Nepalis have kept their performance culture alive, unobtrusively, despite lack of reinforcement or meddling from the state. Interactions between the divine and humans during the Jatras and dance-dramas, is very unique. The ancient and the present-day Nepali theatre focusing on ordinary human beings, in fact, is a mirror of Nepali culture and political history. The performance tradition is very strong here. It is assimilative in characters covering spatial and cultural forms. The genres of art – architecture, sculpture, painting, dance – are interdisciplinary and related to the theatre.
One of the interesting anecdotes the author presents is about conquering of Kathmandu during Indra Jatra. To him, this incident is cognate with a performance – an act of entering the stage where the Vestal Virgin lives, and performing the roles of a king and a worshipper. The king was a prop, a character, a player in the system of performance. And for the people, the relationship of between the ruler and the ruled was a relationship of a carnival. Indra Jatra, according to Subedi, is god arrested in ritual theatre. Festivals like this are the dramatic versions of myths and reality.
Theatre heritage having folk as well as classical foundations are living in written, visual and oral forms in the present reality. The king is replaced by ae president, he is the main recipient of festivals where power and ritual merge. The king had the clout to synthesize the forming with the Indic dramaturgy. During the Malla dynasty, most spectacular fetes, festivals, dance-dramas and processions manifested. And it was interesting to find out that linguistic medium in those plays were Newari, Maithili, Sanskrit, and Bengali hybridism. Prof. Subedi also mentions about plays written by the Malla and Shah kings.
Writing on the medieval theatre, Subedi gives detailed accounts on mask dances like Hari Siddhi, Kartik, Gai Jatra etc that were/are also street performances, like the pulling of chariots, which is the animation of grief and the memories of the deceased.
“Streets in Nepal have always represented wrought drama with dances and songs. Every major cultural and historical performance is made on streets,” Subedi argues. “Journey and street have shaped the Nepali theatre and politics.”
Processions like those of Machhindranath Jatras exhibit a culture giving the inference on the background for demonstrations for regime changes during different times in Nepal’s history. Powers of street marchers have been great in both cultural and political spectrums. Subedi draws parallels between the establishments, evocative of Jatras having great theatrical implications.
Folk tales, rituals and religious sagas were the precursor to Nepali theatre. The Tharu people have a ballad-like performance called Barka Nach which is actually an episode of Mahabharata in dance-drama. Many people in the Tarai still perform Ram Lila during Dashain. It is a ten-day drama performance based on the Ramayana.
When consumerism came to Nepal, the Ranas imported Parsi theatre to their courts. But to the people, it came only during Gai Jatra. Subedi gives brief profiles of the people who brought and tended Parsi performances in Nepal, how they designed the stage and what was the textual element. Parsi performance was the commodification of theatre, and paved the way for films for creating public interests in stories performed decoratively with melodramatic elements. It had evolved in India from the Persian people using Hindu myths and writing in Urdu. While sketching the personal narrative of theatre practitioners, Subedi narrates the history of theatre in the early 20th century.
And then the Nepali theatre changed for better reasons. More people began writing and performing. It was a shift from commercialism to aesthetic taste after the 1950 revolution. Along with the tradition of bringing original plays on stage, realistic and naturalist theatre also developed. Some playwrights started the tradition of popular theatre having streaks of social panorama, others gave space to culture. Gai Jatra, as it is also the festival of humor, gave birth to satirical performances with an objective to portrait the foibles of the government during the Panchayat regime. Some poets were interested in drama and thus began writing lyrical plays. Along came street plays which was/is seen as theatre for education. And now there is Forum Theatre for raising awareness.
At present, many theatre groups use folk drama as part of life they have experienced. Folk drama follows certain culture and rituals, stories from oral tales, and theologies are dramatized. The theatre persons are today voicing for a separate academy of drama/dance, art/sculpture, and literature, which are until now cluttered into one: the Nepal Academy.
The Broadway in the United States is the most prestigious theatre in the world, but it hardly experiments with play performance. To get going, most of the time, it showcases musicals. When moviemakers witness the charms of those plays, they turn them into movies, for instances, Mama Mia, Sweeny Todd, and this year’s Academy Awards nominated “Doubt”. They need almost US$10 million to produce a musical at Broadway, and to cover that expense, their productions must run for at least a year. That’s the reason why they don’t usually opt for metaphorical or highly symbolic plays.
In Nepal, the budget for the theatre festival at Gurukul was less than Rs. Five million. As the cost is relatively low, and the impact high, Nepali theatre persons are experimenting with form and presentation. Private theatre groups are doing a lot in Nepal. Contrarily, the government’s Cultural Corporation has turned its Nach Ghar into a shopping mall. There are numerous shops in that giant structure but only one auditorium.
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