Drama

The concept of Guru Shishya, the traditional Indian/Kathakali teacher/learner training methodology, was primarily a mirroring process where in, for a number of years the learner was learning the craft, receiving knowledge and skill by mirroring (and not imitating or mimicking) a realized teacher and practitioner of Kathakali. This mirroring process involved an observation of the teacher’s action by the learner and then a performance of that observed action. This intimate encounter, often in a small room within the teacher’s house, over months and years, was and still is an extremely sophisticated system of human transaction that sets up both the subjective and objective growth of the learner and the art. Over time, and through a sustained social interaction, understood best I suggest within the framework of an intersubjective “trading of places,” the learner gains the skills and ability of the teacher. In this article I examine what Richard Schechner suggests is a “deep brain” penetration in Kathakali learning. I attempt to de-mystify this “deep brain” process through a sampling of a number of significant neuroscientific discoveries potentially laying the ground for a deeper interdisciplinary enquiry. At the core of these arguments is my own subjective experience as a learner and my journey to becoming a Kathakali teacher or Guru. My personal experiences, neuroscientific ideas and Husserlian intersubjectivity are all harnessed to validate Kathakali mirroring as a significant actor training methodology.

Traditional Indian aesthetic theory (Kumar 2010; Pollock 2016; Shwartz 2006) deems rasa as a knowledgeable audience's taste of aesthetic pleasure, and bhava as the actor's performance of embodied emotional states. This conventional interpretation of an aesthetic theory first articulated in the Natyashastra suggests the actor does not experience pleasure or rasa, and by implication, the actor's craft is primarily in the service of the audience's pleasure. If, on the other hand, the actor does taste rasa, as evidenced by Pollock (2016) through Krishnamoorthy's (1979) interpretation of the Natyashastra, then, contrary to the conventional understanding, a transfer of this ability from guru or master practitioner to learner, is at the heart of its actor training pedagogy. To transfer this very specific skill full ability, the master practitioner's actions need to be imitated precisely and not interpreted. The dominant western academic narrative of Kathakali's imitative pedagogy represents it as "mimicking", a quality for low, and specially not of the high arts. A renegotiating of the idea of mimicry with a more complex and nuanced "mirroring," offers up fertile conceptual ground for an investigation into its offerings of rasa. Practice-led research conducted by the practitioner researcher as part of his doctoral thesis exploring the teaching of Kathakali in Australia, offers original theoretical and practical insights into a transfer of rasa from master practitioner to learner, at the site of intercultural actor training.

The concept of Guru Shishya, the traditional Indian/Kathakali teacher/learner training methodology, was primarily a mirroring process where in, for a number of years the learner was learning the craft, receiving knowledge and skill by mirroring (and not imitating or mimicking) a realized teacher and practitioner of Kathakali. This mirroring process involved an observation of the teacher’s action by the learner and then a performance of that observed action. This intimate encounter, often in a small room within the teacher’s house, over months and years, was and still is an extremely sophisticated system of human transaction that sets up both the subjective and objective growth of the learner and the art. Over time, and through a sustained social interaction, understood best I suggest within the framework of an intersubjective “trading of places,” the learner gains the skills and ability of the teacher. In this article I examine what Richard Schechner suggests is a “deep brain” penet...