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Characters Bhagavata Devadatta Kapila Padmini Actor I Actor II Hayavadana Doll I Doll II Kali Child Girish Karnad is a great dramatic genius who has explored traditional Indian theatre in order to give expression to modern man’s dilemma in his Hayavadana. In fact he has blended the traditional folk drama with the modern western theatre to dramatise the conflict between tradition and desire, perfection and imperfection, mind and body, repression and expression, social reality and individually experienced reality, rational truth and experiential truth and Dionysian view of life and Apollonian view of life in his play Hayavadana. To give a vivid description to the underlying clashes in human life, Karnad makes use of the various elements of Yakshagana of Karnataka, a lively performance having dance, drama and songs as its main constituent components. He has very finely woven into the fabric of his plot the various elements of folk drama like masks, Bhagavata ( Sutradhara or Commentator), device of half-curtain, talking dolls, chorus, mime, comic interlude etc. Hayavadana is one of Karnad’s most remarkable works. The plot of Hayavadana comes from Kathasaritsagara, an ancient compilation of stories in Sanskrit. The central event in the play-the story of Devadatta and Kapila- is based on a tale from the Vetalapanchavimshika, but he has borrowed it through Thomas Mann’s retelling of the story in The Transported Heads. The Sanskrit tale, told by a ghost to an adventurous king, gains a further mock –heroic dimension in Mann’s version. The original story poses a moral problem whereas Mann uses it to ridicule the mechanical notion of life which differentiates between body and soul. He ridicules the philosophy which holds the head superior to the body. The human body, Mann argues, is a device for the completion of human destiny. Even the transposition of heads did not liberate the protagonists from the psychological limits imposed by nature. Karnad’s play poses a different problem, that of human identity in a world of tangled relationships. When the play opens, Devadatta and Kapila are the closer of friends-‘one mind, one heart’, as the Bhagavata describes them. Devadatta is a man of intellect, Kapila a ‘man of the body’. Their relations get complicated when Devadatta marries Padmini. Kapila falls in love with Padmini and she too starts drifting towards him. The friends kill themselves and in a scene, hilariously comic but at the same time full of dramatic connotation, Padmini transposes their heads, giving Devadatta Kapila’s body and Kapila Devadatta’s. As a result Padmini gets the desired ‘Man’. Kali understood each individuals moral fibre and was indifferent than the usual stereotypical portrayal of god and goddesses. The result is a confusion of identities which reveals the ambiguous nature of human personality. Initially Devadatta- actually the head of Devadatta on Kapila’s body- behaves differently from what he was before. But slowly he changes to his former self. So does Kapila, faster than Devadatta. But there is a difference. Devadatta stops reading texts, does not write poetry while Kapila is haunted by the memories in Devadatta’s body. Padmini, after the exchange of heads, had felt that she had the best of both the men, gets slowly disappointed. Of the three only she has the capacity for complete experience. She understands but cannot control the circumstances in which she is placed. Her situation is beautifully summed up by the image of river and the scarecrow in the choric songs. A swordfight that leaves both the friends dead brings the baffling story to end. The death of the three protagonists was not portrayed tragically; the deaths serve only to emphasize the logic behind the absurdity of the situation. The sub plot of ‘Hayavadana’, the horse-man, deepens the significance of the main theme of incompleteness by looking at it from different perspective. The horse man’s search for completeness ends comically, with his becoming a complete horse. The animal body triumphs over what is considered, the best in man, the Uttamaga, the human heads! Probably to make a point Karnad names the play ‘Hayavadana’, human’s search for completeness. Karnad uses the conventions and motifs of folk tales and folk theatre – masks, curtain, dolls, and the story-within-a-story-to create a bizarre world. His plays plot revolves around a world of incomplete individuals, indifferent gods, dolls that speak and children who cannot, a world unsympathetic to the desire and frustration, joys and sorrows of human beings. What is real is only the tremendous, absurd energy of the horse and its rider who move around the stage symbolizing the powerful but monotonous rhythm of life. Karnad’s work has the tone and expression of great drama. He has the outstanding ability and the power to transform any situation into an aesthetic experience. Form of the Play Karnad builds on Indian performance tradition in Hayavadana when throughout the play he employs numerous folk theatre devices such as entry curtains, songs, puppets, masks, story-within-a-story plotlines, and a storyteller character, the Bhagavata. The Bhagavata acts as narrator and sings for and about the characters in both first and third person, often revealing their thoughts, and producing the dances and prose exchanges of the performers. He is in effect a stage manager who appears onstage and directs the action of the play by providing narration. Yakshagana The particular form of Indian folk drama that Karnad draws upon in Hayavadana is “Yakshagana” of karnataka, a lively performance having dance, drama and songs as its main constituents. Karnad has made use of all the theatrical devices used in Yakshgana like masks, Bhagvata (the Sutradhara or Commentator), half-curtain, Chorus and story within story or subplot. Subplot Hayavadana, as the name suggests, is a man with a horse's head (Haya = horse and vadana = face; Dodiya 191). (His mother, a princess, had fallen in love with and been impregnated by a stallion.) Hayavadana is desperately seeking to get rid of this strange head when he stumbles on to the stage where the play about the transposed heads is about to be performed. The Bhagavata of the play then guides him to the same temple of Kali where the characters in the play will get their heads transposed. This incident forms the introduction for the tale of transposed heads that follows. Karnad has also made use of sub–plot or story-withinstory to highlight the conflict in the main plot. The sub-plot of Hayavadana, the man with the horse-head deepens the significance of the main theme of incompleteness. The personality of Hayavadana itself highlights the conflict between the body and the mind. He wants to shed off his horse-head and become a complete human. There is conflict shown between Devadatta’s head and Kapila’s body and vice versa till the end when his search for completeness ends with his becoming a complete horse. Karnad does succeeds in using the techniques of the story-withinstory effectively to bring to the fore the core of the main plot. Relevance of Dolls: Folk Tales Karnad introduces two dolls that Devadatta presents to Padmini as gifts for the expected child. Through their own dialogues, the dolls describe the dynamic changes occurring in the family. They document the change of Devadatta's body from its rough muscular Kapila-nature to a soft, pot-bellied Brahmin body. They reveal that Padmini has given birth to a disfigured son and that she has now begun dreaming about Kapila again. The dolls also become the theatrical device through which Padmini sends Devadatta to Ujjain, so she can use his absence to sneak away with the child to the forest where Kapila resides . Sutradhar: Ancient Theatre Bhagvata plays the multiple roles of a stage manager, a musical director and a narrator. He introduces the characters and comments on the action of the play and also mediates between the audiences and the fictional characters. It is Bhagavata who, in the beginning of the play, brings out the paradox in Lord Ganesha: An elephant’s head on a human body, a broken tusk and a cracked belly- whichever way you look at him he seems the embodiment of imperfection,of incompleteness. How indeed can one fathom the mystery that this very Vakratunda– Mahakavya, with his crooked face and distorted body, is Lord and Master of Success and Perfection. (Karnad 73) Bhagavata plays a crucial role in bringing out the conflict going on in the mind and body of Kapila, Devadatta and Hayavadana. Masks Mask is an excellent device to represent the conflict going within and without a dramatic personage, and Karnad has very well made use of this device to dramatise the conflict between body and mind. At the juncture, of transposition of heads, Karnad has made an artistic use of mask-swapping to signify the switching of Kapila’s and Devadatta’s head and the consequent conflict between Kapila’s head and Devadatta’s body and vice versa. Techniques in Nutshell Yakshagana: Mask of Ganesha, Bhagwata’s role, rich costumes, masks Folk Tale: No formal division of scenes, curtains, folk device of speaking dolls, story-within-story, Bhagwata’s style of narration. Sanskrit Theatre: Underplayed action, emphasized mood Folk Theatre: Religious myths, local legends, mime, half-curtains, painted curtains. Western Theatre: Chorus, Theatre of Absurd style ending, Dionysian & Appolonian Ego concepts. – Dionysian: Harmony of body & mind; ego follows id & superego accepts hence unified body-mind. Appolonian: Body is under mind; mind under morals, i.e. ego is dictated by superego hence mind is independent of body leading to self alienation. Brechtian Theatre: Narrator, linear & loose plot, no climax. Parsi Theatre: Music, mime, comic interlude. Ending of the Play: Theatre of Absurd Padmini decides to commit Sati after Kapila and Devdutta kill each other in sword dual. She entrusts the boy to Bhagavata and leaves instructions for him to be raised both as Kapila's son and as Devadatta's son. Here the Bhagavata ends the story, and Karnad suggests in his stage directions that the audience should feel that the play has ended (2:64). However, the frame story involving Hayavadana begins again. An actor stumbles on the stage screaming that a horse has been singing the National Anthem, while another actor leads in Padmini's son-a mute, serious boy clutching his two dirty dolls. No amount of clowning and questioning by the actors elicits a response from the boy. Hayavadana returns to the stage, now with the body, as well as the head, of a horse. Kali has answered his prayers, it seems, by eliminating his human physical characteristics altogether. Nevertheless, he still has a human voice and is singing patriotic songs. Hayavadana begins laughing when he sees the actors and Bhagavata. His laughter and human voice infect the mute child with laughter, and the child begins to speak and laugh normally. In a cyclic transformation, the child's laughter causes Hayavadana to lose the last shreds of his human nature and he begins to neigh like a horse. Karnard thus uses the logic of myth to create a double, reciprocal exchange of functions that allows for resolution (LeviStrauss 227). Hayavadana and the boy in effect complete each other: the one, as a human child returned to the fold of society and the other, as fully animal........... Themes Incompleteness Quest for Identity Alienation Absurdity of life Tangled web of human relations In this play, Karnad has presented the theme of incompleteness at three levelsDivine, Human and Animal. When the play begins, “ a mask of Ganesha is brought on the stage and kept on the chair. The Bhagavata sings verses in praise of Ganesha, accompanied by his musicians: O Elephant- headed Herambha whose flag is victory, and who shines like a thousand suns. o husband of Riddhi and Siddhi, seated on a mouse and decorated with a snake. o single-tusked destroyer of incompleteness, we pay homage to you and start our play. “ So from the very beginning we see the use of the word ‘incompleteness’. Ganesha is worshipped as the destroyer of incompleteness. Then Bhagavatta says: “ An elephant’s head on a human body, a broken tusk and a cracked belly whichever way you look at him he seems the embodiment of imperfection, of incompleteness…” Here the Bhagavatta regards Ganesha the embodiment of incompleteness because Ganesha has an elephant head and a human body. The theme of incompleteness has been presented at three levels- Divine level includes Ganesha, Human level includes Devadatta, Kapila and Padmini and Animal level includes Hayavadana. . “Hayavadana achieves completeness when finally he becomes a complete horse and loses the human voice through singing the Indian National Anthem. But this is one-sided completeness. But for human being, who is a combination of flesh and spirit, body and mind, completeness requires a harmonical relationship between body and mind but Cartesian division seems to be a perennial irresolvable problem for man. The major reality of this world is selfdivision. Both man and society are self-divided and disturbing antinomies struggle for supremacy. The problem of Hayavadana, alienation, absurdity, incompleteness and search for identity are central of the plays of Karnad. Incompleteness is an inescapable and insurmountable reality. This concept helps to solve such riddles in Hayavadana as why Hayavadana’s mother chooses for her husband a stallion rather than a man and why Goddess Kali makes Hayavadana a complete horse instead of a complete man.”In his ‘Introduction’ to Hayavadana, Kirtinath Kurkoti writes: “The sub-plot of Hayavadana , the horseman, deepens the significance of the main theme of incompleteness by treating it on a different plane. The horse-man’s search for completeness ends comically, with his becoming a complete horse. The animal body triumphs over what is considered the best in man, the Uttamanga, the human head!”