Western theatre practitioners and dancers have for long been attracted to the organic framework and thematic treatment of Kerala’s two major classical art forms — Kathakali and Koodiyattam. Paris-based Karen Twidle is a theatre artiste who has had training in Kathakali.
Recently, Karen staged a solo performance titled, Medeamorfosis , in a private space at Nedumpura village close to Cheruthuruthy. The creative endeavour was staged in association with a group of talented Kathakali actors, a couple of international artistes trained in Kerala’s percussion instruments, and lighting technicians.
The adaptation is based on an ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides (first performed in 432 BC in Athens). This experimental production employed gestures and movements of Kathakali and the vachikabhinaya of Koodiyattam.
The theme centres round Medea whose love affair with Jason eventually makes her an emotional wreck. Jason comes to Medea’s homeland to steal a sacred Golden Fleece that would help him acquire power in his own kingdom. Medea uses her intelligence and authority to realise his aim.
In the process, she betrays her own family and kingdom besides killing her brother who tries to catch the pair. The couple flees and lives in exile in the Greek world (Corinth). Jason, in course of time, deserts Medea to marry the Island King’s daughter for securing his life and that of his children. An enraged Medea turns vindictive and decides to kill the children. Such an action, she knows, would shatter Jason although she too would have to bear the brunt of it.
The performance, divided into seven scenes, begins with the forlorn Medea plotting her revenge and ends with her fleeing Corinth all alone.
Excerpts from an interview with Karen Twidle...
French theatre artiste Karen Twidle
What made you chose the characters of Medea for a solo dance-theatre narrative?
Exploring Medea enables me to give form to the links that I see between Eastern and Western artistic traditions, between Kathakali, which was my entry point, and Greek tragedy.
Medea is compelling as a female character, but also as a myth, and as an agent of change. In that sense, Medeamorfosis also grew out of a desire to highlight hybrid forms and the porous nature of boundaries, between inside and outside, native and foreign, anthropology and performance.
Perhaps no Western theatre artiste has so far experimented with the language of Kathakali and Koodiyattam simultaneously in their creations. But you employed techniques of both in your performance. What was the reason was that?
Again, Medea as a character has multiple facets: a foreigner, a woman, a mother, and a being of divine ascendency. The Koodiyattam elements work to highlight her divine nature, and her ties with the Sun God.
In a sense, Koodiyattam here acts as a bridge for Medea to cross into the realm of the divine, or a means for her to assert that at the very least. The adaptation focusses on the inner conflict that leads to the tragic outcome (the killing of her children) and her move to another state. I felt that employing both Kathakali and Koodiyattam would bring not only physical expression but also meaning to that translocation.
Do you think the Indian audience would be able to correlate spontaneously with your performance, especially with a series of visual frames shown in the backdrop of the stage?
Rather than a backdrop framing the action on stage, the film is in dialogue with Medea, and blurs the boundary between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, and between Medea and the chorus, on stage and on film.
In highlighting multiple meanings, I think the performance also highlights the multiplicity of what the eye can see, and can choose to see. The difference of medium (film versus stage) is illusory — whether the eye looks intermittently at the actor, film or percussionists is immaterial, it is the unity of the experience that counts.
What kind of an audience did you have in mind for this kind of a production?
The project interweaves different languages of communication such as ancient Greek, film, Kathakali, Koodiyattam, Theyyam and so on, but the aim is to be accessible to all. All audiences are not the same, but I hope that all audiences will find something in the performance that resonates with them. The important thing is that one language does not override the other; together they form a seamless whole that can be understood by anyone.
In what way will your visualisation of Medea in the present production facilitate cross cultural communication?
In the sense that it seeks to build bridges between different traditions, and theatrical cultures, yes. I also see those traditions as informing each other, rather than being at odds with each other. Medea and Jason represent two worlds, two visions of the world, which collide, with a tragic outcome.
But Medeamorfosis is about the possibility of encounter in a story about rupture: between languages and across cultures (this is true as much of the creative process as of the actual production). And in that, it is about cross-cultural communication. What can Kathakali, Koodiyattam and the ritual traditions of Kerala tell us about Medea and Greek tragedy? What can a character like Medea contribute to Kathakali? When you start exploring possible answers, you start to build bridges.
