ABSTRACT
Through the prism of performance, Morari Bapu's Ramkatha reveals the aesthetic power of storytelling and the strategic site of katha where hybrid identifications are possible. Beyond the performative display of the text or transmission of signs, all stagings are grounded in heightened action and awareness to experience the world and share ideas, feelings and related transactions. The engaging effects that develop in these spaces are the consequences of collective referential meanings, the sensual appeals of sounds, besides individual subjectivities and myriad layers of sedimented social practice. This metacommunication signals an interaction with other elements of performance, such as music, settings, food, clothing and so on, to produce a complex whole of the Ramkatha event. Multiple perspectives on movement, gesture, as well as schemes of sensations, provide insights into bodily disciplines and emotional states of the satsangi cultivated through individual or collective practice. The satsangi's sense of place and interactions across physical locations invoke their connectedness through affective spaces and sonic sensibilities. Understanding actions as embedded in cognitive and symbolic structures, this chapter concludes that Ramkatha is sustained, embodied and interpreted in a mediatized matrix through patronizing efforts of the Hindu middle-class to promote a variety of visions.
