Kathakali

Provides a clear guide to Kathakali, exploring the origin, evolution and characteristics of the form today and the ways it has adapted for a 21st-century audience.

Kathakali provides an introduction to this vibrant mode of dance drama, which comes from Kerala in southwest India and combines poetry, music, rhythm and dance to represent stories of gods, demons and humans. Tracing the distinctive features of Kathakali - which is sometimes tightly structured with fixed conventions and sometimes fluid enough to incorporate imaginative flight of fancy. It charts how the form has changed over the centuries and assesses its cultural legacy today. It also includes translations of extracts from poems, plays and performance manuals, as well as interviews with actors and cultural historians.

Kathakali, literally ‘story play’, originated in Kerala in the latter part of the 16th century. Today it commands attention and involves practitioners from around the world. Largely drawing its stories from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, it integrates music, dance, grand makeup and costume, to evoke the epic universe. Kathakali combines associated literary texts, performative conventions and practices from local and pan-Indian contexts into its ambit. The actor uses their whole body - deploying complex dance movements, interpretive gestures and highly developed facial expressions - as a site to depict, elaborate and interpret action.

The book encapsulates this encyclopedic world of Kathakali, its performative grammar and the aesthetic theories that underpin it, emphasizing its connection at different points of time to prevalent forms of knowledge and practices. It examines the history of Kathakali as one of continual change, dependent on the tastes, patronage systems and the contribution of great actors who extended the repertoire with their imaginative reinterpretation.