Projects

Village Plays of India

Village Plays of India was my first major attempt to deal with Indian theatre material in as authentic a way as possible. That was 1971. Students learned to tie dhotis in the Gujarati style. Actors created masks modelled on Purulia Chhau masks I had brought back from Indian on a research tour in 1969-70. They consulted 8mm films made in the field to develop their dance and physical movement to do justice to the trained dancers of Purulia District, Bengal. Martha Ashton, recently returned from South Kanara where she had studied yakshagana dance-drama, taught the introductory female dance of the yakshagana repertory to two female students. Martha completed her Ph.D. at Michigan State under my direction and went on to author numerous articles on yakshagana, as well as Yakshagana: A Dance Drama of India with her co-author Bruce Christie.

We also produced a short Bhavai farce from Gujarat, translated by Dr. Harish Trivedi who studied with me. Tejo Vanio no Vesh was perhaps the first English translation of these delightful village plays. The work was subsequently published in 1971 by A Writers Workshop in Calcutta and titled, Asaita Thakar: Vanio and Zanda Zulan, Two Gujarati Folk Plays. Tejo is a bhania and married to an unfaithful wife Teji who is in love with a Muslim warrior Jhanda Julan, a story which has special resonance in this part of India and is particularly interesting today in the wake of post 9/11.

The entire production was designed to approximate the rough, unsophisticated feel of rural theatre in India. All our shows were performed out-of-doors between the International Center and the river on the East Lansing campus. Although the three short works were very different one from another, the spectators seemed enthralled by the outdoor theatre experience and found the material exotic and fascinating. Besides being photographed every night, the actors found that some spectators had brought art supplies and were drawing and sketching them during the show.