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.
