Arts: Alli - story of a woman resisting the destructive power of menBy: Jenny HughesSource: Northeastern Monthly - November 2006
The Story of Alli: the counter-argument / resistance. Response to a ‘reformulated’ ‘kooththu’ performance by the Seelamunai ‘kooththu’ group (Batticaloa), 12 July 2006.
On 12 July 2006 the latest stage in the Seelamunai community’s ongoing Reformulation of ‘Kooththu’ project, a performance of The story of Alli: counter-argument / resistance, was performed in the temple at Seelamunai. The reformulation project has involved a five year programme to rejuvenate the ‘kooththu’ tradition in Seelamunai and other villages surrounding Batticaloa that coincided with increased freedom afforded by the ceasefire in 2002. I attended the performance in my capacity as a researcher for In Place of War; a theatre practice and research project based at the University of Manchester (UK).
The Story of Alli was performed on the ‘kalari’ stage in the temple of Seelamunai. People came from the village of Seelamunai and the surrounding area to watch the ‘kooththu’ performance before participating in a ritual in the temple (the performance took place during ritual season).
The performance was based on the story of Alli from the Mahabharata, which tells of a renowned, ferocious and intelligent woman who leads a kingdom with female ambassadors and governors – without the help of men. During the performance Arjuna falls in love with Alli and Krishna helps Arjuna trick Alli into marrying Arjuna. When she realises this she is furious and declares war on the Pandava kingdom. She is eventually captured by the Pandavas and Arjuna’s wives are summoned to try and reconcile her to being Arjuna’s wife. She discovers through them that she is carrying the baby of Arjuna. In the traditional story this is when Alli submits to the will of Arjuna – in order to ensure that her child is not disgraced she becomes Arjuna’s wife. In the reformulated ‘kooththu,’ Alli continues to argue with Arjuna’s wives. She refuses to marry Arjuna and states that she will raise the child by herself in her own kingdom. She does not submit and says she will resist Arjuna until she is liberated.
The Seelamunai performance was a dynamic and engaging portrayal of the story. It included powerful performances by the young women from the village of Seelamunai, including by a young woman who played Krishna. As such, the performance was radical in form as well as narrative – this was the first time in the memory of Seelamunai that a woman had played a male part in the ‘kooththu’ (previously the reformulation project encouraged women to perform, but until this point they had only played female parts).
The theme of the performance – women resisting the power of men – has obvious relevance to the contemporary situation not just in Batticaloa but internationally. In fact, the story of the battle between the sexes, or women’s resistance to violence is a common motif in dramas about antiwar struggles. I am thinking especially here of Euripides’ plays such as The Trojan Women and Iphigenia at Aulis and Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata. Dharmasiri Bandaranayake’s groundbreaking production of The Trojan Women in 1999 was performed in Batticaloa, Vavuniya, Killinochi and Colombo as well as other areas of Sri Lanka. Lysistrata tells the story of women withdrawing sexual favours from men until they sign a peace agreement.
In 2003 two activists in New York started the Lysistrata Project, using the internet to contact numerous groups and encourage them to stage a play-reading of Lysistrata in protest against the US and UK forces’ invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq in 2003. 59 countries hosted 1029 readings of Lysistrata, Aristophanes’ war comedy in what was called “a theatrical act of dissent.” The women of Seelamunai therefore took forward the important theme of women resisting the destructive power of men in prevalent historical and contemporary drama across cultures.
The Lysistrata Project signalled something new in antiwar performance – the use of local, small-scale performances that are linked to global networks of communication to support a movement for liberation and change. The reformulation project similarly looks locally or ‘inward’ – to identify the issues in the community and to develop the skills and capacities of the community – and ‘outward’ to the aspects in the world of concern. The ‘outward’ focus of the ‘kooththu’ group includes hosting theatre practitioners and scholars such as Professor James Thompson (University of Manchester, UK) who has offered training in theatre of the oppressed methodologies. This dual focus is important to helping the community adapt and survive in a contemporary context and is central to the reformulation concept.
Reformulation is more than an educational programme for young people in the village – it is a complex, dynamic, sophisticated and flexible system of development that develops and shares knowledge inside the community in a programme of practice and activity. Through participating in a process of discussion, creativity and performance, the participants learn about themselves, the community – and also challenge the community (and themselves) to develop new ideas, skills and capacities. The ‘vibrations’ that are created by the energy of discussion, rehearsal and performance have the impact of generating new ideas about the world and changing attitudes and behaviour. In the words of the ‘annaviar’ (director / dramaturge), “this is a very beautiful change that has come through ‘kooththu’” – directly referring to the increase in confidence of the participating young people, but indirectly to the sense of renewal and refreshment brought to the community by the whole process.
One of these beautiful changes has been to develop a questioning attitude in interpretations of the old scripts and texts (and values). The group has drawn on the ‘annaviar’s’ skill in recognising the significance of different interpretations of the story – and are more equipped to question the discriminatory ideas, assumptions and narrow perspectives in narratives of the ancient texts. This questioning is an extraordinarily useful ‘transferable skill’ in today’s postcolonial world, where information is presented in highly mediated and manipulated guises (to support the case for war against Iraq, to use a Western example). The reformulation project has involved asking more complex questions about representation, rather than accepting unquestioningly the views / ethics written into modern and pre-modern forms of the epics.
As such, it is the connection to the changing imperatives of a globalised world that strikes me as most useful and most surprising about the reformulation programme. The revival of a traditional practice has involved linking of tradition with fulfilling the needs of young people surviving in a rapidly changing, and increasingly risky, contemporary environment. As the ‘annaviar’ says, what can be learned through the ‘kooththu’ is more important than a university degree: the annaviar, “can produce any song at any time whilst a university student has to check his books before giving an answer.” It is such flexibility, ability to be creative, to respond fluidly and from a position of ‘living’ and flexible knowledge that is so useful today.
Hence this reformulation is part of the widespread participatory and anti-globalisation movement which has also used improvisation, creativity and performance to increase skills and capacity, and as a means of engaging in global power struggles. Importantly then, reformulation is not a movement from one fixed tradition to creating another fixed tradition. It is about refreshing a tradition: moving from a permanent or fixed state to a position, form and content that is active, dynamic, flexible and open to ongoing change. This happens whilst remaining inherently linked to the underlying principles, ethic and structure that are part of the tradition – which for ‘kooththu’ includes participation of the community in discussion, activity, reviving social networks and gatherings, enjoyment and relaxation, (as well learning a disciplined and complex art form).
In my discussions with the performers a few days after the performance I was asked about forms of traditional theatre in villages in England. I found this question extraordinarily difficult to answer – village communities were the front line in the destruction of rural England wreaked by the Industrial Revolution and cultural forms that survived are less living traditions like the reformulated ‘kooththu’ of Seelamunai, and more remnants of the past, preserved for their heritage value.
The closest similarity I could think of was the famous annual Bradford Mela which celebrates the food, dance and music of Northern Indian communities in this old industrial town, but also includes puppetry performances from traditional pre-Victorian Britain for children attending the festival. In addition, the growing organic farming and fair trade shopping movement in England – reviving the farming of traditional species of food in England and creating new markets to trade them, along with organically produced and fair trade goods from across the world. Like reformulation, these phenomena are a combination of learning anew, linking local and global, building from the remnants of memory as well as responding to the new realities in the world in a way that is dedicated to helping the local survive and prosper.
‘Kooththu’ is claimed as the ‘national theatre’ of the Tamil people – but the reformulation processes of Seelamunai shows it to be far more than this. ‘Kooththu’ is part of the community’s struggle for self sufficiency in a rapidly changing world which presents more risks than the previous realities the community has faced. It contains a social process and an ethic – to bring the community into a discursive and creative space, which respects and revives its capacity whilst not forgetting the imperative to survive changing realities.
‘Kooththu’ means ‘to leap’. Questioning the appearance, construction and interpretation of things is essential in a postcolonial world, and in a time of international war especially, theatre might contribute to the kind of ‘intelligence’ that we all need to embrace new realities. It is a means of asking the kind of questions that will hopefully provide for a prosperous, healthy and happy Seelamunai in generations to come, and some kind of inspiration for the international anti-globalisation movement. The Story of Alli places women as a key and important part of this struggle, and reminds us of the need to include all ethnicities, genders and ages in this movement.