SINGING AND DRAWING AMIDTS PUBLICATIONS

POSTER OF THE EXHIBITION

SHARING AND CELEBRATION PUBLICATIONS UNDER THE SHADOWS OF TREES

A place for thoughtful recreation and social integration

An event of connecting people with their own environment

A place for creative expressions and appreciations

Harvests of socio cultural activism in publications

Exhibition - Sharing - Celebration of publications of socio cultural activisms-2012

Venue:  UNDER THE SHADOWS OF ‘VAAHAI TREES’, Pioneer Road, Batticaloa, Sri Lanka

Date: 14 and 15nth of September 2012

Time: 10.00am-06.00pm

-->

Exhibition - Sharing - Celebration of publications of socio cultural activisms-2012

Venue:  UNDER THE SHADOWS OF ‘VAAHAI TREES’, Pioneer Road, Batticaloa, Sri Lanka

Date: 14 and 15nth of September 2012

Time: 10.00am-06.00pm

Chief Guests:

           Ms.P.S.M.Charles (Government Agent, Batticaloa)

           Ms.Sivageertha Pirabhaharan (Mayor, Municipality Council, Batticaloa.)

Suriya Women Development Centre,

Thirdeye Local Knowledge and Activists Group,

‘Maruha’, Break through for New Generation,

And ‘Khaham’

INVITE YOU ALL

ALL ARE WELCOME FOR THE EXHIBITION-SHARING – CELEBRATION

                                                                                         WITH

PERFORMANCES AND LOCAL FOODS AND DRINKS

Exhibition - Sharing - Celebration of publications!

Cultural activism is meant for people in groups for actions. Publications of cultural activism are not to educate or to make others aware. It’s one of the tools to evoke sharing, discussions, expressions among the collective body and beyond the collective body.

Publications in cultural activism are functioning in two ways. A publication creates sharing and discussions among the affiliates of the collective body and the experiences and the expressions of the affiliates of a collective body sublime into publications.

Publications of cultural activism is not mere an intellectual or a creative practice of personalities but expressions of a collective body or a cooperation of collective bodies functioning with causes unattended or silenced.

THE CIVILIZED SPEAKS

THE CIVILIZED SPEAKS

TALK TO ME

YA, TALK TO ME
BUT DON’T
DON'T TALK TO ME
ABOUT HUMAN SUFFEREINGS

OR ABOUT

ANIMAL SLAUTER

TALK TO ME

YA, TALK TO ME

ABOUT ANIMAL SACRIFICE 

THE FAITH OF THE "OTHER"

TALK TO ME

YA, TALK TO ME

BECAUSE I AM CIVILIZED

BUT

DEFINITELY NOT

A COLONIZED!!!

S.Jeyasankar

PERFORMANCE OF PARAI MELA KOOTHTHU IN BATTICALOA

PARASURAMAN THE MASTER PERFORMER OF 'PARAI' PLAYING 'SORNAALI'

ARCHITECTURE OF 'KOOTHTHU ARANKU' (TRADITIONAL THEATRE OF THE TAMILS OF SRI LANKA

TRADITIONAL THEATRE ARCHITECTURE OF THE TAMILS OF SRI LANKA CONTAINS TWO IMPORTANT FEATURES. ONE IS THE PERFORMING ('KALARI') AREA AND THE OTHER IS 'THORANAM' THE DECORATIVE ENTRANCE FOR THE 'KALARI'.

IT IS THE ART OF THE COMMUNITY.

Book of veteran Eezham Tamil writer published in Jaffna

Friday, June 15, 2012

Book of veteran Eezham Tamil writer published in Jaffna

Professor Sivalingarajah garlanding Mr Nadarajan [Photo courtesy: thirdeye2005.blogspot.com]
[TamilMedia, Friday, 15 June 2012, 20:53 GMT]
A collection of writings on the antiquity and traditions of Eezham Tamils written by Mayilangkoodaloor P. Nadarajan was launched at I’nuvil in Jaffna on last Sunday.
76-year-old Mr. Nadarajan has spent a lifetime in Eezham Tamil studies, editing old texts and in bringing out valuable publications. He is regarded as a symbol of selfless service to Tamil studies, benefitting school children to university academics. Generations of writers, researchers and publishers were benefitted by his editing skills in Tamil.

The present book of him is published to honour an intellectual tradition that gives importance to society than self, said the publishers, Parani Pathippakam, Koa’ndaavil.

The book launch event was presided by Professor of Tamil of the University of Jaffna, S. Sivalingarajah, while Mr Kuzhanthai M. Shanmugalingam and Mr. A. Sabaratnam received the first copies.

Mr Nadarajan has earlier brought out error-free publications of many historiographical texts.

He long served as a teacher at Mahajana College, Thellippazhai.

rtf

Posted by ananda at 9:56 PM 
ceylon-ananda.blogspot.com/

Batticaloa and Koothu

Batticaloa and Koothu

Posted on August 14, 2012 by diblankatap

Conversations with Jeyasankar: a summary

Jeyasankar Sivagnanam is a theatre artist and head of the Dept. Of Fine Arts at Eastern University in Batticaloa Sri Lanka.

He has been instrumental in re-invigorating a style of community theatre called ‘koothu’ in this war torn region. Koothu itself is a form of theatre that involves a whole village in producing and ‘performing’ a traditional story (e.g. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana). The preparation takes several months and involves everyone in the village from the young to the elders in acting, writing, dramaturgy, design and music. For example the process allows for intergenerational exchanges where elders may be consulted informally by younger participants on their take on the work so far, and nieces and nephews might hear about how an uncle (or more recently, an aunt) may have performed a part in years gone by. The work itself becomes a topic of discussion outside the confines of any ‘formal’ organisational meeting, which in itself exemplifies the richness of investment.

The form itself is inextricably linked to rhythmic cues that are provided by the drummers whose compositions themselves are tied to the cadences of the words. This interdisciplinary approach harkens to early forms of Delta Blues from the US where the singer is free to tack on an extra line if needs be and subsequently expands the form of the music to accommodate.

It is also worthwhile to note that women have now been included as performers where in the past they have not. This has allowed for a real shift in perspective as women in these communities have borne a large part of the suffering war, tsunami and poverty has inflicted.

Unlike western theatre where rehearsal is outside of public view, the process is an open one. Once the story has been decided, everyone in the village is in some way kept apprised of the progress of the piece, so the work itself grows organically in the full knowledge of the audience. This means that the piece inhabits the audience in a literal way that is brought to full realisation during performance, which can take up to 8 hours and whose ‘viewers’ come and go as they please or even sleep on site.

This radically turns the idea of specialisation on it’s head and Jeyasankar has said (more than once) that it has been dismissed by academics: the argument being that the practice is ‘old fashioned’ and has no place in modern theatre. What is called modern theatre seems to imply a codification of these works put together by specialists. Jeyasankar illustrates the cost of specialisation when he refers to the ‘master’ of the work (who we can loosely compare to a ‘director’) as someone who has a multi/inter – disciplinary overview of the work (and whose function has more to do with a facilitation of a community agreed – upon interpretation) but who may not have a grip on art/academia speak or have a degree or any of the academic markers that are ‘recognised’ and is subsequently hired by professional theatre groups (who present ‘traditional’ works) as a musician.

What I think Jeyasankar may be referring to is that the whole process is indivisible from the performance and in fact that the ‘process IS the performance’ as it reflects the whole communities’ input into the music, acting, design and dramaturgy of the piece.

It is of great importance to note Jeyasankar’s insistence that these ancient narratives have contemporary relevance for both the communities performing and witnessing them.

He puts special emphasis on the fact that while the pieces are traditional and mythic they are made contemporary by the social context they occur in. For example, while the Indian Peace Keeping Force occupied areas of Sri Lanka, the participants of a koothu related their presence to certain aspects of the ancient story they were presenting.

But communities go even further than that in imbuing their theatre practice with their contemporary experience and values; in cases in which either content or form conflicts with the values held by the community staging the piece, a full re-creation of the text is undertaken by subsections of the community, which is then workshopped by successive subsets, passing through the hands of as many community members as possible, and taking 6 to 12 months. The process, its length, and its broad inclusiveness of the community as a whole is essential, so as to ensure that at the time of performance, the whole village is as familiar with the new text as with the old, and that it can therefore be recognized by young and old alike as a piece of which the community can take ownership.

Friday Aug 10

Jeyasankar invited us to his home where he gathered musicians, a ‘master’ and an elder who was re writing/modernising a koothu play. It was a highly enjoyable evening. In spite of language differences and in between songs they had composed (one of which had been used by an Indian feminist activist in her work in global campaigns that combat violence against women ) we exchanged views on art and culture as well as specific questions of process, engagement (audiences, performers and the neither/nor of both) and the work of achieving contemporary relevance in traditional forms.

Sunday Aug 12

Tova and I were invited to attend a writing workshop for koothu; a surreal experience in itself as everyone spoke Tamil! Nevertheless it was interesting to watch the discussion as it played out in power dynamics between older and younger and also how each person who spoke was given the opportunity to speak uninterrupted and in their own time.

There were three young women on the periphery who did not speak which we found odd given the movement to inclusion that Jeyashankar had mentioned When asked about this he said that they had just begun to get involved in koothu and had not learned enough about writing for traditional theatre to get involved extensively at this stage of production.

Later on that afternoon we visited a school for children (8 – 12years) whose lives have been troubled by domestic and displacement issues. Tova led them through some vocal improvisation cues from her work with the Element Choir. It was a joyful, riotous session. We also watched as they made up plays and performed them. This was quite an inspiring experience as Jeyasankar noted that the kids were quite capable of making up sophisticated songs and plays out of their own knowledge of traditional tales as evidenced that day. He also said that it was really great that English was used outside of a classroom situation where they were free to imitate and react without judgement.

Every one of the 40 or so kids gleefully or shyly came around to shake our hands and thank us like a flock of cheery birds: some more than once (more out of a sense of excitement and play than any sort of extended appreciation…which made it even more fun!).

Implications/Observations

I naturally began to think of my own work in performance after connecting with Jeyasankar and his community particularly as it had to do with aspects of community connection. While there have been many great ideas put forward by ensembles like Mammalian Diving Reflex and Bluemouth Inc., there has not ( to my knowledge ) been one that takes a whole community (ah…except the Passion plays that villages in Europe perform annually) into a creative process to the extent that koothu does There are reasons for this, not the least of which is the fragmentation of communities brought on by entertainment media, the internet, as well as the transient nature of the workforce and the attendant fracture of comunities that has increased with the globalisation agenda. The challenge would be to find a community that still has access to elders, still wishes to engage in a community workshopped performance as well as a population that has remained fairly cohesive. In terms of a well known ‘story’ I have had some ideas on this relating to the various myths that show up everywhere (vis a vis Joseph Campbell’s ‘ Hero of A Thousand Faces’) but as yet have to solidify a concept.

http://diblankatap.wordpress.com/