Pebet
Kanhailal’s classic production, Pebet.
Let me offer yet another instance from my theatre research of how the act of documenting a play can assume a political dimension. I draw here on my experience in documenting some of the non-verbal plays of the Manipuri director H Kanhailal — Pebet and Memoirs of Africa. The first play dramatizes the effects of cultural colonization on indigenous cultures. In this animal fable, a Cat, who is disguised as a Vaishnavite monk, abducts the children of Mother Pebet, a mythical bird. In the course of his indoctrination, he compels the children to stone their own mother with the Sanskrit maxim — “Janani Janmabhumishya swargadapi gariyasi” [Mother and motherland are greater than heaven]. The irony of these words is heightened in the predominantly non-verbal text of the entire play, which is structured for the most part around two words — `pebet’ and `te tu’.My challenge in documenting this text was not merely to prepare a written text out of a non-verbal performance text; the more critical task was to participate in the resurrection of the play from the ashes of its memories as it were. Here I found myself playing the role of a catalyst, as I encouraged Kanhailal and his wife Sabitri to reconstruct the play after an absence of almost 20 years, with a very different cast and a somewhat altered political situation. In Manipur, I found that the very site of documentation compelled me to assume an active role as a writer. The professional demands of the job required a negotiation of existing resources and conditions of work. Not only did I and my photographer colleague Amit Bararia have to get involved in finding an appropriate space for the documentation, we also had to record the productions late at night when it was possible to photograph the plays without voltage fluctuations by stealing electric current from the main line…
