Assimilating the ‘Earth-Energies’: The Ecological Roots in Heisnam Kanhailal’s Pebet and Memoirs of Africa

Abstract

In the 1970s, the performance traditions in India witnessed a flurry of creative interventions to articulate contemporary sensibilities. If the state-sponsored ‘theatre of roots’ ultimately made these interventions what Rustom Bharucha called a ‘cosmetic’ act bereft of any meaningful connection with its originary ecology, theatre practitioners like Heisnam Kanhailal evolved a different idiom of theatre by rooting it in their immediate surroundings. Kanhailal conceptualised his theatre as the ‘theatre of the earth’—theatre that is rooted in the earth and is conditioned by the accumulated wisdom derived from the earth. It heavily relies on a ‘performance text’ that predominantly emphasises the non-verbal and gestural components and evolves organically through an intense process of physicalisation where the actors would establish a nuanced sensorial connection with the natural environment, its innate rhythm, movement, fluidity, and poeticism. The actors would absorb those earth-energies as they would effortlessly enact the most agonisingly turbulent facts of everyday life and the moments of resistance. By studying the ecological roots in Kanhailal’s Pebet and Memoirs of Africa, this paper looks at the ways in which his theatre assimilates the organic principles of life and how those earth-energies permeate the participant-audience, creating a symbiotic bond between them and the natural environment. The paper will examine, using appropriate theories, how the ‘theatre of the earth’ transcends the spatial limit and performs not only the ‘ecology of pain.’ but also an ‘ecology of hope.’ The paper will also explore the possibility of creating an ecology of resilience as it practices a syncretic form that focuses on the regenerative power of nature, thereby bridging the rift caused by the anthropocentric logic of domination and development.