Origins of Tamil Drama

Karthigesu Sivathamby

at First International Tamil Conference - Seminar

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 18 - 23 April 1966

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Introduction

The richness of the cultural tradition of the Tamils is expressed in the concept of Muttamil, which classifies Tamil into three sections - Iyal (Literature), Isai (Music) and Natakam (Drama). 

Origins of Drama

 It is generally accepted by all, that drama had its origins in the religious rituals of the primitive communities." Ritual drama, he shows, is based on a myth, and that myth must be in a narrative form. There is personification. "The chief actor in a ritual drama pretends to be a god or hero in order that he may be able to exercise that power which that God or hero is believed to have exercised." .

Religious ritual, which has within itself all the characteristics of drama, is thus practised, and out of it emerges the popular drama. The emergence of Greek Drama as a popular entertainment from rituals. "We know from tradition that in Athens ritual became art, a dromenon became the drama.

 Akam, Puram Divisions in Tamil Literature

The references in Tamil literature relating to the origins and early development of Tamil drama should be read in the light of the general principles outlined above. In employing Cankam literature as a source for any study, we must take into count its chief characteristic, viz. the division into Akattinai (poetic tradition which deals with subjective experience - love and family life) and Purattinai (poetic tradition which deals with the objective experience - military exploits, raids, royal achievements etc.). Poems which deal with these themes are called Akam poems and Puram poems respectively. There was also the grammatical prescription - done so, after an exhaustive study of the texts -of what should form the background of the poems of each of these divisions. (7) The references relating to Tamil Drama are seen in both divisions.

 Ritual Drama in Puram Tradition
Tunankai, is there described as the dance which is executed with the movement of the shoulders, on the fall of a king,  and the dance "that is executed, with the movement of the shoulders, in the battlefield which is heaped with corpses".
Tunankai dance arose out of the belief in a myth. It was believed in ancient Tamilnad that female devils ate the corpses of the dead soldiers and they danced with glee at the sight of such corpses, bending their arms at their elbows and striking against their sides, feeling immensely grateful to the one who killed those soldiers. This Tunankai dance of the victorious leader and his men is the ritualistic imitation of the dances of the female devils.
  It can therefore be safely assumed that Tunankai, which started as a cannibalistic ritual must have emerged as the ritual dance of the warrior hero performed to maintain the solidarity of the group. Such type of dances are characteristic of the "heroic age".

 Tunankai at that stage becomes far removed from the world of reality and was assimilated into the Vedic mythology. With the diffusion of this once cannibalistic ritual into the Vedic myth we find its slow disappearance as a popular dance form. The assimilation takes place somewhere about A.D. 5th - 6th centuries and by that time the Akam and Puram tradition, which is characteristic only of primitive living, disappears too. The militaristic myths of the Tamils are revived only during the time of the Imperial Colas and that too only in literature. Kalingattuparani depicts that revival.

The Term "Tunanki"

Tamil Lexicon derives the word Tunankai from `Tulanku' meaning, "to move; to sway from side to side". Thus it becomes clear that the word refers to the physical movement. Further, the word tulanku itself may be derived from the word "tullu"-leap or jump. It will be interesting to note that the word `tullal' denotes dance in Malayalam.

 Ritual Drama in the Akam Tradition

The ritualistic origins of Tamil drama is well seen in the dances mentioned in the Akam tradition. 

Veriyattu

The most conspicuous of all such rituals is the Veriyattu, the dance of the priest possessed by Murukan. The great number of references to this dance in Sankam literature reveals the importance it had in that culture.  The contexts described in the poems indicate that Veriyattu was performed by the Velan to find out the ailment of the lady love whose body lost its lustre because of her anxiety regarding her lover.

This ritual has not yet lost its significance. This also arises from the myth that one falls sick when one is possessed by a spirit. 

The Peykkoothu

(devil dance) performed by the Pariahs of South India reveals how fervently this ritual is carried on at present. "Among them, when an individual is attacked by some malignant spirit  the priest performs a ceremony to exorcise the spirit from the victim's body." ( Veriyattu has not yet become a dramatic form. It is yet religion.

 Kuravai dance- Ritual Dance of the Fisher Folk

when the fisher folk found their nets did not provide sufficient reward for their toils, the fisher women assembled and danced around the horn of a shark that is planted for the purpose'.  This dance form is referred to as Kuravai dance. We shall soon see how this Kuravai (soon becomes an entertainment form.

Vatavalli

Tolkappiyar refers to yet another dance which seems to have been a fertility rite.  It is explained as a dance in which both men and women took part. Naccinarkiniyar in his commentary states that  it had become a dance form seen only by the low and uncivilised .Valli is the creeper plant which is often taken to denote fertility. The name of the hill country girl whom Murukan wooed and married is also Valli. In view of these associations, one wonders whether this dance could have been a ritual of sexual character.

Tai Neeratal

In Akananuru refers to a group dance of females performed during the last days of the month of Tai. This dance comes at the end of a month long fast observed with the aim of getting the husbands of their choice. The original dance ritual is yet retained in the Tiruvatirakkali of Kerala.

Festivals

A study of the festivals and the dance plays performed in those early festivals forms an essential part in the reconstruction of the history of drama.  Festivals are defined as "Collective rituals often centering round magical operations. Festivals probably spring from the early communal feast and its attendant sacrifice."

In Sankam literature we find references to festivals which have not lost their ritualistic character and festivals which have lost their significance and were taken as occasions for social gathering. Dances were performed at both the instances.

Intiravila

Of the festivals the most important was the Intira festival.  This festival later emerges as the national festival of the Tamils. . Intira, the Lord of Clouds, was worshipped. Both the works referred to earlier give detailed descriptions of the many dances and dramatic performances that were conducted during the festival.Cilappatikaram (32) and Manimekalai (33) testify amply to the fact that it was a festival connected with fertility rite

Onam Festival

 Onam day, the day on which Mayon, the deity of the Mullai region, was born.An important feature of that festival was the sham fight put on by the Mallar.  Onam day is not celebrated in Tamilnad today. It is an important day of festivity in Kerala. 

Thus we find the dances which were originally ritualistic in character turning out to be recreational. We also note that as society developed, dancing was becoming the activity of one class of women, viz. the courtesans.

Dramatic Performances

It is in that stage that we see dramatic performances being staged by a class of people called the Panar and their women counterparts called the Viralis. No study of the origins of the Tamil drama is complete without a complete knowledge of their activities.

Viralis

 in Tamilnad,  bardism had developed itself into an organised institution. The bard had a troupe which consisted of himself and young female dancers. This female dancer was called Virali because she could exhibit the various emotions and sentiments in her dances in a very telling manner. Viralis danced to songs sung by the Panars. 

Emergence of Natakam

The Virali expressed in dance form what was sung by the Panan (bard). Heroic ballads speak of heroic incidents. Thus the dance depicted the incidents. In this we see the birth of Natakam, which as defined by Atiyarkkunallar is the dance that describes a story. But soon this entire art of `drama' came into the hands of this class.

Feudalsim and the Displacement of the 'Heroic' Bardic Tradition

Heroic age is only a transient age. It marks the transition from tribalism to feudalism and the transition is always fast. Heroic age leads to well defined territorial settlements, with proprietary rights and security of those rights. Militaristic exploits do not have a place in that economy. War at this stage means destruction of the means of subsistence. And it was quite natural that the bardic tradition, the finest artistic flower of that age too suffered with the change. The character and function of art changed.

In the new society they had to perform for the delectation of an audience. Sankam literature shows that many such performances were held.  Such ones as rope-walking too became performances of art.  This era marks the fall in the social status of the artist. Along with the art, the artist too becomes a commodity and the Viralis who danced, now become concubines and hetaerae. Panan, the male member of that caste group becomes the pimp.

Conclusion

That brings us to the end of the Sankam Period. Collective rituals had now become artistic forms. Performance has come to be confined only to a class of people. Post Saankam age reveals that all the dances were performed by this caste and that vedic myths have replaced the indigenous myths. Ilanko Atikal's description of Matavi and her eleven dances shows this change.

http://tamilnation.co/culture/drama/sivathamby.htm 

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Theatre and History

The development of theatre over the past 2,500 years. Greek theatre, most developed in Athens, is the root of the Western tradition; theatre .  According to a Greek chronicle of the 3rd century BC, Thespis is also the first winner of a theatrical award. He takes the prize in the first competition for tragedy, held in Athens in 534 BC.Theatrical contests become a regular feature of the annual festival in honour of  Dionysus, held over four days each spring and known as the City Dionysia.  Four authors are chosen to compete. Each must write three tragedies and one satyr play. The performance of the plays by each author takes a full day, in front of a large number of citizens in holiday mood, seated on the slope of an Athenian hillside. The main feature of the stage is a circular space on which the chorus dance and sing. Behind it a temporary wooden structure makes possible a suggestion of scenery.  Western theatre developed and expanded considerably under the Romans. The Roman historian Livy wrote that the Romans first experienced theatre in the 4th century BC.  Rome encountered Greek drama

 

Liturgical drama: 10th century

During the centuries of confusion in Europe, after the collapse of the Roman empire, theatre plays no part in life.  In the late 10th century, Christian churches introduce dramatic effects in the Easter liturgy to enliven the theme of resurrection. In most of Europe the plays are done on fixed open-air platforms, usually along one side of a square, with little 'houses' or mini-stages set up for different scenes.  rom these small beginnings there develops the great tradition of medieval Christian drama. More and more scenes are enacted during church services,In about 1170, priests somewhere in France decide to move a performance to a platform outside their church and to give it in the language of the people.

12th - 16th century

In the spirit of theRenaissance, Roman plays are performed on festive occasions at the courts of Italian princes. Italy in the 16th century, home to the first stirrings of opera, also launches Europe's most vigorous tradition of popular theatre.

There were also a number of secular performances staged in the Middle Ages, the earliest of which is The Play of the Greenwood by Adam de la Halle in 1276. It contains satirical scenes and folk material such asfaeries and other supernatural occurrences.  At the end of the late middle ages, professional actors began to appear in England and Europe.Richard 111 and Henry VII both maintained small companies of professional actors. Their plays were performed in the Great Hall of a nobleman's residence. The end of medieval drama came about due to a number of factors, including the weakening power of the Catholic Church, the Protestant Reformation  and the banning of religious plays in many countries. Elizabeth forbid all religious plays in 1558 and the great cycle plays had been silenced by the 1580s. Similarly, religious plays were banned in the Netherlands in 1539, the Papal States in 1547 and in Paris  in 1548. The abandonment of these plays destroyed the international theatre that had thereto existed and forced each country to develop its own form of drama. It also allowed dramatists to turn to secular subjects   .

 

Commedia dell'arte

 Commedia dell'arte troupes performed lively improvisational playlets across Europe for centuries. It originated in Italy in the 1560s. Commedia dell'arte was an actor-centred theatre, requiring little scenery and very few props. Plays did not originate from written drama but from scenarios called, which were loose frameworks that provided the situations, complications, and outcome of the action, around which the actors would improvise.

The plays utilised stock characters, which could be divided into three groups:

1.      the lovers,

2.      the masters, and

3.      the servants.

 The lovers had different names and characteristics in most plays and often were the children of the master. The role of master was normally based on one of three stereotypes.  The servant character had only one recurring role:  He was both cunning and ignorant, but an accomplished dancer and acrobat. He typically carried a wooden stick with a split in the middle so it made a loud noise when striking something. This "weapon" gave us the term "slapstick".

A troupe typically consisted of 13 to 14 members. Most actors were paid by taking a share of the play's profits roughly equivalent to the size of their role.

London's theatres:1576-1599

The theatres built in London in the quarter century In 1576 an actor, James Burbage, builds a permanent playhouse in Shoreditch - just outside the city of London . They named this theatre as “Globe”,  it is where many of Shakespeare's plays are first presented. It has been calculated that during Shakespeare's time one Londoner in eight goes to the theatre each week. A city of 160,000 people is providing a weekly audience of about 21,000.

 the Golden Age

The Spanish Golden Age was a period of high artistic activity and achievement that lasted from about 1580 to 1680. During this time period, the theatre also enjoyed a golden age in acting and playwriting, producing plays to rival those of the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists who were writing at the same time.

Theatre historians used to claim that the plays from the Golden Age were too traditional and too concerned with a narrow code of honor to appeal to a wide audience, but recent scholarship has proven that the plays are as exciting, challenging, and relevant as the works of most English and French playwrights of the time period. In fact, the plots for many seventeenth-century English and French plays were taken from Spanish drama.

The three major forms of Golden Age theatre are the comedia, the auto sacramental, and the entremés. Autos sacramentales are one-act religious stories, and entremeses are one-act ridiculous situation originally performed between the acts of a full-length comedia. Comedias are three-act dramas written in verse, which mix comic and serious elements in complex plots that often emphasize intrigue, disguises, music, and swordplay.

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Indian theatre

Indian theatre has an  a rich tradition of performance practice , history of over two thousand years.   Bharata produced an encyclopaedic manual on theatre called Natyashastra which became the basis Indian performances genres for centuries to come. The aesthetic theory of rasa practice for more than a millennium.

 Bhasa, Kalidasa, Shudraka, Vishakadatta, Bhavabhuti and Harsha are great Sanskrit drama eminents live in first millennium . Their works compares with  the  theatre traditions of the world ancient Greek theatre and Elizabethan theatre. The glory of ancient Sanskrit drama ended with the first millennium. The medieval period witnessed the emergence of regional language literatures also folk and ritualistic theatres flourished throughout this period. Because of Bhakti movement considerable innovations happened in religious drama. During 18th and 19th centuries British colonial interregnum Indian drama was reborn.

Parsi theatre

The new urban theatre is popularly known as Parsi theatre. The rise of urban middle and working classes due to industrailazation made the path of  Parsi theatre developement.  This genre was an interesting mixture of Western Naturalistic drama, opera and several local elements. Spectacle based on huge settings and colourful backdrops was an essential part of it. The stage was normally divided into front and back for the staging of main and subsidiary action. Music was its life-breath. The actors of this theatre were also great singers. The acting became naturalistic and melodramatic in contrast to the stylized techniques of traditional Indian theatre. Parsi theatre productions chose their story-lines from diverse sources: popular mythological, folklore and contemporary life.Geared to amuse urban middle and working classes. 

Parsi theatre was acted out in interior spaces, now called proscenium theatre.  This theatre produces a plot of melodrama, humour, romance and social criticism. It developed in newly emerging big cities like Kolkata, Delhi, Mubai and Chennai form late 19th century. This  form of professional theatre performed by professional groups, sometimes travelling, was the only source of mass entertainment before the emergence of cinema. With their emphasis on music, spectacle and melodrama, their productions became the paradigms for Indian cinema. Except in some states like Maharashtra and Assam, entertainment theatre was gradually supplanted by popular cinema by 1970's. Though entertainment theatre thrilled masses, it elicited criticism from sensitive sections of modern Indian population, particularly from educated people.

Literary drama or  amateur theatre

Literary drama was the output of great Indian language writers in different parts of India. The most famous of such playwrights was Rabindranath Tagore, who enriched the genre of drama as much as he enriched poetry and fiction. Some of his plays like Chitrangada, a musical play and Post-office, became internationally well-known and performed in Europe and North America. His plays, which are the classics of world drama, were orchestrations of rich poetry, symbolism, socio-political criticism and cosmic vision. 

Amateur theatre is theatre performed by amateur actors. These actors are not professional actors  or  unlikely to be a member of an Actors' Union, Many amateurs do provide a source of entertainment for their local communities and amateur theatre can be a fun and exciting hobby, with strong bonds of friendship formed through participation in community organized theatrical events. Amateur Theatre is common in most urban centres; notably, it is staged in summer schools and in formal amateur companies. Amateur theatre is a convenient way for lay people to gain acting and stage experience, for pleasure and amusement.  Technically speaking, an  "amateur" is anyone who does not accept, or is not offered, money for their services. One interpretation of this is"One lacking the skill of a professional, as in an artThe relationship between amateurs and professionals in a theatrical context is the subject of debate in many countries. Professionals argue that the amateur community devalues the art form and damages the industry, through the promotion of unskilled performers, directors and crew. On the other hand, amateurs continue to argue that they perform a community service, and many practitioners accrue considerable experience and skills, which may be transferred to the professional industry, if they are lucky. There are a considerable number of "jobbing" actors who had their start in amateur theatre. In the United States Amateur Theatre is generally known as community theatre.

Most of India's modern theatre may be categorized as amateur; that is theatre in which majority of those who participate do so with little expectation of earning a living. The quality of amateur theatre is quite high in Calcutta It is said that  3000 registered theatre , five hundred amateur group functioning in Bombay and 2500 in the state of Maharashtra. 

Theatre organisations are either autonomous bodies or they are a part of larger cultural organisation sstrong personalities & dedicated workers. The Indian National Theatre is a cosmopolitan theatre organization sponsoring theatre productions in Marathi , Gujrati, Hindi & English.  Prithiviraj Raj , famous film actor was a pioneer through his Prithvi Theatre in nurturing Hindi theatre . According to the State Academy of Music , Dance & Drama, Films & Folk Arts , Madras (Chennai) has about fifty registered group, most of which perform plays in Tamil , the language of Tamil Nadu. 

After independence, the first Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who was also a great votary of culture, wanted to ensure that the arts flourish without sate interference in the new democratic order. He therefore established several national academies which, though funded by the state, would function with autonomy to preserve and nurture the growth of the arts. Sangeet Natak Akademi (Music and Performing Arts Akademi) was set up to further performing arts including theatre.

Amateur movement has mostly given way to drama school theatre by the turn of the century, some of the active troupes have turned into semi-professional drama schools involving amateurs. They continue to keep the theatre scene active.

Other institutions fostering Indian theatre today are departments of culture both at national and state levels. State government-run academies are playing an active role in keeping theatre alive and growing by conferring awards, organizing festivals and providing funds.

Indian theatre has gone through different avatars in the post-independence period. During the phase of modernism, it produced internationally acclaimed play-wrights like Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sarcar, Dharmaveer Bharati, Mohan Rakesh and Girish Karnad, Chandrashekhar Kambar, P Lankesh and Indira Parthasarati, whose works have been widely performed and discussed. Performed in 24 major languages and in many tribal languages and in English, Indian theatre today has infinite varieties and potentials, which is still attracting audiences in spite of the overwhelming popularity of its rivals-cinema and television. It is therefore one of the most potent expressions of contemporary India and the world.

Traditional Indian theatre                            

Kuttiyatam is the only surviving specimen of the ancient Sanskrit theatre, thought to have originated around the beginning of the Common Era, and is officially recognised by UNESCO as a  Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.In addition, many forms of Indian folk theatre abound. Bhavai (strolling players) is a popular folk theatre form of Gijarat, said to have arisen in the 14th century CE. Jatra has been popular in Bengal and its origin is traced to the Bhakti movement in the 16th century. Another folk theatre form which is dialogue-oriented rather than movement-oriented and is considered to have arisen in its present form in the late 18th - early 19th centuries. Yakshagana is a very popular theatre art in Karnataka and has existed under different names at least since the 16th century. It is semi-classical in nature and involves music and songs based on carnatic music, rich costumes, storylines based on the Mahabharata and Ramayana. It also employs spoken dialogue in-between its songs that gives it a folk art flavour. Kathakali is a form of dance-drama, characteristic of Kerala, that arose in the 17th century, developing from the temple-art plays Krishnanattam and Ramanattam.

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