For the 12th edition of Assam’s ‘Under the Sal Tree’ theatre festival, the group Badungduppa, which also organises this unique fest in the forests surrounding Rampur village of Goalpara district, was mounting a play called Bodaraja. The title means ‘Python King’ in the Rabha dialect. The Rabhas are a Tibeto-Burman community concentrated in Lower Assam, West Bengal’s Dooars region and the Garo Hills. They are one of Assam’s major plains tribes. Rampur and a sizeable part of Goalpara are inhabited by the Rongdani Rabhas, who speak the language in its purest form. However, certain sections among the Rabhas, such as the Pati Rabhas, hardly speak the dialect these days.
Five months before the production, the Badungduppa troupe members picked the brains of village elders around Rampur for more inputs. The elders supplied details about various aspects of Rabha tribal culture — from music and motifs to hunting, fishing, farming and rituals — for this play inspired by a Rabha folktale describing how human greed transforms into a python that keeps growing bigger and stronger.
Short and crisp
“The idea behind Badungduppa, named after a musical instrument made of bamboo, is to revive, preserve and promote our Rabha cultural heritage with emphasis on traditional theatre. We are driven by the need to document
Villagers watch the Rabha play ‘Bodaraja’ at the 12th edition of ‘Under the Sal Tree’ theatre festival in Rampur, Assam.
the cultural nuances that might vanish with the elders,” says Madan Rabha, managing director of Badungduppa Kalakendra, the group’s permanent workplace in Rampur. Bodaraja was the inaugural play of the 2021 edition of the three-day ‘Under the Sal Tree’ festival, held from from December 15 to 17. As the name suggests, the stage of the fest is a natural clearing of about 1.5 bighas in the forest, overshadowed by a thick canopy of sal trees.
The theatre of the Rabhas is traditionally festival-oriented. It has two schools — one associated with hunting and the other designed to make people warier of the world around them, usually through humour. “During festivals such as the pre-harvest Baikho, our forefathers would organise impromptu plays for entertainment. These plays were invariably about hunters and their prey, with the actors impersonating a shikari , a deer, a bird or any other animal. They were short and crisp, relying more on body movements and sounds than dialogues,” says Madan.
Manipuri influence
So when theatre practitioner Sukracharjya Rabha (1977-2018) established the Badungduppa group in 1998, giving a formal shape to traditional Rabha theatre, economy of words, vocal gymnastics and vigorous physical action became its defining
An actor performs the Rabha play ‘Bodaraja’ at the 12th edition of ‘Under the Sal Tree’ theatre festival in Rampur, Assam.
characteristics. Sukracharjya’s guru, Manipur’s famous thespian Heisnam Kanhailal (1941-2016), had fine-tuned the form. It was he who conceived the idea of taking theatre to nature, staging plays in a sal forest. ‘Under the Sal Tree’ started in 2008, four years after Badungduppa was formally registered as a group.
“There’s a pronounced Manipuri influence in our theatre because of its association with Kanhailal. The movements we adopt are akin to the exercises typical of Manipuri theatre. But we have blended them with our traditional style,” says Badungduppa’s creative director, Dhananjay Rabha. No two plays staged by Badungduppa are exact copies because actors are given the licence to improvise the moves or sounds. “Our actors often make on-the-spot changes to raise the bar,” says Madan.
Silence and pauses
Lakhikanta Rabha, Badungduppa’s secretary and music director, says it took the group several years to deviate from the jatra or the commercial bhramyoman (mobile theatre) style, especially in terms of background music. “When we staged our first play Rupalim across villages in the 1990s, we had an orchestra. We realised this would not work for us for long. We cut out on instruments alien to Rabha culture, stuck with four-five traditional instruments and learnt to weave silence and pauses into our music,” he says.
The emphasis on physical expressions and minimal use of words have made Rabha theatre fathomable to non-Rabhas. Although the festival’s audience consists mostly of locals, theatre enthusiasts from Guwahati and different parts of India attend too.
From financial difficulties to disruptions caused by social and political strife, nothing has stopped Badungduppa from organising ‘Under the Sal Tree,’ although they were forced to reduce the number of days from four to three. The fest has hosted groups from West Bengal, Odisha, Bangladesh. It has staged intensely political plays after the eruption of violent protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in 2019. The latest edition, organised in collaboration with Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi, featured Bengali, Assamese, Tamil and Manipuri plays.
The participating troupes are put up in bamboo and thatched huts within the expansive Badungduppa Kalakendra complex. They perform in a temporary amphitheatre backgrounded by a bamboo mat screen and surrounded by rows of semi-circular seats for the audience. “We are coming here for the third time and the experience has always been refreshing ,” said S. Murugaboopathy, director of the Tamil play, Idakini Kathayaaratham , which was performed at the 2021 edition of the fest.
“We will try to be as good, or better, next year,” said Badungduppa’s president and Sukracharjya’s widow, Cheena Rabha, as the festival drew to an end.
rahul.karmakar@thehindu.co.in
