"Theatre of Roots": Encounter with Tradition

I am taking the risk of giving a label-theatre of roots-to the unconventional theatre which has been evolving for some two decades in India as a result of modern theatre's encounter with tradition. Theatre of roots has finally made its presence felt. It has compelling power, it thrills audiences, and it is receiving institutional recognition. It is deeply rooted in regional theatrical culture, but cuts across linguistic barriers, and has an all-India character in design. Never before during the past century and more has theatre been practiced in such diversified form, and at the same time with such unity in essential theatrical values. Apart from giving a label, I would also like to admit my guilt (my friend, director ShyamanandJalan, talking about this new theatre, calls me the guilty man) for raising the question of relevance of traditional performance for contemporary theatre in a national seminar in I96I which I organized as the general secretary of the Indian Center of the International Theatre Institute (ITI). As part of the great cultural renaissance of the post-Independence period, there has been a most meaningful encounter with tradition in various fields of creative activity. The return to and discovery of tradition is inspired by a search for roots and a quest for identity. This is part of the whole process of decolonization of lifestyle, social institutions, creative forms, and cultural modes. The modern Indian theatre, a product of colonial culture, felt an intense need to search for roots to counteract its violent dislocation from tradition. Directors like B.V. Karanth, K.N. Panikkar, and Ratan Thiyam have had meaningful encounters with tradition and, with their work, have reversed the colonial course of contemporary theatre, putting it back on the track of the great Natyasastra tradition.1 It sounds paradoxical, but their theatre is both avant-garde in the context of conventional realistic theatre, and part of the 2,000-year-old Natyasastra tradition. Natyasastra's survival is strikingly marked in the art of the actor, in the use of music and dance in realizing the performance text, in a whole set of conventions for treating time and space, and in the overall design and structure of a performance. In this context it is of interest to note that the search for roots, the liberation from Western realistic theatre, and the emergence of a new thea-