March 20, 2011: Tamil Nadu trip, in Kanchipuram

Notes added while typing this are indicated in [...]. Otherwise the rest is copied directly as is from my travel journal.

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March 20, 2011. 10.38pm.

Last night of my stay in Kanchipuram [I stayed a week in Kanchipuram volunteering for a local NGO]. Tmr morning I head off to C.M.B.T. of Chennai [CMBT stands for Central Mofussil Bus Terminus, the largest in Asia. Don't expect much though] by bus and from there catch a 1pm A/C bus to Chidambaram. I've enjoyed my time here in Kanchipuram, particularly so because my teaching in rural schools and my two German friends here. I got along really nicely with them, and Mathias is a really nice boy w/o the usual antics you would expect a kid from a developed country might have. Today he cleaned the room so thoroughly I was impressed [and embarrassed too].

Last Wednesday I went for a Kaittaikuttu performance of the local Kanchipuram Kaittaikuttu Sangam. The actual show was performed by another group, not the local Kanchi troupe [the local troupe was apparently very famous, they performed on Tuesday]. I knew of this academy before I came, it being one of the places I'd like to visit. So happen that this week they are holding a 'kuttu' (drama) festival and seminar--shows 8pm and 10pm daily. It was still out of the way w/o buses, luckily Alex was interested & got her friend's husband who's an autorickshaw driver to do our driving [even the driver thought we were lost! luckily we didn't decide to walk hahahaa]. The performance was really nice, though I only understood little of the Tamil dialouge [but I could catch many words, just couldn't catch the sentences!].

that was a guy.

I found the character 2nd from the right very cute!!

The costumes were very decorated with huge headsets & skirts. All male actors, even for female roles. There was a lot of singing, vocalization, duet dialouges.

The character on the right was Rama. First time I saw a greenish Rama~

 Interestingly, a 'clown' existed throughout the play and seemed to serve a peculiar role of threading the plot along as characters conversed with him, and also a comedian role by doing funny physical stunts that were not only unrelated to the plot but very distracting too [the children loved it though]. The 4th wall was broken w/o hesitation.

this was at the beginning when they sang a series of verses. The guy sitting behind the purple stand sang for 2 hours straight...unbelievable.

  Monolouges were almost all sung.  Actors also served as musicans and would join the band on center stage to do some instruments or sing the lines.

Check out the hands of the actors at the back =)

They would blatantly drink tea on stage [the director of the academy actually went on stage and served them tea at the back. So nice] & wear modern tshirts--totally out of sync with the play. Thus I think this form of performance--at least the one I enjoyed--was very less formal than bharatanatyam, required less effort to appreciate, and is much more flexible than many old, classical formal arts [Kaittaikuttu is centuries old itself and has been a continuous evolution].

It was a village style performance, a once common fare in South and Southeast Asia.  Performances used to draw huge audiences from the surrounding villages and last eight hours through the night. Now we urban kids never see such things no more. Oh yes, we have the cinema and LotR's 3 hours were a pain in the butt (literally).

I also went to two temples this past week, but I shall leave them for tmr night's writing., since I don't expect to have much to write about the trip to Chidambaram.


10.54pm.