By Dr. Sudipto Chatterjee PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3
In a critical moment in Chakravyuha, probably the most important play in Ratan Thiyam’s career, Abhimanyu, the unborn son of Arjuna (the greatest warrior
in the great Indian epic The Mahabharata) is shown symbolically in her mother Subhadra’s womb, moving restlessly inside a circular human-wall formed by a chorus-like group
clad in red. The yet unborn Abhimanyu listens to Arjuna as he reveals to Subhadra a military secret—how to defeat the chakravyuha, the impassable ‘circle of defense’.
Abhimanyu ‘learns’ from within the darkness of his mother’s womb as his father uncovers the coveted technique of penetrating the ‘circle,’ by whispering it into Subhadra’s
ear; but just as Arjuna is about to share how to breakthrough the ‘circle,’ Subhadra dozes off and the communication between father and the gestating son is cut off.
Abhimanyu clamors inside the protected uterus, entreating his mother helplessly not to fall asleep, but to no avai—the traffic of communication flows only in one direction.
Abhimanyu’s lesson remains incomplete. Later in The Mahabharata, we find out how Abhimanyu, while his father lies engaged elsewhere in the war, is prematurely thrust into the
Great War of Kurukshetra and is killed ruthlessly inside the chakravyuha, which he has penetrated but is powerless to emerge out of.
The Abhimanyu episode is perhaps, for obvious reasons, one of the most the most frequently recalled parables in all forms of artistic expression in India, from literature to
painting to dance. However, the import of the symbolism goes far beyond in the context of Thiyam’s retelling. In the broadest sense, Manipur is Abhimanyu, the unfortunate
sacrificial child of the Indian nation, that lies trapped in a ‘circle of strangulation’ that it is powerless to defend against.
There is some double play going on here. Suresh Awasthi, a noted cultural bureaucrat and performance scholar from the seventies and eighties, had the following to say about
Thiyam’s work: “Thiyam’s productions powerfully echo his regional theatrical culture, which is pronounced even when he does epic themes and Sanskrit plays.” (Awasthi: 57)
With that curiously succinct preamble, Awasthi analyzes the various components that go into making Thiyam’s productions both markedly non-Western and reflective of a
pan-Indian (even pan-Asian) performance aesthetic. Much of what Awasthi argues holds at the level of what seems visually apparent on Thiyam’s stage. The incredible
ritualistic energy, the free flow of colors and patterns (vocal and visual), seamless merging of dance and drama, drawn from the rich bed-base of Manipuri folk performance;
but when injected into texts that refer back to Sanskrit sources, the two elements attain a theatrical concordance that seems to be effective at the level of performative
hybridity.
However, Awasthi’s overall effort, despite his acknowledgement of Manipuri traditions, is to connect Thiyam’s work to the bases of Sanskrit performance aesthetics that, he
claims, informs Indian performance across the numerous cultures, thus conglomerating them all under the umbrella of a single national culture. Much gets elided, nay
jettisoned, in this overtly aesthetic and hegemonistic project of trying to locate Thiyam and the Chorus Repertory’s work as a function of the larger Theatre of Roots
movement (thereby lodging it securely within the domain of a one-nation Indian ‘official’ culture). However, the deep political issues and historical processes that almost
all of Thiyam’s plays and productions grapple with, both in text and performance, always stay in steadfast attendance behind the physical and visual poetry of the staging.
While being championed as one of the most dazzling models of the ‘Roots’ aesthetic, seldom has Ratan Thiyam’s work been (at least not in the seventies and eighties) credited
for the political points they make repeatedly-in the choice of plays, themes, subjects, and their production strategy. In an interview given to Kavita Nagpal, published in
1989, Thiyam went on record saying, “I was aware of the call (to go back to the roots), but how do I respond to a call when I do not know the artistic roots? I had to
discover and choose an idiom... You need a language acceptable to your audience. The folk theatre has this. It can tell a complicated story in an easy way. I wanted to evolve
my own method. This was a pressure exerted by history itself—social and political history and the history of theatre.” (Nagpal: 140)
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