The Bard is speaking a new language in Kerala. Kathakali exponent Ettumanoor P Kannan, while strictly adhering to the form’s rule book, is staging Shakespearean plays, with emphasis on the characters and their psychology, through Cholliyattam.
For this seasoned artiste, delving into the minds of either a Macbeth or Hamlet is easy through this medium. The only way to distinguish Cholliyattam from Kathakali is the absence of the hefty, colourful costumes and make-up which makes the latter art form distinct. Keeping these cheese and chalk difference in appearance aside, performance wise, the two forms are similar.
So, then why is there a need for Cholliyattam instead of Kathakali? The explanation of the artiste is that while performing Kathakali before a traditional audience in Kerala, the costume becomes a medium and they begin to concentrate on the meaning that is conveyed, as the performance progresses. “The manner in which the audience from outside Kerala perceives differs,” says Kannan. “Inspite of the body language or mudras, the costumes will take away their attention. Or else, to completely turn the attention on the nuances, the person has to have a sense of appreciating theatre aesthetics.”
Since he holds a masters degree in clinical psychology, it is not an uphill task for Kannan to understand the intricacies of the mind. “One should know that Kathakali is not a story-telling theatre,” he says. “It tells the story of the human mind, and the situations are being presented before the audience.”
Does it mean that the task is over? “No,” he says. “How it is presented is of paramount importance. As the plot is familiar to all, telling the story from beginning to end is not a necessity, as they will know how it is going to end.”
Way back in 2001, Kannan first presented Macbeth Cholliyattam in Pennsylvania for a Pittsburgh-based production company. He created a version (in English) out of the complete text of Macbeth to make a 40-minute performance. To the accompaniment of traditional Kathakali music, the text was rendered in parallel. At that time, Kannan was accompanied by Lissa Brennan, a theatre person, to enact Lady Macbeth on stage.
Following that, there was no performance for years, as he had to face the ire of the traditionalists. Then in March 2013, he presented it again, this time in Thiruvananthapuram, as a solo performance.
While performing Macbeth, the presenter on stage handles multiple roles; that of a narrator, the character and its milieu and also manages the Kathakali techniques (dance, song and percussion). Hence, he never falls into a trance or gets transformed into the character and remains conscious throughout the performance of what he is doing and why he is before the audience. “I am aware that I am performing. An alienation evolves during the performance itself, hence I am not becoming the character. At the same time, I maintain an involvement with the techniques and get absorbed by it,” he says.
Following Macbeth came Hamlet, which he performed before the Kerala audience. He also tried his hand at tracing the trauma of King Oedipus. Towards this, he read the Theban plays; Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone. From it, he wrote poems in Malayalam, based on which the Cholliyattam performance was staged.
In his mid-forties now, Kannan’s tryst with Kathakali began at age nine, when he first learned its lessons in his home town Ettumanoor. So involved has he been in the art form, that he became an apex artiste at the University of California; co-ordinator of MA courses at Kerala Kalamandalam, field researcher at International Centre for Kerala Studies, University of Kerala. At present, he is a visiting faculty at the National School of Drama and at the New York University in Abu Dhabi.
