Copyright by Kristen Dawn Rudisill 2007
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Copyright by Kristen Dawn Rudisill 2007 The Dissertation Committee for Kristen Dawn Rudisill certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: BRAHMIN HUMOR: CHENNAI’S SABHA THEATER AND THE CREATION OF MIDDLE-CLASS INDIAN TASTE FROM THE 1950S TO THE PRESENT Committee: ______________________________ Kathryn Hansen, Co-Supervisor ______________________________ Martha Selby, Co-Supervisor ______________________________ Ward Keeler ______________________________ Kamran Ali ______________________________ Charlotte Canning BRAHMIN HUMOR: CHENNAI’S SABHA THEATER AND THE CREATION OF MIDDLE-CLASS INDIAN TASTE FROM THE 1950S TO THE PRESENT by Kristen Dawn Rudisill, B.A.; A.M. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2007 For Justin and Elijah who taught me the meaning of apu, pācam, kātal, and tuai ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I came to this project through one of the intellectual and personal journeys that we all take, and the number of people who have encouraged and influenced me make it too difficult to name them all. Here I will acknowledge just a few of those who helped make this dissertation what it is, though of course I take full credit for all of its failings. I first got interested in India as a religion major at Bryn Mawr College (and Haverford) and classes I took with two wonderful men who ended up advising my undergraduate thesis on the epic Ramayana: Michael Sells and Steven Hopkins. Dr. Sells introduced me to Wendy Doniger’s work, and like so many others, I went to the University of Chicago Divinity School to study with her, and her warmth compensated for the Chicago cold. Dr. Hopkins introduced me to the poetry of the Tamil language, and I was very fortunate to work with Norman Cutler and J. Bernard Bate at the U of C. Dr. Cutler went above and beyond all expectations to support me and it was his hard work and encouragement that sent me to Madurai for the first time in 1999. His passing in 2002 was a tremendous loss to me and his many other students and friends as well as to the field of Tamil studies. Back then I was only trying to speak Tamil passably and get to know India a little bit. I started studying Bharata Natyam for fun and exercise and attended other classical music and dance performances and a few specially organized folk performances. I have to thank Dr. S. Bharathy and Rachel Weiss from the AIIS and Madison programs in Madurai for facilitating many of these performances. I returned to the US six months later with a real interest in Tamil and Indian performance arts and started the Ph.D. program at the University of Texas, Austin in 2000 with an amazing group of faculty that included Dr. Sankaran Radhakrishnan and the co-advisors of this dissertation, Drs. v Martha Selby and Kathryn Hansen, who have read this work in so many incarnations that they probably have it memorized by now. I can never say enough to thank these three individuals for their insightful comments and generosity of spirit and time over the last seven years. They have been mentors to me in the true sense of the word. In addition to my wonderful advisors, I need to thank the other two members of my exam committee, Drs. Ward Keeler and Sumit Ganguly, and the other three members of my dissertation committee, Drs. Ward Keeler, Kamran Ali, and Charlotte Canning. Every member of my dissertation committee gave me valuable comments and raised questions that I’m sure I will be thinking about for many years and many projects to come. They broadened my perspective and forced me to consider sabha theater from a variety of different angles. I would also like to thank Drs. Monika Mehta and Oscar Brockett, who served on this dissertation committee at earlier points in the process. Their comments and suggestions were much appreciated. I feel fortunate that my time at UT overlapped with theirs even for a short while. I arrived in Austin at a time of improvement and expansion in the South Asia program. The South Asia Institute at the University of Texas, Austin provided me with the opportunity to interact with the many distinguished scholars of South Asia, a resource that is incredibly valuable. Special thanks to Patrick Olivelle, the Chair of the Asian Studies Department during my time there, and to Kathryn Hansen and James Brow, who served as Directors of the South Asia Center and later Institute. Their support of graduate research, the visiting scholars they invite, and the conferences and seminar series that they organize make Austin a very exciting as well as nurturing place to study South Asia. I’m confident that Dr. Joel Brereton and Dr. Itty Abraham, who took on those roles of vi Chair and Director just as I was leaving, will continue to strive for excellence in both the Department and the Institute. I returned to India in 2001, actively looking for a dissertation project, but knowing only that I wanted to work on theater. I spent the summer attending everything from terukkuttu to Shakespeare readings and meeting as many people as I could. I have to thank Pritham Chakravarthy for turning me on to sabha theater and encouraging me, against the advice of other Chennai intellectuals, to take it seriously as an academic. I’ve received many grants in support of this work, including a Fulbright-Hays DDRA that allowed me to spend twelve months from June 2003 to June 2004 in Madras. Not knowing where to affiliate, I made the fortunate decision to join the Madras Music Academy, where I was assigned Nandini Ramani as an advisor. She became dance teacher, fount of information about the city and the performance world, and invaluable contact. She and Pritham Chakravarthy, who read plays and academic writings on the Tamil theater with me three mornings a week, really helped keep the project moving forward. They paid attention to what I was doing and introduced me to many performers, writers, and journalists in Chennai. I need to send out a special thank you to comedian S. Ve. Shekher and the members of Natakapriya, who opened an amazing number of doors for me. They invited me into their homes as well as to their rehearsals and performances and also took me on tour. I spent many an evening backstage with the actors and technicians and was allowed access that really made me feel like one of the troupe. When I did my audience questionnaires, Shekher helped to design the questions and announced them at every vii performance. He even invited me to make the announcement from the stage, and I know that hearing me speak Tamil convinced many audience members to fill them out. Comedian Kathadi Ramamurthy and playwright Raadhu (S. Radhakrishnan) also provided friendship and assistance with this project. They really believed in me and my project and went to a great deal of trouble to introduce me to people like K. Balachander, C. Nagesh, and Kamalhasan, and even though I was never able to parlay those introductions into interviews, I very much appreciated them. During Kathadi’s Golden Jubilee celebrations, Raadhu’s daughter Priya procured some very detailed questionnaire answers for me by passing them out to a ladies club that was attending the performances and having them take them home for a night. Their thoughtful answers and comments are much appreciated. I would also like to thank Dr. S. Gopalie for sharing his lifetime of knowledge about the Chennai theater scene with me. His thesis and the interviews and conversations we had were absolutely invaluable, especially to my understanding of the relationships between artists and sabhas. Over the course of the year in Chennai I interviewed many people. Here I name a just a few of those I spoke with most extensively, and thank them for their time and generosity: Cho Ramasamy, R. Neelakanthan, Mouli, Venkat, K. S. Nagarajan, Bosskey, Crazy Mohan, Crazy Balaji, Y. Gee. Mahendran, Mrs. Y. G. Parthasarathy, T. K. S. Pughagherti, M. B. Murthy, Purnam Viswanathan, Malathi Rangarajan, Kausalya Santhanam, A. R. Srinivasan, all the members of Natakapriya and Crazy Creations, many members of United Amateur Artists, V. Sreevatson, K. Vivek Shankar, S. T. Baskaran, N. Muthusamy, Pravin, Mangai Arasu, Pritham Chakravarthy, Kovai Padhmanabhan, V. S. Raghavan, K. S. Narayan, S. L. Naanu, Thillairajan, Delhi Ganesh, Manager Cheenu, viii Kamala Kamesh, R. S. Srinivasan, Dr. Mathrabootham, Girish Karnad, V. Rajendran, E. V. R. Mohan, Kalai Ravi, Kishore Subramanian, Priya Kishore, P. Muthuswamy, Mr. Prasad, K. P. Arivanantham, S. Thirukkonam, Bombay Gnanam, T. V. Sundararajan, Karur Rangarajan, and Murali. I also had the good fortune to interview R. S. Manohar, whose contribution to the Tamil stage cannot be overstated and whose January, 2006 death marks the end of an era. I also have to thank the many actors, writers, technicians, and audience members that I spoke to at the around one hundred and twenty-five dramas that I attended that year. Special thanks to Kaladhar and Sridhar, ever my allies and friends. I also spoke casually with many sabha secretaries and volunteers, and I thank them for their time and the souvenirs that they provided to me. For the 2005-2006 academic year I was generously supported by a Hemphill- Gilmore Fellowship from the University of Texas, Austin, which gave me the time to organize my notes and thoughts and spend time writing. I have presented nearly every chapter of this dissertation, in some form or another, at conferences or invited lectures over the course of the last five years.