Performing the Ramayana Tradition: Enactments, Interpretations, and Arguments

Description

The Ramayana, one of the two pre-eminent Hindu epics, has played a foundational role in many aspects of India's arts and social norms. For centuries, people learned this narrative by watching, listening, and participating in enactments of it. Although the Ramayana's first extant telling in Sanskrit dates back to ancient times, the story has continued to be retold and rethought through the centuries in many of India's regional languages, such as Hindi, Tamil, and Bengali. The narrative has provided the basis for enactments of its episodes in recitation, musical renditions, dance, and avant-garde performances. This volume introduces non-specialists to the Ramayana's major themes and complexities, as well as to the highly nuanced terms in Indian languages used to represent theater and performance. Two introductions orient readers to the history of Ramayana texts by Tulsidas, Valmiki, Kamban, Sankaradeva, and others, as well as to the dramaturgy and aesthetics of their enactments. The contributed essays provide context-specific analyses of diverse Ramayana performance traditions and the narratives from which they draw. The essays are clustered around the shared themes of the politics of caste and gender; the representation of the anti-hero; contemporary re-interpretations of traditional narratives; and the presence of Ramayana discourse in daily life. Dedication Contents Preface and Acknowledgments: The Journey of the Book Note on Transliteration PART I: ORIENTATIONS AND BEGINNINGS 1. The Ramayana Narrative Tradition as a Resource for Performance • Paula Richman 2. Thinking the Ramayana Tradition through Performance • Rustom Bharucha 3. Where Narrative and Performance Meet: Nepathya’s Rāmāyaṇa Saṃkṣēpam • Rizio Yohannan PART II: THE POLITICS OF CASTE 4. Shambuk’s Severed Head • Omprakash Valmiki, Translation by Aaron Sherraden 5. Recasting Shambuk in Three Hindi Anti-Caste Dramas • Aaron Sherraden 6. The Killing of Shambuk: A Retelling from a Director’s Perspective • Sudhanva Deshpande PART III: INTERROGATING THE ANTI-HERO 7. Ravana Center Stage: Origins of Ravana and King of Lanka • Paula Richman 8. Ravana as Dissident Artist: The Tenth Head and Ravanama • Rustom Bharucha 8a. Script of The Tenth Head • Vinay Kumar 8b. Script of Ravanama • Maya Krishna Rao PART IV: PERFORMING GENDER 9. The Making of RāmaRāvaṇā: Reflections on Gender, Music, and Staging • Hanne M. de Bruin 10. Writing Her “Self ”: The Politics of Gender in Nangyarkuttu • Mundoli Narayanan PART V: CONVERSATIONS AND ARGUMENTS 11. Reflections on Ramayana in Kutiyattam • David Shulman, Margi Madhu Chakyar, and Dr. Indu G., in conversation with Rustom Bharucha 12. Questions around Rām Vijay: Sattriya in a MonasticTradition • Sri Narayan Chandra Goswami with Parasmoni Dutta, Paula Richman, and Rustom Bharucha 13. Performing the Argument: Ramayana in Talamaddale • Akshara K.V. PART VI: BEYOND ENACTMENT 14. Revisiting “Being Ram”: Playing a God in Changing Times • Urmimala Sarkar Munsi 15. The Night before Bhor  rti: Play and Banarasipan in the Ramnagar Ramlila • Bhargav Rani 16. The Challenges Ahead: Researching the Ramayana Performance Tradition • Rustom Bharucha List of Performance Traditions Glossary List of Contributors Index