Kavalam Narayana Panikkar is one of India's most revered theatre directors. He has been writing and directing plays for the last four decades and even today, remains as energetic and as creative as ever. Panikkar's involvement with theatre began with him writing poetry and plays. Gradually he began directing plays himself. This was the beginning of a significant career as a theatre director who found new ways of relating to existing traditions. Panikkar's contemporaneity lies in his continual experimentation and innovation within the broader framework of Indian ways of doing theatre. In this way, his theatre is in constant dialogue with the folk (deshi) and classical (margi) traditions of performing art in India.
K.N. Panikkar: The Theatre of Rasa goes deeper into the styles and sources of Panikkar's theatre. It includes essays by some of India's finest theatre writers and thinkers, as well as a long conversation with this master theatre director and a detailed discussion on the production of Ottayan, one his renowned plays. This book will give an insight into not only the theatre of K.N. Panikkar, but into theatre as an art form within a broader framework.
Udayan Vajpeyi is a Hindi poet, translator, essayist, short fiction and script writer. He has published two volumes of poetry, three collections of short stories, two books of essays and other miscellaneous publications (including a book of recreated folktales and an account of an extended conversation with filmmaker Mani Kaul).
He has received various awards for his writing, including a Senior Fellowship from the Government of India (1994-96), the Krishna Baldev Award (2001), the Raza Foundation Award (2003) and the Raza Foundation Fellowship (2003). He was Writer-in-Residence in Lavigny in 2000 and Paris in 2003. He participated in the International Book Fair in Paris in 2007. He teaches Physiology at Gandhi Medical College, Bhopal.
Kavalam Narayana Panikkar was born on 28 April, 1928 in the picturesque village of Kavalam, part of Kuttanad, once famed as the granary of Kerala. The rustic lifestyle of the agricultural community, in the heart of Mother Nature and the scenic beauty of the area where the sacred River Pampa ends its journey by merging into Vembanad Lake-all provided an ideal background for the young Panikkar to develop his innate artistic talents and vision. He himself believes that the ambience of the area played a decisive role in grooming his personality in the early stages of his life.
Panikkar was born into a matrilineal joint family where the maternal uncle was the head of the family. This system gave him the first lessons of discipline in life. However, it was his father, the late Godavarma, who introduced him to the world of literature. In fact, Panikkar remembers that he was initiated to the fascinating world of the great epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata by his father. Moreover, a system of intense and regular reading of the epics existed in the house where his mother, grandmother and women from the neighbourhood participated. This tradition inspired him to organise poetry reading sessions later in life, at a time when it was argued that poetry was for private reading and enjoyment.
Panikkar, after his initial education in local schools in Kavalam and in the nearby village of Pulinkunnu, joined the famous CMS College in Kottayam, that has produced prominent personalities like K.P.S. Menon and Sardar K.M. Panikkar, the latter being Kavalam Panikkar's own uncle.
Taking inspiration from his surroundings and upbringing, Panikkar started writing poetry from his schooldays. The poems, rich with rural idioms, were the reflections of a young poet's mind on the archetypal imageries, myths and parables that had a profound influence on him.
He took his degree in Economics from SD College, Alappuzha and later Bachelor of Law degree from Madras Law College. After obtaining his Law degree, he started his career as a lawyer in Alappuzha Bar and practised for six years starting from 1955. However, he continued to pursue his artistic interests and a breakthrough came when he was nominated as Secretary of Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi in 1961. He consequently shifted his base to Thrissur, the cultural capital of Kerala.
The new responsibility gave him a chance to interact with artists from all over the state. He was also introduced to different art forms, both classical and folk. He remembers how the tenure helped him to expand his relations and facilitated the growth of the artist in him.
Panikkar's tenure in the Akademi also saw the institution getting more systematic in its functioning. During this period, the Akademi organised many festivals, which gave Panikkar a deeper insight into the rich cultural heritage of the state and its deep rooted and indigenous folk traditions. He started his research in the folk and classical arts of Kerala, which ultimately led him to theatre.
Panikkar admits that his first few attempts at writing plays in tune with the established and popular realistic theatre traditions were not successful. But the journey in search of his real identity continued.
A turning point in his theatre experiments, especially as a playwright, came with the production of Daivathar. Panikkar did not direct the drama, but tried to actively collaborate with directors like Kumara Varma, interpreting his textual inputs to the director.
In 1974, Kavalam shifted his residence to the state capital Thiruvananthapuram. A highlight of the period was the staging of his play Avanavan Kadamba, directed by the established film director G. Aravindan.
In contrast to Aravindan's known style of functioning while donning the mantle of a film director, he interacted a lot with the playwright as well as the actors in the production of Avanavan Kadamba. This resulted in what is termed as ensemble acting.
The structure of this play and its presentation were truly path-breaking. The theme demanded an open auditorium with trees in the background with hanging lamps. The concept of proscenium and picture-frame stage with a rolled curtain divide was broken. The acting area started growing beyond its prescribed limits, creating a sense of involvement and participation among the audience.
atarang Pratishthan was set up as a contemporary theatre archive and resource centre by the eminent writer and theatre critic, the late Shri Nemichandra Jain with his personal collection of material on theatre and literature. Now in its twenty-third year of existence, the Pratishthan has a rich and well documented collection of books, journals, photographs, posters, brochures, play scripts, clippings and audio-video recordings relating to the practice of theatre in India, particularly North India. It is attempting to preserve for posterity this information on productions, actors, directors, writers and organisations, which presents an amazing plurality of visions. The Hindi theatre journal Natarang, continuously appearing since 1965, is published by the Pratishthan. It also organises public events including theatre festivals, seminars, exhibitions, lectures, dialogues, etc. Through these multifaceted activities, the Pratishthan attempts to initiate new areas of interdisciplinary debate and focus critical attention to the interface between the theory and practice of modern Indian theatre.
Natarang Pratishthan started a project of documenting important theatre directors of our time, covering their visions and style, working methods and productions. The focus during this project was on the work processes of directors in order to get an insight into the creative impetus of these practitioners. The directors shortlisted for this project were a mix of the pioneers of modern Indian theatre and a few promising new ones who are still evolving their methodology and styles, so as to get a sense of continuity of the creative expression in post-independence theatre. The materials so collected are vast and complex.
To make this material accessible to a larger body of scholars and practitioners, Natarang Pratishthan is publishing a series of books, each devoted to a single director, which would use the archival material and documentation from the Pratishthan and from other diverse sources to give a comprehensive picture of the methods, development and contribution of the director in question. To begin with we have chosen Satyadev Dubey, Kavalam Narayana Panikkar and Badal Sircar. Much of the material used in these books has never been looked at before. The editors, Shanta Gokhale, Udayan Vajpeyi and Kirti Jain, have also commissioned new material on areas not covered by the archival collections. In some cases, fresh interviews have been included to get a picture of the present vision of the director. These are likely to be the most comprehensive books brought out on these directors.
What makes this series special is that the editors of these books are eminent creative people in their own right, and senior scholars who have had firsthand experience of the work of the directors they are working on and are therefore in a position to contextualize the contribution of the directors apart from analysing the collated material. The first book was on Satyadev Dubey, a stalwart of Indian theatre at a time when modern urban theatre was in the process of establishing itself.
The second book in this series is on Kavalam Narayan Panikkar, a major figure in modern Indian theatre who being deeply rooted in the soil of Kerala has not only inherited the classical concepts and practices of Indian theatre but has also reinvented and revitalised them: Panikkar's theatre is simultaneously classical and contemporary. It is a theatre which celebrates and interrogates. Folk traditions and classical conventions merge in his work in a unique and intense manner making the categories of classical, folk and contemporary seem inadequate in describing his work. It is not entirely coincidental that the contemporary theatre criticism in India has, more or less, been wanting in developing concepts and strategies to analyse, understand and evaluate Panikkar's theatre. This book, in this context, is the first serious attempt to look at this complex and significant body of theatre of our times from many different points of view and to provide critical insights into the structures, theatrical devices, vision and struggles of Panikkar's unique theatre.
Udayan Vajpeyi has edited the book for Natarang Pratisthan. He is a Hindi poet, fiction writer and critic who has been engaged for long with cinema, theatre and other performing arts. He has spent considerable time with Panikkar watching him work and talked to him at length. The material collected in the book carries many traces of a multilayered dialogue between a master and a younger inquisitive and sensitive mind.
Kavalam Narayana Panikkar had come for three of Bhasa's plays in Bhopal. We designed the programme in such a way that after each play, there was a discussion. During these discussions, I said to him that he should also do Uttararamacharitam, not in Sanskrit but in Hindi. He very gently replied, 'If you work on it with me, I will do it.' I agreed. The deal was finalised. I had no idea as to where the support for such a thing would come. And, as if from nowhere, the proposal to do a book on Panikkar came from Natarang Pratishthan, New Delhil It was like a gift from heaven. I spoke to Panikkar about the book and told him that it would contain a long conversation with him. I also spoke to him about our possible collaboration on Uttararamacharitam. 'Now we can also work on Uttararamacharitam, it will help me understand your creative process of producing a play and will also initiate me into writing plays. He happily agreed and told me that we would do both these things in his village, Kavalam. The village was not unknown to me; I was aware of its beauty and had wanted to go there for some time. Travelling from Bhopal to Mumbai and from there to Cochin, I reached Alappuzha. I could have taken a boat to go from there to Kavalam, but Panikkar's son, Harikrishnan came to receive me. Hari bhai was a wonderful. person who had worked for many years in a big company and left it to help Panikkar manage his theatre group, Sopanam. He used to avoid smoking in front of his father, and would take any and every opportunity to leave the house so he could smoke his cigarette in peace. We took the road flanked by lush green fields of paddy. The breeze rippled gently and created several shades of green across fields, serene and mysterious.
Panikkar has a house on the banks of beautiful Pampa River in Kavalam. The door of Panikkar's house frames the river elegantly and one can see ferries passing across it, the people sitting on them awash in golden sunlight. Kavalam is his ancestral village, where he spent his childhood. He often comes here from Thiruvananthapuram to spend time writing or thinking.
He is at home there. Amma, Panikkar's wife, was also there. In fact, wherever Panikkar goes, Amma accompanies him; she is not only a great support to him but is also his memory bank; if ever he forgets something at any time, he immediately calls for her.
Without wasting even a minute, we got down to work. We decided that we would first work on Uttararamacharitam and then record our conversation. I had to write the performance text of Uttararamacharitam in Hindi. It was a great joy working on this text with him.
For the first few days in Kavalam, we continued working on the performance text (which Panikkar calls subtext). We worked all day and then, in the evening, we would go for a walk along the river. He would stop at the paan shop and have a paan and few leaves of tobacco (this was done clandestinely; because of health reasons, Amma does not allow him to have tobacco). After his paan, we would walk along the Pampa and he would point out places of interest in the village. Whoever saw him waved at him or greeted him with great respect. On our way back, we would sometimes buy parotta (paratha) for dinner, a strange mix of the Punjabi version with a distinct Kerala flair. When we reached home, Amma would immediately ask us to have our dinner. The Panikkars are vegetarian, but Amma once prepared a delicious fish dish for me, bought from the vallam (boat) passing on the river flowing beside their house.
Panikkar works very fast and therefore I too used to write as quickly as I could. I would try to be as brief as possible because I was aware that vachika, the spoken, is only one of the four elements of acting and overdoing the vachika, even if it is poetic, takes away the poetry in theatre. The poetry of theatre or abhinaya (acting) lies in the poetic coming together of the four elements of theatre namely, vachika, angika, sattvika and aharya. In fact, to write the performance text of any play is to find the essential vachika from the written text of the play and to discover how this vachika will be poetically integrated with other elements of theatre.
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