Preserving Prabandhakoothu plays
The Hindu
Prabandhakoothu artiste A.V. Narayanan has videographed a 37-hour performance of Dootavakyam, creating invaluable archival footage
The word is as important as the face for a Koodiyattam artiste. As the vidooshaka in a Koodiyattam play or as the narrator of Prabandhakoothu, a sub-genre of Koodiyattam, the artiste has to be a master of narrative skills. The vidooshaka in Prabandhakoothu once even enjoyed the privilege to mock and criticise the king. Is that mighty word losing its edge? Prabandhakoothu is the solo male-only art form that chronicles epic stories, while interspersing them with modern situations and spicing them up with wit and humour. Sanskrit slokas are parsed and their logical meaning explained in Malayalam in great detail, references are made to similar stories or even modern literary texts. For instance, the famous sloka in Ramayana, ‘Raman dasaratham vidhi…’, where Sumitra advices Lakshmana just as he sets out for the forest. Though the sloka has only 12 words, the Prabandhakoothu artiste may take over two hours to explain it, unfurling the different shades of meanings in each word.More Related News