ABSTRACT

In the face of the stridency of the political realities shaped by an ever-hardening religious nationalism (van der Veer 1994), the ‘play’ of the gods is being revisited throughout India as well as in Kerala, whether in Iyyamgode Sridharan’s reimagination of Krishna in Message of Love, or in Maya Krishna Rao’s remarkable recent solo performance, ‘Khol Do,’ first performed in 1993. On 9 April 1999, I was fortunate enough to see Maya Krishna Rao’s ‘Khol Do’—an original dance-theatre performance inspired by the short story by Saadat Hasan Manto, and created out of her years of training and performance of

kathakali. Trained at the International Centre for Kathakali in New Delhi from a young age, Maya Rao learned kathakali from such excellent traditional masters as Guru Madhava Panikkar who came to the New Delhi Centre on its creation in 1960 (Zarrilli 1984a: 304-8). These master teachers introduced her to kathakali, not through the female roles, but rather through the strong male roles, providing her with a firm foundation in the ‘strong’ (tandava) aspects of playing kathakali characters. Only later in her training did she begin to learn, and discover the joys, of the repertory’s female roles. Throughout her years of performance and teaching, often at the National School of Drama in New Delhi, Maya Rao’s work has been inspired by and based on her kathakali training.