Thrissur
has the privileged sobriquet of being the ‘cultural capital of Kerala’, and so
visiting Thrissur has always been a top priority on my academic go-to places. It’s little surprise then,
and a coincidence too that this semester I had the opportunity of visiting
three prestigious colleges in and around Thrissur, starting with Mar Dionysius
College and now in Sree Kerala Varma College!
From
my interactions with the Professors here at SKV, I came to know very
interesting facts about the college. Sankaran Nambiar, a literary giant, [known
for his renowned Malayala Bhasha
Charitram,] was the first principal of this college. Moreover, greats like
T. Balakrishna Menon, G. S. Ramakrishna have also worked here, they said. Quite
interestingly, the college got affiliation to University of Madras, and it was
inaugurated on 11th August 1947. For the
first time in Kerala, a course in Music was offered only in this college, I was
told.
The
three-day National Seminar on Theatre at Sree Kerala Varma College, Thrissur
got underway today (25 Nov) at 10 a.m. Mangai from Stella Maris, Chennai [Currently
Visiting Professor, Centre for the Study of Law & Governance, New Delhi],
gave the key-note address on “Theatre as Transformative”. Elaborating on the primal texts like
Aristotle’s Poetics, Bharatha’s Natya Shastra, and the golden text of
the Sangam Age – Meypaatiyal of Tolkappiyam, she said that humour is
much more subversive than tragedy, but “Aristotle doesn’t give us much of
comedy – it’s quite truncated”. Silappadikaram
translates the tenets of Natya
Shastra and the Poetics, and this
unique epic literature [Silappadikaram] deals extensively on music and dance,
and also describes the various grammatical and technical rules that define
music and dance, she added.
The
weight of being a great and a ‘heavy’ tradition is a burden, she said, and so the
very ancient nature of theatre can also be a burden, at times! Theatre is a
discipline, and what they call experimental theatre in the West is actually our
traditional theatre, she opined.
The
very ephemeral nature of theatre makes it a perfect medium for capturing the
raw emotions of the moment. In other words, the ephemerality of ‘Hold that
Moment’ gives theatre its significance. So every single space that you occupy
makes a huge difference!
Chandradasan,
Artistic Director, Lokdharmi Theatre, spoke on ‘Theatre in the Globalised
Context’. His talk approached theatre from socio-political outlook, as a
product of the collective, and reflected on the paradoxes offered by the new
spirit of globalization.
Excerpts
from his talk:
Theatre
is a cultural construct – and culture is a political construct; thus theatre
represents the pangs of the time and social anguish through representations / metaphors
/ images / narrations, etc.
The
connotation of the term globalization is mostly about the global influence of
imperialism rooted in a capitalist economy which is decided by market
strategies of selling and profiting, decided by the industrial/commercial/corporate
house, the politics of market trying to control all
walks/sensibilities/sensitivities of life including the cultural milieu.
The
new era of globalization is creating the feeling of a global village, where
boundaries and distinctions fade off, different entities merge and dissolve
into a melting pot – and at the same time this is not relaly real. It offers a
virtual reality of oneness, a hallucinatory possibility which never is true. At
the core, issues of race, ethnicity, gender, nation and many more
socio-cultural-political issues are operating negating a homogenous global
entity. So the happy safe bubble of a global culture and hence a global art
practice is just an idealistic metaphor, a dream which is never actual. The
advances of technology and communication systems reinforce the fact that such a
global system is never possible.
Deepan
Sivaraman, from School of Culture and Creative Experience, Ambedkar University,
New Delhi, shared his experiences with Theatre while talking on the
‘Post-dramatic turn’ in Theatre.
No comments:
Post a Comment