Abstract
As one of the intercultural theater pioneers, Schechner’s numerous trips to India have enriched his performance theory and practice tremendously. Of all the various topics on Indian performing arts, such as the Natyasastra (the ancient Sanskrit treatise on performance), Indian rituals, dance theaters, and rasaesthetics, Schechner has written extensively on the Ramlila of Ramnagar, a thirty-one-day folk festival enacting the life of Rama at Ramnagar—a city across the Ganga river from the Hindu spiritual capital Varanasi. This chapter proposes to explore Schechner’s “play” or rendering of the mythopoetic and fantastic ritual display—the Ramlila of Ramnagar. Deeply impressed by his outlook on the festival, I attempt to interrogate the impact of the Ramnagar Ramlila on Schechner and critically examine his formulation of performance theory as a case of intercultural border-crossings and encounters. Finally, I look into the complex interrelationships between lila and mela, and between religious rituals and performances in everyday life. I argue that Schechner’s original and insightful writings on the Ramlila of Ramnagar have helped redefine the parameters of contemporary performance.
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Notes
- 1.
In the field of theater and performance studies , there has been a prevailing interest in India—especially in its culture, literature, ritual, philosophy, and religion—in the last fifty years. Many Western theater practitioners—such as Eugenio Barba , Jerzy Grotowski , Peter Brook , Phillip Zarrilli, Ariane Mnouchkine , and Richard Schechner , to name only a few—have been drawn to various forms of Indian theater and ritual performance. Many of them went to India a number of times, embarking on their theater and religious pilgrimages.
- 2.
The articles written by Schechner, which deal with the Ramnagar Ramlila in particular, are listed as follows: “Ramlila of Ramnagar: An Introduction” in Performative Circumstances: From the Avant Garde to Ramlila (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1983), pp. 238–88; “Performance Spaces: Ramlila and Yaqui Easter” in Performative Circumstances: From the Avant Garde to Ramlila (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1983), pp. 289–305; “Ramlila of Ramnagar” in Between Theater and Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), pp. 151–211; “Striding Through the Cosmos: Movement, Belief, Politics, and Place in the Ramlila of Ramnagar” in The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 131–83.
- 3.
The festive play is staged annually according to the Hindu calendar during the auspicious period of Sharad Navratras, which marks the commencement of the Autumn festive period, starting with the Dussehra festival and culminating on the festival of Vijayadashami day, which commemorates the victory of Rama over demon king Ravana. In 2015, the festival was held from September 27 (Sunday) to October 27 (Tuesday). In 2016, it was celebrated from September 8 (Thursday) to October 8 (Saturday).
- 4.
Svarupas “means shape, form, appearance. Therefore when young brahman boys playing the deities Rama, Lakshmana, Janaki, Bharata and Shatrughna are called svarupas, it implies that they are in the shape, form and appearance of god” (Kapur 2006, p. 12).
- 5.
As Surinder Mohan Bhardwaj notes, “The number of Hindu sanctuaries in India is so large and the practice of pilgrimage so ubiquitous that the whole of India can be regarded as a vast sacred space organized into a system of pilgrimage centers and their fields” (1973, p. 7).
- 6.
Upanayana is a Hindu ritual of initiation, which marks the acceptance of a student’s entrance to a school in Hinduism or spiritual knowledge by a guru.
- 7.
Schechner once wrote in his notebook: “I think about my initiation into Hinduism. I am not cynical about it. And this lack of cynicism stirs contradictions. Am I ‘betraying’ my Jewishness? I am attracted to Hindu philosophy, especially the Bhagavad Gita, and what I know about the Upanishads, and Hindu art, of course. And I want to go deeper—is this the way?” (1993, p. 3).
- 8.
Schechner explored the overlapping of theater and life in his “6 Axioms of Environmental Theatre ” and proposed a “continuum of theatrical events” ranging from public occasions and demonstrations, through happenings and environmental theater, to traditional theater (1994, p. xix–li).
- 9.
For a detailed contrast chart between Western positivist and Indian maya–lila approaches to playing, please consult page 35 of Schechner’s The Future of Ritual.
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Su, TC. (2018). Lila or Mela? Richard Schechner’s “Play” of the Ramlila of Ramnagar. In: Tuan, I., Chang, IC. (eds) Transnational Performance, Identity and Mobility in Asia. Palgrave Pivot, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7107-2_5
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