A 2014 Inlaks scholarship to study the Yakshagana folk theatre form took Bangalore-based theatre practitioner Sharanya Ramprakash to the esteemed Guru Bannanje Sanjeeva Suvarna of the famed Yakshagana Kendra in Udupi. “I wanted to have a residential experience in a traditional framework, and acquaint myself with not just the form, but the culture as well,” says Ramprakash. Although women have made inroads in recent times, Yakshagana remains an enduring male-only bastion. Being accepted into the fold was in part due to her mentor’s pluralist vision. Ramprakash’s urban privilege opened doors closed to most women. For two years, she was the only woman in the repertory, graduating from budding student to bona fide performer, her decade-long experience in theatre coming in handy. Ramprakash toured with the centre’s professional troupe, the Yaksha Ranga, performing in makeshift tents, playing female stock characters, as well as standing in for male actors on occasion. The ‘collisions’ that she experienced, as a lone woman and female artiste amidst men borne looking to transcend the trappings of gender happened even as her innately urban sensibilities negotiated for space in such bucolic settings. This ultimately led to her play Akshayambara , which will play in Mumbai this week. Funding from the India Foundation for the Arts helped to mount a contemporary piece that is an intriguing introspection of a traditional form.
The lines of subversion in the play are very clearly drawn. The performance within is Draupadi Vastrapaharana , a popular piece in the Yakshagana canon. Ramprakash plays a woman not unlike herself, who has been assigned the male part of a belligerent Kaurava, while Prasad Cherkady, a traditional practitioner, has been roped in to play the male actor who enacts Draupadi. Men who play female parts are very much entrenched in a status quo in which women are excluded. This is evident in the two characters’ differing approaches to the gender role reversal, and male performers’ resistance to a female performers stepping on their turf. “I have found that those who took on female parts had very little empathy for their characters,” says Ramprakash. “Even Draupadi is performed so perfunctorily, almost like a stock figure, and sometimes her anguish is completely excised from the narrative.” By contrast, her own character is anguished by the Kaurava’s deep-seated misogyny, and these conflicts feed into the manner she delineates him. Fleshed out male parts, in any case, afforded more room for performers to deliver powerful turns. “I find it disturbing that the narrative has been usurped by a male point of view that is never questioned,” she says. “And situating myself inside that mindset was akin to undertake a harrowing journey.” At some distance from this effort, stands the world of actual female Yakshagana performers. The earliest female ensemble was established in 1979 by pioneer Akkani Amma. And the women’s Yakshagana movement has been gradually gaining steam since. A mixed cast such as that depicted in Akshayambara is rare. “The female troupes are concerned with faithfully reproducing the traditional style. There is no introspection, or subversion in their work,” says Ramprakash, which is why it was more important for her to work with an established all-male group, where she could shake up the dynamics.
Gender and power politics aside, there is much that is intrinsically queer in Akshayambara ’s premise: the fluidity of gender, for instance. Ramprakash stresses that this wasn’t intentional and her characters take on guises in a performative context. Yet in her own onerous exploration of masculinity, she drew much strength and solace from the real-life experiences of female-to-male transgenders. “I met someone who was perfectly okay with being a man who menstruates. His own definition of what it means to be a man came first,” she says. Ramprakash was ultimately able to discard the baggage of manliness being imposed upon her, particularly Suvarna’s emphasis on physicality, and create what is uniquely her own personal take on a gendered persona. The war--paint-like makeup and armoured costume merely aids this interpretation.
Sharanya Ramprakash’s Akshayambara in Kannada, with supertitles in English will be performed at the G5A Foundation for Contemporary Culture, Mahalaxmi, on February 24 at 7:30 pm. Entry is free but an RSVP is required. Please contact menaka@indiaifa.org
The author is a freelance writer and theatre critic
