Theatre, Acting and the Image of the Actor in Abhinavagupta’s Tantric Sources In: Around Abhinavagupta: Aspects of the Intellectual History of Kashmir from the Ninth to the Eleventh Century Ed. E. Franco and I. Ratié, LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2016. p. 451-95. (original) (raw)

Theatre, Acting and the Image of the Actor in Abhinavagupta’s Tantric Sources

2016

Abhinavagupta compte parmi les savants les plus feconds en Inde classique, avec des travaux concernant, entre autres, l'exegese tantrique ainsi que l'esthetique du theâtre. Cette etude a pour but d'explorer dans quelle mesure les sources canoniques tantriques pouvaient inspirer cet auteur a creer des liens entre ces domaines eloignes et sous quelle forme les elements constitutifs du theâtre et de la poetique theâtrale etaient presents dans les textes tantriques connus par Abhinavagupta.

"The Theory and the Practice of the Performing Arts in Ancient India".

"The Theory and Practice of the Performing Arts in Ancient India" , 2020

This essay looks at the evolution of "nrtta" (graceful physical movement), "nrttya" (graceful movement and expressions) and "natya" (acting, dancing, singing) and their close interfaces with sculpture and architecture in ancient India (1500B.C.E--800C.E). According to Kapila Vatsayayan in the "Square and the Circle of the Indian Arts", the fundamental rituals of the Rig Veda were inherently dramatic as they involved movement and the utterance of sonorous sounds. Bharata's "Natyashastra" ( 2 B.C.E- 2 C.E) a prodigious compendium of the various rituals of performance, its techniques and manifestations lays out what he designates as "natyadharmi", a term later picked up and used by theatre director and anthropologist Eugenio Barba to mean the specialized world of an actor's training and performance. It is opposed to "lokdharma" which is the stuff of life from which theatre or "natya" emanates.The essay takes the reader through the nine rasas (quintessential emotions), 49 bhavas (feelings), the sahrdaya (ideal spectator), the various kinds of "abhinaya" or acting (sattvika, vacika, angika, aharya), "vrittis" (mental attitudes) and "pavrittis" (local colour), various kinds of auditoriums, themes of "natya", and most importantly the operation of rasa as aesthetic principle. Abhinavagupta is one of the key theoreticians referred to in this essay. The essay also looks at the development of Bharatnatyam from Bharat Natya, from the 1000 C.E. in the great temples of South India, principally, Tanjore (Brihadeshvara). The court of the Naik rulers of Tanjore in the 16th and 17th centuries, provided strong encouragement to artists, principally dancers, to develop their talents. As E. Krishna Iyer posits in "Rasa and Bhava in Bharat Natya", Kshetrayya, a court poet for the Naik rulers in the 17th century, wrote many beautiful padas (poems, songs) for Bharatnatyam, which performed by the devadasis or the temple dancers, reached great heights of artistic fulfillment during this time. The essay also looks at the evolution of Indian classical music from its origins in the Samagaan (Vedic period) and the music of the Gandharvas, through "Jati" and "Graam" ragas to its final form of fruition in both North and South Indian classical music traditions.

5 THE CONCEPT OF MODERN THEATRE AND THEATRICALITY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO INDIAN THEATRE

Life is a long journey of our emotions, sentiments, happiness and grief. Our life hangs between love and joy on one hand and sorrow and pathos on the other. Modern Indian theatre is the real voice of mankind. It comprises not only art, literature, music and dance but also reflects our day to day life. If has a rich treatise since 2000 BC to the 4 th century A.D. the great playwright Bharat Muni pioneered the concept in his writing " Natyashastra ". India has the rich honour to give this treatise to the world. According to the historians Oscar Brockett and Franklin Hildy – " In a theatre rituals typically include elements that entertain or give pleasures, such as costumes and masks as well as skilled performers. As societies grew more complex, these spectacular elements began to be acted out under non-ritualistic conditions. As this occured the first step towards theatre as an autonomous activity were being taken. " (1) All the above said elements are keys to modern Indian theatre. It can easily be traced back to the religions and ritualism of the Aryans. From epic theatre (stories of the Ramayan and the Mahabharat) to the theatre of modern era it is a rich saga of a journey of modern Indian drama and theatre. The earliest form of Indian theatre was the Sanskrit theatre. (2) It gave a divine origin to the Indian theatre contributing it to the Natyaveda created by Lord Brahma. It emerged sometimes between 2 nd century BC and the I century AD and flourished between the I century and the 10 th , which was a period of relative peace in the history of India during with hundreds of plays were written. (03) According to the legends after defeating demons the gods performed their victory in dramatic art. Our rich ancient culture with multi-religions and rituals along with

Drama in Ancient India: A historical perspective

isara solutions, 2016

Drama has been an integral part of ancient Indian culture. In fact the dramas reflected the social milieu of its time. The origin of the Indian theatre is still obscure. It is certain, how-ever, that even in the Vedic period dramatic performances of some kind were given, passing references in early sources point to the en-action at festivals of religious legends, perhaps only in dance and mime. Some writers have found elements in common between the Indian and the classical Greek theatre. The curtain at the back of the stage was called yavanika, a diminutive form of the name by which the Greeks were generally known in India. One play at least, “The Little Clay Cart”, has a superficial resemblance to the late Greek comedy of the school of Menander. We cannot wholly reject possibility that Greek comedies, acted at the courts of the Greco-Bactrian kings of N.-W.India, inspired unknown Indian poets to develop their own popular stage into a courtly art form.

Decoding the theatre language: What Can Kerala's Sanskrit Theatre offer Us

Kūṭiyāṭṭam, the traditional Sanskrit theatre of Kerala has come to the limelight in recent times with the UNESCO awarding the title ‘Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity’ to it in 2001. Being the only surviving Sanskrit theatre anywhere, it opens up vast possibilities of research in classical theatre .India is fortunate in having a seminal text like the Nāṭyaśāstra which happens to be the only ancient treatise in the world in outlining the a to z of theatre. However, the abstract principles of performance described in the text are often baffling for want of a living theatre. Sanskrit theatre, it is well known, has become extinct in most parts of India from medieval times. However, through Kūṭiyāṭṭam, we can understand the implications of theatrical practices of ancient India to a considerable extent, though it has developed a lot of regional ramifications in the course of its development. It is proposed here to explore what Kūṭiyāṭṭam has to offer us in decoding the theatre language of ancient India. The salient features of the Sanskrit theatre, especially its emotive dimensions, body language, dance orientation and orchestration could be better understood if we could explore the theatrical practices of this unique art.

The theatre and classical India: some availability issues

Philosophy East and West

Quite apart from urgencies arising within the theatre as an enterprise, it is independently necessary to bring the tools of speech act theory to bear on the theatre. This paper begins by redescribing the foundational moves of that theory in terms of drawing successive core-supplement boundaries – Austin’s first move demarcates a propositional core from a spoken-performative supplement; his second move, generalizing performativity over all speaking, demarcates a spoken (illocutionary) core from an active (perlocutionary) supplement. A third move, proposed here, extends this strategy of expanding the core in a performative direction. So extended, the central theoretical concern of speech act theory converges with what one major tradition articulates, both practically and conceptually, as the way forward for theatrical performance. That tradition – which has travelled from Stanislavski’s Russia, via Grotowski’s Poland, to Badal Sircar’s India – is in the business of giving democracy theatrical teeth. While Sircar does not explicitly claim a classical Indian ancestry for his work, serious Indology will find it easy to place him in that context.