‘Idakini Kathayaaratham’ – the tales of migration, alienation and estrangement – is the latest ongoing production by Manalmagudi Theatre Land.
Based in Kovilpatti town in Tamil Nadu’s Tuticorin district, Manalmagudi is deep in the practice of ritual theatre. Though the play can be seen as a response to the migrant workers’ crisis during the first COVID-19 lockdown as well as the year-long farmers’ struggle, the underlying theme is recurring to their philosophical and political journey.
Sitting on the floor of the thatch-roofed balcony in their theatre cum residence – whistle of trains and cooing of cuckoos punctuating the conversation – the Manalmagudi actors speak of their work, life, body, and how all this merged into one. Murugaboopathy, the founder-director; his brother Konangi, eminent Tamil writer; and other members of the group, including several young actors, join in to share their experiences and feelings, imaginations and realisations.
Their ardent connection with the ‘land’ and adherence to a collective belonging to that ‘land’ set them apart in the realm of modern Tamil theatre. Therefore, the themes of migration, alienation and estrangement from that ‘land’, too, keep returning to their plays in various forms.
Manalmagudi Theatre Land, Kovilpatti, Tamil Nadu. Photo: Manalmagudi Theatre Land
‘A script should have its own land’
A ship sways against the waves on a dimly lit performance arena. The audience too gets engulfed in the dark waters of the chant-like chorus. The performers’ bodies get shrouded in a whirlpool of dust. Out of the swirl rises ghost-like faces covered by straw slippers. The slippers are endlessly walking – forever resisting against encroachments, bans and barricades. Neital, Palai, Kurinji, Marutam, Mullai – marine land, barren land, hilly land, agricultural land and forest land – the entire gamut presents a free pasture for these actors.
The theatre of Manal Magudi is a descendant of a practice that Suresh Awasthi called the ‘Theatre of Roots’ – a meeting point of modern theatre and tradition. In their practice of ritual theatre, the actor’s body is not just a vehicle of expression. Rather, it has a profound connection to the ‘land’.
This body is a co-living space for myths and oral histories, worships and faiths. And yet this ‘cultural body’ is far from being subservient. It is forever searching for ways to revolt against discrimination – just as a kuricolli – the mythical panther – emerges out of the deep forests of southern Tamil Nadu in a respectful search of the theettu thuni – the so-called ‘polluted’ menstrual piece of cloth.
The actors frequently speak of ancient and modern myths with a note of simple faith. But that faith is deeply rooted in spiritual, experiential and political understanding. As if, they are constantly referring to lands of alternative realities. A reality in which animals and humans coexist and interact as empathetic equals; where realisations reign over proofs.
The Westernised analytical mind has labelled these realities as mysteries and miracles in need to be debunked. But the politics of Manalmagudi stands at the polar opposite, thriving on the mystique that the ‘land’ generously offers them.
A photo of ‘Idakini Kathayaaratham’: Actors in rehearsal with Murugaboopathy. Credit: Manalmagudi
The intimate connection of Manalmagudi with land is evident from its very name. It comes after the red sand dunes, a characteristic of southern Tamil Nadu. It was this land, colloquially known as the therikkadu, where their journey began in the ’90s. The dunes made of sand or manal – lying like gigantic snake-charmer flutes or magudis – led to the name Manalmagudi.
However, just as the body of the actor in Manalmagudi is not merely an individual’s physical body, the ‘land’, too, is not a material piece of land that can be owned through legal papers. Boobalan, a member of the Manalmagudi family and the light designer comes forward to explain how they look at the actor’s body: “For us, the actor who can perform ritual theatre has a ‘cultured body’, a ‘collective body’. Culture here does not mean academic intellect. Here it means a strong connection to the ‘land’.”
He continues, “The land is not where I physically reside, but where my thought process starts. It may or may not coincide with my place of birth or living. Gandhi said that you could kill me or break my bones, but never get my obedience. This is how we understand land. No corporate company can buy that land lying within me. It’s like, a man living lavishly in a city might be owning a lot of land. But he never feels that land. Whereas others, who own nothing, but are free to roam within the nature, can feel the land. The landlord owns, but the farmer feels. In ritual theatre, it’s the intensity of this connection with ‘land’ that differentiates an artist from a craftsman.”
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‘The land decides the script’
Once the actors are able to identify the land that the script demands, often, the land starts redesigning the script in turn. For example, in the therikkadu plays, Boopathy felt that they were being directed by the land to do away with their myriad of props and rebuild everything with the palm leaves – a characteristic of that particular landscape.
It was the land that made them replace the wings with the peaks of the dunes – thus changing the exits and entries; the local river Vaippar was turned into the protagonist’s hair; the light, sound and movement – everything was eventually moulded by the land. The play and the land could not be torn apart anymore.
Likewise, Manalmagudi believes that once rooted in the ‘land’, the artist cannot be torn apart. She cannot be corrupted or coerced. The fiercely independent actor Mariappa Samigal from the colonial times, who appears in Boopathy’s first therikkadu play ‘Kunthal Nagaram’ (City of Hair), exemplifies such a character. He cuts off his own tongue for the sake of freedom, and the red of his blood mingles with the red sand of the therikkadu.
The character and the land become one. Stories interwoven within stories, each connecting to the land – this is the motif Manalmagudi keeps returning to, while the meaning of land keeps shifting between the material and the metaphorical.
‘Cemmoothaai’: A therikkadu play with props made of palm leaves. Photo: Manalmagudi
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‘That the ritual reality is out-of-control is a colonial idea’
In an interview, the maestro of ritual theatre, Heisnam Kanhailal, said, “In a ritual, the performer and the spectators share a commonplace, like in a temple, the priest and the devotees. Even the god, priest and devotees become one at a particular moment of time and develop an inner dialogue. Spiritually they become one. Here, spiritually, our senses meet with each other through rituals and we become one.”
For Manalmagudi, the phenomenon of meeting of the ‘land’ with the body, light and sound is one such act of spirituality. In their plays, such intense moments of meeting are often expressed through trance.
In this context, Boopathy recalls the Kulasekharapatnam dasara (Dussehra) festival, in which more than one lakh devotees come wearing masks and disguises. For months, they prepare for their body to become worthy of their vesham (disguise). During the offering, some of the devotees go into a trance. In that moment, life mingles with rituals.
“To call this trance raw and uncontrollable is looking at it through the colonial lens,” he says, adding that “only if you enter the ritual reality, you become an insider. Not every mask-wearing person is a ritual performer. The apparent chaos of a trance in fact represents many interconnected points in life that need to be experienced, not necessarily understood.”
In this spirit, the actors feel that every inauguration of trance is unique in their plays, just as every invocation of transcendence is uniquely fulfilling; one does not tire of it in one’s inner world.
For a listener, for an audience, a doubt nags whether this is a circular defence. So, if the uninitiated is not a part of the ritual reality, if they are perhaps blinded by the colonial or materialistic lens, and therefore, ineligible to critique or identify, what then could be their point of entry into the theatre of Manalmagudi?
‘We do not go by power structures’
After all, there is a downside of rituals; namely, they can be faked, corrupted and made into an instrument of discrimination. But Manalmagudi attempts to stay away from that trap as they seek the true essence of rituals, which symbolises survival through coexistence, not the hierarchy of power. It is this air of equality that in a way answers the above question. In particular, it visibly convinces the actors that their ‘theatre land’ is also a ‘democracy land’.
Right from the therikkadu days till date, the Manalmagudi artists have lived a collective life – each learning to perform the necessary everyday duties of household and theatre. However, as against the early days of more adventurous collective abodes, including haunted houses, currently, the group has a permanent place of residence with a non-proscenium performance arena. Does this space open its gate to all, across gender and class? The team says it does so in aspiration, if not in practice.
‘Poozhipaavai’. Photo: Manalmagudi
Not every actor who came to Manalmagudi has been able to cope with such shared living, such “constant cancelling of self”. According to Boopathy, “One has to reach great simplicity in order to participate in the collectiveness of ritual theatre.” Thus, it is not surprising that the majority of Manalmagudi members are from rural and suburban Tamil Nadu. They are inspired by the Sangam poets – individually unknown but offering an era of greatness to society as a collective.
The choice of establishing a space outside the metro-centric cultural hierarchy, while gradually building up a community around experimental theatre through performances, seminars and workshops in these regions, is a bold one. But coming to think of it, what kind of ‘land’ could the city offer them! Isn’t it the city that sets the trap of individualism and intellectuality? Of migration, alienation and estrangement?
The actors fondly remember a day, when a herd of cows with tinkling bells in their necks visited one of their rehearsals at the edge of a forest and stood in complete silence for eight long minutes before gently trotting away. As ‘Idakini Kathayaaratham’ is ready for grazing the country, already having visited the North-East along with the South, one hopes that it may leave no land untravelled, no soul untouched – humans and non-humans alike.
‘Idakini Kathayaaratham’ (120 minutes) will be performed in Purisai Festival on October 1 and 2, followed by a tour in other parts of South India. For details, contact https://www.facebook.com/manalmagudi and manalmagudi.art@gmail.com.
Madhushree is a Chennai-based artist and writer.