’ 14. draw like a ‘W’ where the middle point reaches only half of the tail ends. 15. draw the reverse of this. 16. ‘>’ train like this.

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17. ‘