Open correspondence with Lissa Tyler
Renaud on Ratan Thiyyam and Uttar Priyadarshi.
Chandradasan
On October 2000 Ratan Thiyyam's Chorus Repertory Theatre presented "Uttar-Priyadarshi"
("The Final Beatitude"), described as "an Epic of War
and Peace" in Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall, USA. This contemporary
theatre company--which people "in the know" do know--is from
the remote state of Manipur, India. The play tells the story of the
second-century emperor, Ashoka, who promulgated Buddhism in India.
Lissa Tyler Renaud, an award-winning actress,
a recognized scholar, and Program Director and actor trainer wrote to
me asking to introduce and comment about Thiyyam’s show and its
place in India’s theatre "scene" and to orient her to
Ratan Thiyyam and Uttar Priyadarshi and to prepare her to watch the
show more effectively. I wrote back and the correspondence continued
as a discussion on Ratan Thiyyam in specific and theatre in general.
Those letters are given below.
Hi Lissa,
I am so happy to know that Ratan Thiyyam
and his company, Chorus Rep, are visiting the US with their production
of the play "Uttar Priyadarshi." Lissa, you are right in pointing
out that Ratan Thiyyam is one of the most important directors of contemporary
Indian theatre-- one of the really biggest names, a distinction which
he achieved through painful and purposeful work. He comes from Manipur,
one of the North Eastern states of India, a state which was not at all
a part of India's cultural scene till he came into the picture.
Of course, the state of Manipur has a very
distinctive classical dance form--The Manipuri Dance-which is very graceful,
slow and poetic. Also, this part of the country has very special traditions
in both folk music and instrumental music, especially for the flute
and for its authentic Manipuri-style derivatives. There is also a very
vibrant martial art form there.
The language of the state is Manipuri, which
has a very special sonority, rhythm and is spoken in highly dramatic
voice, is also occasionally very sweet. The extreme high pitch of Manipuri
is so appealing and clear—the voice that we all long for in theatre.
The physique of the average Manipuri is stocky,
heavy and different from that of the rest of India. These people have
a Mongolian look and character. The costumes and rituals of Manipur
are also colorful and special; this is a very proud ethnic group, with
traditions of its own.
With the work of Ratan, one of the front
runners of Indian theatre, Manipuri theatre suddenly burst into the
limelight. Now, in addition to him, there are many names to reckon with:
Kanai Lal, Lokendra Arambam, Jogeendra, Shoimcha Indrakumar and a lot
of other new, refreshing faces. Of course, Ratan is the still the Guru
and inspiration to all.
Now, as Ratan has pointed out, his home state
is a very troubled state, full of insurgency, extremists, militant attacks
and attacks by the National Government on the masses, etc. The state
is virtually without a nightlife, and is one of general unrest--this
is what my friends from Manipur tell me. I have never personally been
to this very beautiful state; it is not yet connected to the mainland
by train. You can only reach it either by air (very costly) or by road
(very tedious and dangerous). I am afraid that theatre activities in
this state are also under threat; any theatre there is fighting against
all odds to survive. I actually doubt whether Ratan's works have even
been performed in his own home state any time recently--in spite of
the fact that he is a celebrity who is regularly featured on the international
theatre circuit!!
During the late sixties and early seventies,
Indian theatre was in a period of reawakening to its own traditional
heritage. The theatre pundits were advocating a National theatre, to
be evolved from our own performance roots and rituals. We started to
question the western sensibility, western style of production and its
techniques, so that an indigenous Indian theatre could be developed.
Ratan was one of the answers to this call, and from a remote part of
the country, with its very powerful, colorful productions, real spectacles
of movement, a new visual and audio sensibility, with fresh native energy.
His productions such as "Chakra Vyooha" and "Karnna Bhara"
established him. His hallmark was a repertory concept with trained actors,
very sure and specific in both movement and voice. Ratan, along with
other masters, rejected the proscenium stage for open air performance
in the Indian tradition. The rejection of the proscenium was one part
of the overall rejection of the western theatre idiom in favor of a
native one. Plot and characterization became secondary, and the actor
became more important than the character. In Ratan's case, some critics
say that the director is so important that the actor is also secondary,
except in the exposition of the abilities in craft, skill in movement
and voice that he has mastered through the training. The creative energy
of the actor is missing in Ratan productions. I have felt
that the actors of Ratan are like soldiers engaged in a sort of war,
with sharp and concentrated mental and physical states.
"Uttar Priyadarshi" is a typical
Ratan production, in that it shows his overt indulgence in colour, choreography,
technique, perfection, music and overall spectacles. He works at a movement
or piece of choreography till it is visually complete and perfect--so
much so that it loses its emotional energy, at least to an extent. And
there are some critics who say that even if Ratan has taken his productions
out of a proscenium to a more open and informal space, his formations,
choreography, entrances, exits and blocking are still controlled by
an invisible proscenium arch.
It will be thrilling to watch Ratan and talk
to him. I am really eager to know how Ratan was appreciated and accepted
in the states. Tell me how you feel after watching him. I am afraid
I have elaborated a lot and sorry for the delay in replying.
Love,
Chandradasan
[October 12, 2000] Dear Chandradasan,
As I came into the theatre for the pre-performance
lecture, Thiyyam's company was doing lovely, easy vocal group warm-up
behind the curtain. Simply singing a simple melody (was this "devotional"
singing?). It was wonderful to hear vocal preparation so genuine and
unforced--i.e. it didn't involve a lot of pretentious "exercises"
that many directors insist on for some reason I don't understand.
I am completely inspired by everything I
know about the training of these actors--such as the following: "All
company members are trained in dance, acting, martial arts, stagecraft,
and design." I am committed to the notion that actors need to be
trained in design. I have seen my acting students improve when I asked
them to take drawing lessons or provided teachers for this. I am excited
by the idea of actors' designing their own sets and costumes, building
their own props. Thiyyam’s actors apparently built their own theatre!
In the pre-performance talk, we learned that
Thiyyam is a painter in addition to his writing and theatre activities.
I have a particular interest in artists who work in more than one medium--painter-poets,
musician-writers, etc. I have an enormous affinity for the work that
came out of the cross-media experimentation of the early 20th century,
and have done some writing on this subject. And so I was especially
looking forward to what I was about to see.
I would like to talk about the performance
I saw on its own terms, but—in spite of all the effort I made
to inform myself--I’m not sure I fully understand what those "terms"
are. Was this performance a new expression of an old story by a company
of actors who work in isolation from the rest of the world? Or was it
an experiment in trans-media sociological ritual-making such as flourished
in the ‘70’s? Neither? Perhaps the goal of the work is to
be both of those--to be ancient and avant-garde at once—a project
which inspires me. But somehow I got mixed up on this point—I
had to shift my sense of the production’s intentions again and
again to accommodate what I was seeing, and each time I got a little
more frustrated.
I started out thinking I was watching an
old story being newly rendered by a group of people who lived in a place
more remote than I can really fathom. I understand that this place the
company is from, Manipur, is too expensive to reach by airplane and
too dangerous to reach by bus. I was watching and thinking about ancient
storytelling, about ritual, about beautiful young people keeping ancient
traditions alive by re-imagining them, then taking them to "the
outside world."
In the early parts of the performance, I
was very struck by the intersection of what I saw with a whole array
of other theatre forms and cultures. First I thought—"aha!
so this must finally be what the ancient Greek performances looked like.
Yes, there is Oedipus, there is his chorus, yes." I felt I was
seeing something fabulously authentic from these ancient people. Then
a Japanese kabuki-esque element came into focus—the warrior dress,
the bearing, the vocal quality—even some of the words sounded
literally Japanese. Then a kind of Middle Eastern keening began. It
was as if all these classical and traditional elements met in this one
ritual play from Manipur.
But I ran into problems watching the show
from these "coordinates." I was sitting in a very urban, polished
concert venue watching something Of the Earth. As if I were wearing
taffeta to watch burlap. Odd, disconnected. And this is, after all,
a proscenium stage I’m looking at. Where is the dancing circle,
or the stomping ground, the ceremonial site? I became uncomfortable
that we were all sitting in identical rows, in folding chairs, with
programs.
Also, the phenomenon of performing a ritual
which is organic to your community in a foreign place confused me. This
company was touring, and had all of the problems one has with touring.
The choreography was being adjusted during the performance all the time.
The lighting plot couldn’t offer enough light for a stage that
large (63'x30' [19.20m x 9.14m]). That auditorium seats over 2000, and
I could be very wrong but it seemed to me that the actors were concerned
about being heard and had to shout a lot—so that I missed a lot
of the vocal variety and subtlety I had heard so much about. If the
piece was an outgrowth of a specific community, then it lost its real
impact outside of that community. It became simply a curiosity.
Sometime later I decided I’d been way
off—that I was actually watching a highly trained company make
its most recent contribution to the international theatre scene, funded
by arts grants. Very much grounded in The Now, as it were. Far from
being an ambassador from a "primitive" or pre-industrial culture
of some sort, Thiyyam was born into a professional theatre family, studied
at the National School of Drama in Delhi; his name is often mentioned
in the same breath with the great international lions of 1960’s/1970’s
theatre—Grotowski, Brook, Barba. I also saw images reminiscent
of Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet Theatre and theatres of that
"alternative"or experimental theatrical ilk. At the post-performance
Q&A session, someone asked Thiyyam if he would ever work with more
conventional kinds of texts and he assured the questioner that he and
his company have worked on Moliere, et alia: "Yes, we do know Ibsen,
we do know Robert Frost." From this perspective I wondered, when
I saw a chef in Thiyyam’s hell, whether it could be a reference
to Faust in Hell’s Kitchen? This seemed like an interesting path—to
re-enliven classical Indian texts through a combination of re-constructed
ritual, newly-created ceremony and reference to the full range of world
dramatic literatures and performance modes.
But I ran into problems watching from these
"coordinates," as well. When I’d thought the piece was
ancient and ritualistic, I hadn’t felt I had the "right"
not to like anything about it. Its naivete was touching; its slowness
was, uh, meditational. But if I looked at the performance from the perspective
of theatre that is familiar to me, and if Thiyyam and I were in the
same "conversation" about contemporary theatre, and I had
the "right" to an opinion about it—then its naivete
seemed sentimental, cloying; its slow pacing seemed to mean what it
always means all over the world: the actors were tired or otherwise
distracted.
I mean, I really tried to feel what I would
feel if a Western person had created this piece. After all, it’s
difficult not to feel impressed by the director’s being from Far
Away, or to feel intimidated by his accent or impressive bearing. We
do watch a piece like this "making allowances" for its weaknesses—and
I am not at all sure whether this is a sign in us of sophistication
and worldliness, or your garden variety condescension.
If a Western director friend had created
this piece, and has asked me for my opinion, I would have said:
Thiyyam said, "It’s a very thin story line, but the ultimate
thing I wanted to explore was the subtext: Who is this Ashok, what is
the nature of power, and where does the impulse to dominate come from?"
(Contra Costa Times). This exploration sounds very interesting to me.
I read in the program notes (Bradley Clough) that scholars argue, for
example, about the sincerity of Ashoka’s conversion to Buddhism,
as well as about the purity of his version of Buddhism, and I thought
these arguments would make good foundations for a dramatic play.
But I don’t think that this broad-brushed,
ritualistic form of storytelling allowed for inquiry such as this. Instead,
I saw a series of striking tableaus which communicated that war is terrible,
that killing causes suffering and that Hell is awful, you wouldn’t
want to go there. The actor who played the enlightened Buddhist priest,
who couldn’t be touched by Hell’s damnation, did have a
celestially lovely voice, and the brief comic sections were deftly played.
The sounds of the bells and drums had been lovingly scored. All of this
was impressive, interesting—but it fell short of offering serious
inquiry into complex matters.
I’m not at all sure that such inquiry
is what everyone wants in the theatre. Audiences all around the world
have been completely captivated by the piece without its offering this
"serious inquiry" at all. The press on the show is full of
words such as: masterpiece, genius, mesmerizing, dazzling, staggering,
one of the world’s great directors. Closer to home, I ran into
a well-known composer, Richard Marriott, who was seeing the show for
the second time--and one of the Bay Area’s best costume designers,
Allison Connor, said it was one of the best things she’d seen
in a long time and it had actually made her cry. So Thiyyam seems to
be doing fine in spite of my concerns.
I am reminded of something that Goethe wrote
in 1827 in response to Schlegel’s criticizing Euripides. "A
poet whom Socrates called his friend, whom Aristotle lauded, whom Menander
admired, and for whom Sophocles and the city of Athens put on mourning
on hearing of his death, must certainly have been something. If a modern
man like Schlegel must pick out faults in so great an ancient, he ought
only to do it upon his knees."
Thiyyam has created and maintained a thriving
company of actors who are recognized worldwide for their unusual accomplishments.
These have been achieved against almost unimaginable odds. They endure
bloody war, and hardship—to mention only one of very many: the
company’s poultry farming collective was devastated when a flood
drowned all their chickens. If I am to "pick out faults,"
or suggest weaknesses, in so awe-inspiring an undertaking as this production
of "Uttar-Priyadarshi," I do it only with my head bowed in
utmost respect.
Very Best Wishes, Chandradasan,
Lissa
____________
[October 16, 2000] Dear Lissa,
These are my responses to your impressions
of the Ratan Thiyyam production. This is not to correct or manipulate
your impressions or perceptions, but only to express mine. We know that
a true work of art may invoke different responses in different people.
It has to be so. And that is inevitable since we do live in two entirely
different parts of the globe, with different life experiences and surroundings.
I should tell you that I saw "Uttar
Priyadarshi" three years ago, and for this reason my responses
may be at once a little dusty, and at the same time, "ripe."
And I would also like to say at the outset that I respect Ratan a lot
for all he has done for the development of Indian theatre, and for creating
a theatre language that is so totally visible and poetic. In his absence,
and without people whose work is related to his, Indian theatre would
be much different in quality from what it is now. The works of those
of us who belong to the next generation are offshoots of Thiyyam's and
the works of the other gurus.
Nevertheless, when I saw the production of
"Uttar Priyadarshi," I was not very much impressed by it,
and still have reservations about the aesthetics and the theatrical
form of the work--while at the same time accepting and upholding the
theoretical and philosophical premise of the production.
As I came into the theatre for the pre-performance
lecture, Thiyyam's company was doing a lovely, easy vocal group warm-up
behind the curtain. Simply singing a simple melody (was this "devotional"
singing?).
Yes, it was a ritualistic invocation, the
pre-performance practice of this group. Also somewhat religious, it
is in accordance with the tradition of Indian performance. His group
usually does this privately, away from audience scrutiny. It may help
the actors warm up mentally and feel concentrated. You might remember
that all the work of the actors, from movement to vocal modulation,
and from posture to choreography, moment-to-moment suggest a highly
concentrated and meditative mood, which helps them to transgress the
reality of the performance time and space.
It is interesting, Lissa, to read of your
struggles to find a proper 'co-ordinate' for seeing the production.
When we watch a play from a foreign culture, what do we generally look
for? Yes, we are curious about the overall culture and its performance
traditions. But the performance has to go beyond just having this effect,
and start to communicate with the freshness of the "theatre"
it is offering. I have had the same problem when I was watching a Japanese
production, a Finnish production or a performance from Bulgaria. I should
have the same problem with "Godot," "The Maids"
or "Death of a Salesman" (or even Shakespeare). In a sense,
each work is both culture- specific and time-specific.
But it is a universal language that creates
new avenues in the art and craft of narration, and it is the basic conflicts
and state of humanity expressed in the body of the performance, which
make each play one’s own. In this respect, Ratan Thiyyam’s
production needs to address an American or Japanese audience, beyond
its cultural specifics. And I am not advocating the universalisation
of ethnic cultural identities so as to address the global village (which
is a dangerous lie and part of the neo-colonial process.)
Me, I am from Kerala, at the farthest extreme
from Manipur—I am also alien to the cultural codes of the play.
So that Lissa, my own pre-positioning in relation to the play was not
much different from yours, except for the very broad, weak bond of being
another "Indian-ness." And I myself am also a person who would
love to replace the western models of theatre with an indigenous Indian
perspective. I, too, would prefer to rely on the ritualistic performance
tradition of our "roots" in/for the process. This very purposeful
inversion of priorities is not only to free the theatre of India from
alien perspectives, but also is to enrich the whole of international
theatre. Orientalism in theatre is not simply for the sake of fashion,
but is to liberate and humanize the theatre of our much-mechanized techno-world.
For me, this particular production by Ratan
did not succeed in these. The production lacked emotional punch and
spontaneity. It seemed to me to be a well-crafted, well-organised, polished
and "well-packed" piece. It did not emotionally address the
current war or agonies of Manipur (or any other mutilated land) in the
way it was framed. For me there was no blood, but only purposefully
crafted visual images of red cloth and beautifully-composed music and
careful (and pre-meditated) movements for the actors to land at the
pre-determined points in the visual picture. The performance can perfectly
well be epic and narrate a story from the past to represent the present
day. And I do not need rounded characters, well-structured plot development
or histrionic outbursts--nor even Brecht--for this purpose. But I still
think that something is lacking in the whole ideology of the group and
its philosophy, or they are caught up in some paradoxes, or else restrained
by some invisible forces (like that of a big funding agency and their
indirect political interests.) I am informed that Ratan is presently
one of the blessed Indian theatre persons who has the luxury of getting
huge grants and can do theatre with more than enough money. Inevitably
such theatre will become decorative, will move away from the political,
social and historical functions it has to serve, and will be devoid
of the warmth and feel of human dilemmas.
Still admiring Ratan Thiyyam and his contributions
to Indian theatre;
Thanking you,
Chandradasan
_______________
[October 16, 2000] Chandradasan:
This is so completely interesting--I have
the impression that our responses to this production were 100% identical.
I'd like to respond to what you write here but…I agree entirely
with every word you've written.
Lissa
© 2000 Lissa Tyler Renaud and Chandradasan. All rights reserved.
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