There are several facets to the traditional koodiyattam recital that catapult it straight into the realm of a contemporary performance. For those watching with fresh eyes, the sparseness of the performing space, the committed rigours of interpretation and the rousing rhythms of the percussive accompaniment via the versatile mizhavu (big copper drum), are all departures from modes of performance that we are most accustomed to in our modern times, yet glaringly outmoded, prosceniums.
Nonetheless, this is an ancient ‘temple theatre’ form that dates back more than 2,000 years, and officially recognised by UNESCO as a ‘Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity’. Its performing lineages have always been along caste lines and only been breached in recent times. Its elitist Brahmanical origins are certainly anachronistic in a world where blue-blooded trappings are very slowly losing currency, even if we are very far from living in a post-caste society.
In Irinjalakuda, a small town near Thrissur in Kerala, I had the opportunity to witness a few evenings of a twelve-day koodiyattam festival at the Ammanur Gurukalam, a thriving centre for the form. A plethora of performers were at hand to show their mettle. Some were practiced, yet clinical, others brusque and desultory, and still others, bewitchingly quaint. The best seemed to have been left for the very last evening, in which an episode of Subhadradhananjaya was performed with unerring eloquence by Sooraj Nambiar. The Sanskrit drama is a 10th-century piece that is one of the most important in the koodiyattam repertory. In Nambiar’s presentation of Arjuna, one experienced a gamut of ideas and visual motifs that were par for course certainly, but interestingly, there was also a deep empathy for the feminine, and a tinge of melancholia that I hadn’t spotted in performances by other exponents during the fortnight. This was made all the more pronounced by the humorous ministrations of the jester, or vidushaka, (a delightful Ammanur Rajaneesh Chakyar), who interrupts the performance with a spiel in the more colloquial Manipravalam dialect (Sanskritised Malayalam, as opposed to the pure tongue employed by Arjuna). In a self-referential moment, he berates the stoic temple performer that Nambiar embodies, and tries to tear apart his composure. For all his efforts, we end up feeling all the more powerfully touched by the privations of passion that such traditional performers submit themselves to over years and years of training.
In the allied traditional art of Nangiar Kuthu , which is the sole domain of female artists, performers such as the formidable Usha Nangiar have attempted to recreate female archetypes, that have historically never been particularly well delineated within the pantheon. Her Draupadi is considered a tour-de-force, and can be seen as a contemporisation, even if the grammar of performance is along customary lines. Others like director Abhilash Pillai have tried to insert koodiyattam elements in modern plays, as we saw in his recent workshop piece, Peer Gynt , based on the master-work by Henrik Ibsen. Once again, a traditional performer like Nambiar is the conduit through which this fusion of forms takes place.
Peer Gynt , based on a Norwegian fairy tale, is particularly popular with Kerala theatre-makers. Pillai translates the lyrical metre of this five-act play in verse, into an ethos seeped in Sufi mysticism, as evinced by a production design whose central component is akin to an inverted funnel, and frequently evokes images of swirling dervishes even as projections provide texture to Gynt’s hyperactive imagination. Both Nambiar and co-actor Jhilmil Hazarika are kitted out in all-white garments that have a hand-stitched quality to them. The koodiyattam elements include a live mizhavu recital, and Nambiar’s spaced-out reverie, instantly recognisable as rooted in the form, yet acquiring a transcendental quality of its own that seems fresh and original. Yet, Pillai doesn’t push it all the way, and the play itself is cobbled together waveringly, with the Hindi interludes featuring Hazarika slackening the pace irretrievably. It does establish how an age-old virtuosity can seamlessly flow into a contemporary performance, without striking a discordant note. Future productions could no doubt strike a better balance, but koodiyattam is a legacy that has its keepers, who would also need to open themselves up to experimentation. As part of my ongoing work with the Vienna Festival, an interesting collaboration is in the offing later this year between a Nangiar Kuthu performer and an intrepid Russian playwright. We are hoping that such juxtapositions will create the right energies for cutting-edge innovation.
The writer is a playwright and stage critic
