Sajitha Madathil is a Ph.D. scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and a theatre activist who has a number of research fellowships, theatre, film and television productions, workshops and awards to her credit. Many of her writings and productions have examined the role of women in Malayali theatre. With this new project, Sajitha seeks to expand her research interests to study the ways in which women from Kerala have made significant interventions and inroads into classical and folk performance traditions, and the ways in which such interventions have reshaped the aesthetics of these traditional forms.

Sajitha plans to study three traditions of performance—the classical tradition of Kathakali, the percussion ensemble of Singaari Melam, and the female folk performance tradition of Mudiyattam—to raise the following questions: “What are the different strategies adopted by women artists to enrich, reinvent or find spaces for these art forms, both within their traditional context of performance and in contemporary Kerala society? How have they transformed existing power relations of caste, community, and gender which were embedded in the practice of these art forms, both traditional and folk? How have the new social movements of Kerala created a space for these artistes?”

This book-length project in Malayalam, seamlessly combining the ‘ideological’ and the ‘aesthetic’, is exciting from at least two perspectives. One is its self-reflexive, coming-of-age narrative of a generation of Indians shaped by the forces of modernity and cultural politics of post-seventies India. The study is equally valuable for its potential to shed new light on complex questions that surround gender studies, particularly the ways in which female interventions can be said to crystallize an autonomous and self-driven ‘female tradition’ beyond occupying the male domain. In extending the question of gendered aesthetics over three disparate aesthetic and socio-cultural traditions, the project offers enormous scope for understanding the diverse ways in which the ideological and aesthetic combined to reinvent ‘tradition’ in post-seventies India.

Sajitha describes women’s entry into the Kathakali tradition as a ‘silent revolution’ spearheaded by educated women whose activism was shaped as much by the declaration of 1975 as the International Year of Women, as their personal frustrations with Kathakali’s ban on female performers. The various obstacles that women interested in Kathakali face reflect patriarchal attitudes towards Malayali womanhood, such as over-protectiveness towards women that effectively closes off their presence within the form; refusal by male artists to validate their expertise; and stereotyping of women as too feminine for male roles. Against this backdrop, and in recognition of the many personal sacrifices made by female Kathakali performers, Sajitha will study the Thrippunithura Women’s Kathakali group that has over 1,000 performances to its credit, to raise a set of questions that range from the political to the aesthetic: How have they negotiated the training process? What elements have sustained them in the patriarchal world of Kerala? How have they carved out spaces for themselves as performers and artists? What are the new gender norms and practices which serve to reinvent or re-imagine traditional ideologies within a traditional art form?

Women’s entry into Singaari Melam displays close links between art and female empowerment along a different register, where women have utilised a state institutional space—Kudumbashree Poverty Eradication Mission set up in 1988—to organise themselves into performing troupes, and subvert the stereotype of the domestic(ated) woman. Singaari Melam, an ethnic drum ensemble, was traditionally performed by an all-male crew and passed down as family tradition. The interventionist efforts of pioneering women’s groups such as Kottayam Vanitha Singaari Melam and the activist-turned–artist Kudumbashree group have transformed both the art form as well as the lives of the women involved. Sajitha will explore their choice of form, their techniques for learning the complex elements of the exclusively male percussive form, and the significance of the nexus between economic and artistic self-empowerment within state sanctioned spaces, represented by the Kudumbashree group.

Unlike Kathakali and Singaari Melam, Mudiyattam offers an interesting ‘female’ space for studying how a Janus-faced modernity can inscribe itself into a folk tradition and open it up to a democratising ideal of inclusivity. While the form of Mudiyattam itself—a panegyric performed by women with long hair let loose, and involving top-like head spinning and rhythmic hair whirling to the accompaniment of male singers— signals a psychic and symbolic release for women within sanctioned spaces of ritual performances and folk festivals, it faced the threat of extinction with the disappearance of traditional communities under the onslaught of modernity. But the reinvention of this form in the hands of Dalit and other progressive groups with a secularist agenda has re-energised Mudiyattam and effected some interesting transformations of the form itself. Where within ritual economy it was confined to a few select communities and performed by elderly women, the re-staging of the art form as part of secular festivals showcases a coming together of various castes and communities, with choreography, costumes and rehearsals added to the experience. The shift of the performance and identity of the ‘female’ from a customary consciousness to the modern individualist/collectivist one is also an exciting area to explore. The study will examine the full social effect of the reinvention of this indigenous art form on marginal communities, and track the attitudinal changes of elderly and new performers of the form. All in all, this project potentially offers a valuable contribution to culture studies through its analysis of the symbiotic relationship between identity and tradition through the lens of gender.

 

This description is part of the institutional records created by IFA at the onset of the grant. The project may have changed in due course as reflected in the deliverables from the Grantee.