Tamilarasi Shanmugam: Drama Queen

In two hours, the girl becomes a gypsy. Slender and sharp-featured, she peers into a hand mirror and applies a pasty foundation. Her face and fingertips turn blue, her ‘look’ for the lead role. She then dusts her face with talc. With steady hands, she lines her eyes with kohl, draws a neat black circle on her forehead and fills it with kumkum. She stains her lips a deep red, ties her own hair into a bun, and pins false hair beneath it. “Tamilarasi,” I tell her, “you look beautiful.” She smiles, but quickly goes back to work.

Kings, queens and clowns rush in and out of the green room, the sound of their ankle-bells fade and flare; a little boy pulls faces at his moustached reflection; another adjusts his red skirt and glittering crown. Many of the actors are children. They are students of the Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam, a school that teaches kattaikkuttu, a rural form of theatre once popular in Tamil Nadu. The night’s performance is at Chennai’s prestigious auditorium, Narada Gana Sabha. The younger ones sit around their teacher —Tamilarasi Shanmugam —as she gets ready for the lead role in Draupadi Kuravanchi.

Her students are fascinated with her. Traditionally, it was men who dressed and danced as women. Tamilarasi is only the second woman who chose to be a professional kattaikkuttu—a form of therukuthu or rural theatre—artist.

And she is only 21 years old.

It was her guru P Rajagopal, 62, who first introduced and included women in kattaikkuttu. A third-generation artist, Rajagopal acts, writes and directs plays and teaches the Perungattur bani of kattaikkuttu —the name derived from his village in Tiruvannamalai district. This elaborate theatre form includes song, dance, make-up, drama and dialogue and is typically performed through the night at village festivals in north Tamil Nadu. It takes extraordinary stamina and skill to last the eight hours.

The art gets its name (kattai or ‘wood’; kuttu or ‘theatre’) from the heavily decorated wooden gear that the lead actors wear on their head, shoulders and chest. This art form is also unusual in that the performers sing and dance, says Hanne M de Bruin, Rajagopal’s wife, who based her PhD research on it.

Training for kuttu starts early in life. Rajagopal recalls performing when he was barely 10, for his late father C Ponnuswami’s theatre company. “One of my first memories was acting as Krishna. I was very small. They made me sit on top of the pandal and drop a sari down to Draupadi.” In 1990, he established the Kattaikkuttu Sangam in Kanchipuram with 16 artists from different companies. He still runs the Sangam—and a Tamil-medium residential school, the Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam, started by the artists themselves—with Hanne.

The Gurukulam, located in Punjarasantankal village of Kanchipuram district, was started in 2002. Today, a third of the 54 students are girls. In addition to the regular subjects, students learn dance, drama and music. The teachers are from nearby villages. International volunteers teach English through drama and storytelling. The day I visit, the group is rehearsing under Rajagopal’s supervision. The kids call him thatha (grandpa), and Hanne, paati (grandma). The dance and drama is riveting, the high-pitched music very catchy. The high point is Tamilarasi’s footwork: extraordinarily light, quick and precise.

Tamilarasi joined the Gurukulam when she was nine. “I was in class five; my parents put me in the hostel.” But, she admits that she didn’t take to kuttu at once. Her singing was off-key, and she struggled to memorise the lyrics. Only the dance came effortlessly. Her guru and teachers noticed this and encouraged her to try lead roles, even the heroic male ones. She did, and was soon a big hit on stage.

In Tamil villages, kuttu begins at 10 pm. There are neither mikes and chairs, nor a raised stage—just a well-lit open ground, often near a temple. The orchestra has four instruments: the mridangam, dholak, harmonium and mukaveenai. The kattiyakaran (narrator/clown) is the first to appear. He entertains the audience and initiates the story. The lead performers are ushered in around midnight. There’s an air of mystery as they come dancing behind a cloth screen and a gasp when the richly dressed performer emerges. For the next six hours, they hold the audience captive as they sing, dance, bring stories from the great epics alive— stories of kings and queens, gods and gypsies, warriors and clowns.

Kattaikkuttu was mostly confined to two castes in this region—Pandarams and Vanaars. Ponnuswami broke that tradition and began teaching anybody who wished to learn. Rajagopal too teaches everybody, including and especially girls. Until then, men played women’s roles, because the all-night performance was considered physically demanding. Families, for their part, worried if their daughter’s marriage prospects would be ruined by dancing alongside men. Hanne and Rajagopal have been keen to address these concerns. They started an all-girls programme at the Gurukulam to encourage better participation in this male-dominated theatre. They believe kuttu can and should be a dignified full-time profession for both boys and girls.

But, even among boys, the economically well-off don’t wish to learn kuttu, despite the pay jump over one generation from Rs 200-300 to Rs 20,000-30,000 for a performance. The money is divided among the 15-member troupe (12 performers and 3 musicians). During the kuttu season— mid-January to mid-October—top troupes have 150 performances; others average between 50 and 100.

The trouble is tiding over the lean months. A full-time performer may be out of a job during the monsoon, but his or her earnings—of Rs 800-1,000 per performance—must pay for the upkeep of costumes and musical instruments, apart from regular household expenses. Unless he has savings, he will be in debt before the next season begins. And many performers are in debt. They also have to necessarily look for another source of income. Kuttu earnings can be unpredictable, unless the company or artist is well known. Some work temporarily as farmers and coolie workers. “Others like me, teach, or make the wooden gear and costumes,” says Kailasam , 60, performer and teacher at the Gurukulam.

The difficulties haven’t stopped many of the Gurukulam’s students from taking to the art form full-time. Recognition and fame are big draws. Doraisamy, 22, actor and teacher at the Gurukulam, loves kuttu because of the adulation. People laugh and clap when he plays the clown; they enjoy his lines, his actions. That, for him, is addictive.

Parents too give in when the children are passionate and adamant. “How can they say ‘no’?” asks Rajagopal. He should know: his father did not wish to foist the art on his son. Except, the son was very keen! “There were reservations,” Hanne explains, “because the word ‘therukuttu’ was used derisively, and actors were not accepted socially.”

Tamilarasi too faced hurdles. Only, she vaulted over them. “When I was 13 or 14, some parents pulled their kids out of the Gurukulam.” Her father, Shanmugam, insisted she quit too. “That was the first time I stood up to my father. I told him I did not ask to learn this: ‘You put me here, and now I want to continue’.” She got her way, and it strengthened her resolve to dance. Her mother encouraged her by attending every performance. Her friends teased her, but she told them her mother comes to hear the feedback from the crowd. “She is proud when I’m praised.”

Tamilarasi is always praised for her work. And kuttu is extremely challenging. “You need a good voice, great foot-skills and incredible breath-control.” Given how slight her frame is, she is often asked where she gets her energy from. “I tell them, ‘When I’m singing and dancing on stage, I just become the character’.” She gets into the character, especially when she plays Draupadi in Pakatai Tukil (‘Dice and disrobing’). She auditioned for it, and recalls vividly the sleepless night before she was selected. “She’s my role model. She’s so powerful, the questions she asks, the way she refuses Dushasana’s advances, and yet, he drags her…” As she explains the scene, her voice rises, its tone changes, and Draupadi’s anger comes through as she addresses an imaginary Dushasana with, “I won’t come, you go!”

She is equally adept at playing male-roles. Arjuna is her favourite, as is Abhimanyu. “When that young boy goes to that great battle, I get very emotional.” When she was younger, wearing the elaborate male costumes excited her. Now, she enjoys the characters’ complexities. She’s clearly very good with her epics, which is very handy for her sister, a schoolteacher, who makes it a point to consult Tamilarasi before her mythology lessons. “She has no idea who is whose mother, father, brother…”

Tamilarasi’s father sells agricultural land when he’s not working as a farmhand. Her mother runs their house with her financial help. “The money I earn here goes to her. She’s careful with it, unlike my father.” Tamilarasi’s two sisters and brother are married. She’s the youngest. Given what a novelty she is, she has to fob off snide remarks. The most common being: ‘You are a kuttu dancer, who will marry you?’ Tamilarasi always replies that somebody will. And that she will not let marriage end her career.

Tamilarasi plays the lead in many of the Gurukulam’s productions. Her voice is somewhat rough, but her diction is superb and throw simply astonishing. When I meet her in Chennai, she’s pleased to be performing for an urban audience, but prefers a boisterous rural one. “It is such a joy to dance in a village. In city auditoriums, they use mikes. It distorts the voice, and I’m self-conscious about how I deliver my lines.” There’s also the way the audience behaves. “Here everybody sits in the dark, they’re all so quiet. Of course, they clap for comedy scenes, during entries and exits. But how do I know if they like what I’m doing?” In a village, she’d know. Audience enthusiasm adds energy to her performance.

Teaching also excites Tamilarasi. “I teach acrobatics and steps, I have put together a programme called Masala”: a fun half-hour programme in which she has artistically blended storytelling (in English and Tamil), acrobatics, clowning, fighting and, of course, strong kuttu elements. This,she believes, even the uninitiated can enjoy.

Tamilarasi learnt acrobatics and clowning at the Dimitri school, Verscio, Switzerland. “I was there for three months, and stayed in the director’s house.” It was her first trip abroad alone; she had visited England earlier for workshops with Rajagopal, Hanne and other students. While in Switzerland, she conducted two kuttu workshops, taught step classes; and received in return training in rhythm, clowning, acrobatics and classical dance. Her biggest takeaway, though, was how much art was venerated, its teaching respected, and how well it paid!

Hanne raises the same points: unequal pay scales, the step-motherly treatment of folk arts and the almost- complete dismissal by the urban set. “Why are our shows covered only when we perform in Chennai? Our 25th year show, at Punjarasantankal, got very little coverage.” The village shows are bigger, longer and draw thousands of spectators, she argues. “Why are we not invited to theatre festivals in the city? To Chennai’s December music season? Why are we paid a pittance, compared to a classical musician, who might earn 10 times what we do? They are just five people in that troupe, we are 15.”

Her ‘whys’ are unsettling; they hang there without answers. Rajagopal, through his art, has resolved some issues. He addresses patriarchy, for example, through his twist to Draupadi’s story. In his version, she challenges Duruyodhana to a game of dice. She pledges her chastity. And wins. When this is performed, audiences are ecstatic, Tamilarasi tells me. Won’t the last scene take place only at 6.00 am, I ask. “Of course, but people wait; 2,000 of them, some standing all night.” They clap and whistle. They bless the artists. They beg them to perform in their village for the next festival.

The performance in Narada Gana Sabha is a thumping success. Tamilarasi makes an extraordinary gypsy and receives a rousing round of applause at the curtain call. After the audience files out, the troupe packs up and goes home. They still need to take off the make-up, fold their costumes, and rest their throats and limbs. And then Tamilarasi might dream of more ways to take this rural art form to the world.

(This article is part of the series Vanishing Livelihoods of Rural Tamil Nadu, supported by the NFI National Media Award programme, 2015)

KattaikkuttuKattaikkuttu SangamPakatai TukilTamilarasi Shanmugamtherukuttu