Kattaikkuttu

Kattaikkuttu is a rural theatre form practiced in the State of Tamil Nadu in South India. The performers – by tradition only men - sing, act and dance and the musicians accompany them on the harmonium, the mridangam and the mukavinai. The terms Terukkuttu and Kattaikkuttu are often used interchangeably. However, historically the two terms appear to have distinguished, at least in certain villages, between two different kinds of performance: while Terukkuttu referred to mobile performances by two actors participating in a procession for the village deity Mariamman, Kattaikkuttu denotes overnight, narrative performances at a fixed performance space acted by an ensemble of about fifteen actors and musicians.

Kattaikkuttu derives its name from the word kattai, which refers to the special ornaments worn by the actors during performances; kuttu refers to theatre. The audience recognizes the various characters by the shapes of their head wear and their make-up.

Kattaikkuttu has been performed in rural Tamil Nadu for years. In November 1990, a group of seventeen rural actors and musicians founded, on the initiative of Kattaikkuttu actor Perungattur P. Rajagopal, an organization to promote their theatre in the town of Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu. They called this grassroots collective the Tamil Nadu Kattaikkuttu Kalai Valarcci Munnerra Sangam using the name of Kattaikkuttu rather than one of the current terms of Kuttu or Terukkuttu. The main objectives of the Sangam – an officially registered society - were to promote Kattaikkuttu as a theatre form in its own right and to further the interests of professional performers. Since its inception more than twenty years ago, the Sangam has developed into an umbrella organization with a number of activities including educating and training a future generation of young, talented Kattaikkuttu performers (the Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam), opening up the theatre to rural girls and women, organization of an annual theatre festival and production of new and often innovative plays. In 2009 the organization shortened its name into Kattaikkuttu Sangam.

Many traditional performances center on the enactment of parts of the Mahabharata; a few plays have Purana stories as their theme. To cater to a renewed interest in the theatre from urban audiences and cultural institutions, new plays of shorter and all-night duration have also been created. These plays have been successfully performed in Indian metros and abroad and have been assimilated into the repertory of the Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam’s Young Professionals Company.

...
Wikipedia