Second Honeymoons, Jurassic Babies: Identity and Play in Chennai S Post-Independence Sabha

SECOND HONEYMOONS, JURASSIC BABIES: IDENTITY AND PLAY IN CHENNAI’S POST-INDEPENDENCE SABHA THEATER

Abstract

Second Honeymoon (1977) and Jurassic Baby (2000) are the titles of two very popular Tamil-language plays from what I call the Sabha Theater genre that is based Chennai, the capital of the South Indian state of Tamilnadu. This talk will present an overview of my book project concerning this theatrical genre that relies on the patronage of voluntary organizations known as sabhas and also reflects a shared political ideology, structure, and aesthetic. Sabhas are dominated by middle-class members of the high-caste Brahmin community, and this book demonstrates the social and ideological significance of regional language popular theaters in developing and projecting community identity. I will present a brief history of the development and trajectory of a theatrical tradition that despite its cultural importance has been largely ignored by scholars. Additionally, I will sketch generic boundaries for this type of theater and briefly explore the cultural facets of the humor, using Honeymoon Couple as an example of a typical play from the genre.

Bio

Kristen Rudisill is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Popular Culture. Her PhD is in Asian Studies from the University of Texas, Austin, and her research focuses on Indian theater and dance. She has published several articles in journals such as Text and Presentation, Asian Theatre Journal, South Asian Popular Culture, and Studies in Musical Theatre.

SECOND HONEYMOONS, JURASSIC BABIES: IDENTITY AND PLAY IN CHENNAI’S POST-INDEPENDENCE SABHA THEATER

Today I’m presenting on my book manuscript, Second Honeymoons, Jurassic Babies, which is based on my dissertation. I’ll give you an overview of the book as a whole, then present the bulk of one of the chapters. The book concerns a theatrical genre I refer to as Sabha Theater due to its reliance on the patronage of voluntary cultural organizations known as sabhas in Chennai, the capital of the South Indian state of Tamilnadu. It focuses on the intersections of caste, class, and aesthetics on the Tamil-language commercial theater scene in Chennai, and involves over fifteen months of extensive ethnographic research with writers, actors, and audience members of the Sabha Theater. In addition to interviews, I circulated a questionnaire with audience members and observed rehearsals, performances, and television and film shootings. I also use historical research and published criticism, combining my ethnography with performance (Conquergood, Kirby, Goffman) and area studies (Appadurai, Bhabha) approaches to construct a thorough vision of the development and trajectory of a specific theatrical tradition that despite its cultural importance has been largely ignored by scholars and simultaneously patronized and dismissed by its viewers. This book is the result of eleven years and five visits to India (2001, 2003-4, 2008, 2010, 2012) spent trying to give a name and sketch generic boundaries for this type of theater, and to seriously consider what the plays mean for those who produce and consume them.

I consider such things as how the contemporary political climate and development of mass media have affected live theater in terms of aesthetics, personnel, scripts, production, and patronage. I also dispel some myths about the state of Tamil theater in Chennai. While it is certainly not at its peak now, it is also not “dead” as so many intellectuals and journalists in the city would like to claim. The relevance of these plays to an educated, middle-class audience both in India and the diaspora is ample proof of their importance, and while the dedication of many artists and enthusiasts may not lead to a revival, it certainly indicates a continuation of live Tamil language theater in Chennai.

This style of theater is the product of a Tamil Brahmin community concerned with emphasizing its local ethnic identity using Tamil language and inside jokes while simultaneously marking itself as cosmopolitan through both stylistic and content choices. As a genre of popular culture that developed in the Brahmin community during the early 1950s, a period of intense anti-Brahmin politics throughout this region of India, Sabha Theater functions as a window into the identity formation of a community so often defined solely by religion and the classical performing arts. The book will thus significantly advance and broaden scholarly understandings of Brahmin taste. This shift will encourage emphasis on actual popular practice and allow for the development of a more fluid and modern understanding of Brahmin culture, which is heavily influential both in India and abroad. Chennai is one of the centers for software development in India, and these high-tech jobs are dominated by Brahmins. As personnel exchanges with the US and other countries accelerate, empirically-based research such as this into the values, aesthetics, aspirations, and allegiances of this segment of the Indian population becomes ever more essential.

This is the first book-length, comprehensive study of a regional language commercial theater genre in India. Recent studies of post-independence Indian modern and folk theater (Dharwadker 2005, Seizer 2005, Dalmia 2006, Dimitrova 2008) have helped to illuminate issues of national and regional identity formation. Second Honeymoons, Jurassic Babies builds upon these insights by exploring them in the context of a commercial theater tradition that portrays an identity that is specifically marked by regional, caste, and class distinctions. The study examines the position of Sabha Theater within the context of other media and performance genres in the city of Chennai relevant to the lives of educated urbanites. This approach puts the theater into conversation with the television and film industries, with which the sabha theater shares writers, actors, and narratives, as well as with classical music and dance, with which it shares patrons and stages. Such an approach also opens a space for a productive discussion of taste creation and aesthetics, particularly with regards to the influential Tamil Brahmin community in Chennai. In comparing Sabha Theater and its audience to other entertainments in the city, the book historicizes and seriously studies commercial theater genres in Chennai for the first time by analyzing literary and performance texts along with performer, audience, and press responses. The result is a complex view of a theater genre neglected by scholars that simultaneously receives elite patronage and yet is dismissed by its viewers.

By looking at humor and the spontaneous reactions of audiences to the comic scenarios and jokes contained in the plays, Second Honeymoons, Jurassic Babies offers insights into the actual, as opposed to idealized, self-conceptions of the Tamil Brahmin community. The book argues that the identities projected through the representation of ordinary families on stage for insider audiences conflict in telling ways with accepted stereotypes of frozen, idealized models of behavior and culture. These conflicts provide a potential index by which to measure and define the transformation of the city’s cultural atmosphere in the light of media, economic, and political changes. Furthermore, the study reveals that discourses surrounding the plays and their stylized brand of humor, especially debates about frivolity and vulgarity, point to fundamental contradictions in identities projected within and outside of the community. The geopolitical importance of the emerging Indian middle class and its pivotal role in the still-developing global culture of the 21st century underscore the need for research such as this into the values, aesthetics, aspirations, and allegiances of this growing segment of the Indian population.

Sabha Theater is a community theater, with audiences bound not only by their language, religion, and class, but also by their high caste status as Brahmins. Sabhas have been the main sponsors of classical music and dance performances along with some dramas and the occasional film, debate, or religious discourse since the 1928 founding of the Music Academy of Madras. They organize entertainment for their fee-paying members, and each sabha has its own identity and focus based on the tastes of the founders and response of members to each year’s schedule. Second Honeymoons, Jurassic Babies demonstrates the social and ideological significance of regional language popular theaters in developing and projecting community identity. I argue that the influence of the sabhas extends beyond their narrow target audience, however, as these cultural organizations are key players along with the press and the academy in creating a notion of “good” taste in Chennai. All three of those fields are dominated by the high-caste Tamil Brahmin community, which thus both constructs and embodies the idea of good taste in the city.

Brahmins, as the most powerful taste-makers (in Pierre Bourdieu’s sense) in Chennai, are influential in shaping middle-class culture in the city. In contrast to other scholars (Singer 1972, Hancock 1999), I argue that Brahmin identity is best visible not in tradition and ritual, because performances of the classical arts and the response of connoisseur audiences to them reveal an ideal that is frozen in time. I look instead to something much more fluid and spontaneous: humor. Jokes are cued, but it is common for them to fall flat or lose relevance over time. So when audiences actually laugh and find intended jokes funny, these performances can offer some insights into non-idealized self-conceptions of the community of observers who are responsible for the creation of taste in Chennai.

Unlike classical music and dance, which are valued because of their adherence to “tradition,” Sabha Theater is a more recent development that has not remained static, instead reflecting shifts in the political and social identity of the elite Tamil Brahmin community in Chennai. In the early post-colonial period, when discussions of Indian national identity dominated public culture, Tamil Brahmins chose to emphasize their regional and caste identity with Tamil-language plays, and thus began the Sabha Theater genre. It was one of the new dramatic traditions that started in the post-Independence period that favored dialogue over other aspects of production, borrowing more from the British theater than from the Parsi, which isn’t surprising given that Sabha Theater actors come from elite backgrounds and have western educations, steady incomes, and secure social statuses. Elite amateur drama was not a new phenomenon in the post-World War II period; elites had been translating and adapting western dramas for elite audiences as early as the 1860s in Chennai, as Theodore Baskaran has discussed in detail. But it was new for sabhas, functioning as a patronage system, to support this type of drama in this period.

I conclude that such things as the contemporary political climate and development of mass media have drastically affected live Sabha Theater performances in terms of aesthetics, personnel, scripts, production, and patronage. The plays I consider part of this genre share a political ideology and a patronage system as well as a structure and aesthetic. I look at historical, political, and performance contexts, repertoire, humor, reception, performer, aesthetics, and performance style in order to historically, politically, socially, and artistically situate the genre. The plays, several of which I analyze in depth, are part of a multi-lingual world of folk and experimental theater and Tamil-language television and film, and I clarify how they fit into that broad media landscape.

The fact that many people from the Brahmin community choose to become members of sabhas or attend sabha dramas is not to say that the plays themselves are ideal representations of Tamil Brahmin culture or of good taste. In fact, the discourse about the plays has created two factions within the Tamil Brahmin community, the most vocal of which dismisses them as “just comedy.” I engage with both voices in the course of my examination of these literary and performance texts in order to meaningfully approach questions about the circumstances in which the genre emerged, various trends, the drastic decline in audiences in the late 1980s, and how troupes and audiences are responding today. My research engages a number of methodological and theoretical issues including the relation between art production and audience; the interaction of literary texts, live performances, and mass media texts; and the effects of class, caste, and ethnic/religious identity on the content and aesthetics of theater.

Now I’ll present part of one of the chapters. In this chapter, I analyze the 19772 play Honeymoon Couple, written by playwright and actor Crazy Mohan (b. 1949) for long-time theatre artist Kathadi Ramamurthy (b. 1938) and his troupe Stage Creations (founded 1964), as a typical play that illustrates the basic content as well as structural and aesthetic characteristics of the genre. I have selected this play as an exemplar for several reasons. First, it is a classic of Tamil comedy theatre, thanks to both Crazy Mohan’s writing and Kathadi Ramamurthy’s acting. Second, Stage Creations is average, neither at the top nor the bottom of the current theatre troupes in terms of either finances or audience size. Third, it exhibits the major traits that in my analysis constitute sabha theatre as a genre: patronage by sabhas, with their middle-class, usually Brahmin, audience base; a central theme concerning marriage alliances and/or married life; scripted witty dialogue with a thin plot and one-liner jokes, often including language jokes that code-switch between Tamil and English; a socially conservative message; and an “amateur aesthetic” that involves minimal sets, costumes, lighting, and two-hour evening or weekend matinee performances.