Kathakali
Kathakali or ‘story play’ took shape in Kerala in southern India in the seventeenth century under the patronage of the prince of Karnataka, who wrote plays for performance drawn from the epic Ramayana in Malayalam, the language of the region. Stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata provide the content of most Kathakali plays, which have come down to us in a steady stream over three centuries.
Kathakali categorizes its characters according to their nature and employs make-up and costume to build them up as symbolic personalities. The faces of actors are painted according to the type of character they represent – green for heroes, kings, and divinities, red and black for the evil and fierce, etc. The main feature of the costume is a large, billowing skirt for male characters and various elaborate headdresses
The actor’s performance in a Kathakali plays is completely speechless: the ‘libretto’ is sung by two singers on the stage who keep time on gong and cymbals, while a pair of drummers also on the stage play the Chenda. The story is enacted using a vocabulary of facial expressions and hand-gestures.
A traditional performance of Kathakali starts in the evening after preliminaries that include an invocatory drumming on the Maddalam, and concludes only at daybreak. Though earlier only one play was enacted through the might, today select scenes from two or three plays are presented.