ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author offers an ethnographic study of nangiar kuthu, and in it she traces its evolution from an obscure temple-theatre genre to an important female genre in the current Indian theatre scene. Contemporary nangiar kuthu, a solo female storytelling performance with a centuries-old heritage, compels one to watch. In nangiar kuthu, a sub-genre of kutiyattam, one actress tells the story of the god, Krishna, by blending a codified sign language system of the hands, face, and eyes with movement and mime. Nangiar kuthu survived the breakdown of the socioeconomic arrangement that had underpinned its performance and moved to a new level. In 1984, a watershed event occurred. P. K. Narayanan Nambiar published an acting manual for nangiar kuthu. The author attempts to bring together data that she collected on women who perform nangiar kuthu during more than thirty years of continuous fieldwork.
