How Is Ramayana Part of the Great Storytelling Tradition?

Connecting Communication Arts and Social Studies

Focus Question #3: What is the Role of a Performance?

Major Ideas

• Performance traditions accommodate to styles and customs of the audience.
• Most performances today are a combination of written dialogue and improvisation

Student Performance Objectives

• Improvise a performance based on a written text
• Articulate the factors involved in performance, such as setting, stage directions, dialogue, costumes, makeup and hairstyles, and the role of the director
• Analyze their experience in performing an episode of the Ramayana

Teacher Background

Many of those writing about folklore and oral traditions in today's world have focused on the idea of performance as being key to recognizing a piece of folklore. At another level, we could say that all speech is performed, some less so and some more so. The woman who says, "But have you heard the one about..." is keying, or marking, the beginning of a performance, in this case most probably of a joke. The man who says, "but when I was six I..." is marking for his children a piece of family folklore, often instructional or moral. The woman who arrives home at 5pm and says, "boy, did I have an awful day..." is marking yet another performance, but one less artistic and less structured than the two previous examples. Die more rules about how to perform and the more critically a speech event is evaluated mark more or less performance. You could ask your students to think about performance by asking them about the rules for different kinds of speech events. Is a sermon more or less performed than a family story?

As with performances around the world, The Ramayana is performed in many different ways. Sometimes the text is chanted in temples. Sometimes the text is read aloud and actors mine the actions. Sometimes they dance the words. In others, the actors speak, often improvising their lines. The video accompanying this guide has performances that tend toward the improvised style, although the text is read during portions of the village play. The Miracle Plays of medieval Christian guilds had the same kind of interplay between text and improvisation, and between seriousness and playfulness. Improvisation allows for more immediate reactions to the audience and lets the actor "play off of' the audience. Sticking to a set script, especially one in a slightly archaic language (as is the case with both the Ramayana and the King James Version of the Bible), demands a different kind of relationship to audience.

Springboard

Today we are going to do a "Saturday Night Live" version of the Indian epic The Ramayana. Student groups will perform their episodes from The Ramayana.

Procedure

In the front of the room is a microphone and/or a tape recorder. Each group will come up to present their episode as a radio play. The teacher will act as an announcer giving the title of the episode and names of the actors. Reminder: this is an improvisation, no scripts or notes are allowed.

Summary/Application

1. Class will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of improvisation. Possible contributions include:

fun
more accurate colloquial speech
strengthens memory
creates a sense of cultural community more immediate and real
can be used as a vehicle for comedy
heighten one's awareness of language
promotes audience identification with characters
encourages audience reaction and interpersonal quality
acting style is very powerful and varied
requires strong character identification on the part of the actor
requires impromptu speaking as there is no real chance to rehearse or re-do
actor's lines may create surprises and be difficult to answer or react to

2. Audiotape could be played for another class and their reactions recorded.
3. Students could be given a protocol or checklist for judging other groups and record their reactions to the performances.
4. Comparable segments of the TV Ramayana can be shown and compared to the class performance.
5. Students can re-tell The Ramayana to a neighbor, child or relative and record on tape or in writing the explanations for necessary changes in plot or character, and side comments used to entertain the child. They should also record the child's reaction and questions. A follow question could be a comparison of the group performance with the oral retelling.

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