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SECOND HONEYMOONS, JURASSIC BABIES: IDENTITY AND PLAY IN CHENNAI’S
POST-INDEPENDENCE SABHA THEATER
Abstract
Second Honeymoon (1977) and Jurassic Baby (2000) are the titles of two very popular
Tamil-language plays from what I call the Sabha Theater genre that is based Chennai, the capital
of the South Indian state of Tamilnadu. This talk will present an overview of my book project
concerning this theatrical genre that relies on the patronage of voluntary organizations known as
sabhas and also reflects a shared political ideology, structure, and aesthetic. Sabhas are
dominated by middle-class members of the high-caste Brahmin community, and this book
demonstrates the social and ideological significance of regional language popular theaters in
developing and projecting community identity. I will present a brief history of the development
and trajectory of a theatrical tradition that despite its cultural importance has been largely
ignored by scholars. Additionally, I will sketch generic boundaries for this type of theater and
briefly explore the cultural facets of the humor, using Honeymoon Couple as an example of a
typical play from the genre.
Bio
Kristen Rudisill is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Popular Culture. Her PhD
is in Asian Studies from the University of Texas, Austin, and her research focuses on Indian
theater and dance. She has published several articles in journals such as Text and Presentation,
Asian Theatre Journal, South Asian Popular Culture, and Studies in Musical Theatre.
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SECOND HONEYMOONS, JURASSIC BABIES: IDENTITY AND PLAY IN CHENNAI’S
POST-INDEPENDENCE SABHA THEATER
Today I’m presenting on my book manuscript, Second Honeymoons, Jurassic Babies,
which is based on my dissertation. I’ll give you an overview of the book as a whole, then present
the bulk of one of the chapters. The book concerns a theatrical genre I refer to as Sabha Theater
due to its reliance on the patronage of voluntary cultural organizations known as sabhas in
Chennai, the capital of the South Indian state of Tamilnadu. It focuses on the intersections of
caste, class, and aesthetics on the Tamil-language commercial theater scene in Chennai, and
involves over fifteen months of extensive ethnographic research with writers, actors, and
audience members of the Sabha Theater. In addition to interviews, I circulated a questionnaire
with audience members and observed rehearsals, performances, and television and film
shootings. I also use historical research and published criticism, combining my ethnography with
performance (Conquergood, Kirby, Goffman) and area studies (Appadurai, Bhabha) approaches
to construct a thorough vision of the development and trajectory of a specific theatrical tradition
that despite its cultural importance has been largely ignored by scholars and simultaneously
patronized and dismissed by its viewers. This book is the result of eleven years and five visits to
India (2001, 2003-4, 2008, 2010, 2012) spent trying to give a name and sketch generic
boundaries for this type of theater, and to seriously consider what the plays mean for those who
produce and consume them.
I consider such things as how the contemporary political climate and development of
mass media have affected live theater in terms of aesthetics, personnel, scripts, production, and
patronage. I also dispel some myths about the state of Tamil theater in Chennai. While it is
certainly not at its peak now, it is also not “dead” as so many intellectuals and journalists in the
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city would like to claim. The relevance of these plays to an educated, middle-class audience both
in India and the diaspora is ample proof of their importance, and while the dedication of many
artists and enthusiasts may not lead to a revival, it certainly indicates a continuation of live Tamil
language theater in Chennai.
This style of theater is the product of a Tamil Brahmin community concerned with
emphasizing its local ethnic identity using Tamil language and inside jokes while simultaneously
marking itself as cosmopolitan through both stylistic and content choices. As a genre of popular
culture that developed in the Brahmin community during the early 1950s, a period of intense
anti-Brahmin politics throughout this region of India, Sabha Theater functions as a window into
the identity formation of a community so often defined solely by religion and the classical
performing arts. The book will thus significantly advance and broaden scholarly understandings
of Brahmin taste. This shift will encourage emphasis on actual popular practice and allow for the
development of a more fluid and modern understanding of Brahmin culture, which is heavily
influential both in India and abroad. Chennai is one of the centers for software development in
India, and these high-tech jobs are dominated by Brahmins. As personnel exchanges with the US
and other countries accelerate, empirically-based research such as this into the values, aesthetics,
aspirations, and allegiances of this segment of the Indian population becomes ever more
essential.
This is the first book-length, comprehensive study of a regional language commercial
theater genre in India. Recent studies of post-independence Indian modern and folk theater
(Dharwadker 2005, Seizer 2005, Dalmia 2006, Dimitrova 2008) have helped to illuminate issues
of national and regional identity formation. Second Honeymoons, Jurassic Babies builds upon
these insights by exploring them in the context of a commercial theater tradition that portrays an
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identity that is specifically marked by regional, caste, and class distinctions. The study examines
the position of Sabha Theater within the context of other media and performance genres in the
city of Chennai relevant to the lives of educated urbanites. This approach puts the theater into
conversation with the television and film industries, with which the sabha theater shares writers,
actors, and narratives, as well as with classical music and dance, with which it shares patrons and
stages. Such an approach also opens a space for a productive discussion of taste creation and
aesthetics, particularly with regards to the influential Tamil Brahmin community in Chennai. In
comparing Sabha Theater and its audience to other entertainments in the city, the book
historicizes and seriously studies commercial theater genres in Chennai for the first time by
analyzing literary and performance texts along with performer, audience, and press responses.
The result is a complex view of a theater genre neglected by scholars that simultaneously
receives elite patronage and yet is dismissed by its viewers.
By looking at humor and the spontaneous reactions of audiences to the comic scenarios
and jokes contained in the plays, Second Honeymoons, Jurassic Babies offers insights into the
actual, as opposed to idealized, self-conceptions of the Tamil Brahmin community. The book
argues that the identities projected through the representation of ordinary families on stage for
insider audiences conflict in telling ways with accepted stereotypes of frozen, idealized models
of behavior and culture. These conflicts provide a potential index by which to measure and
define the transformation of the city’s cultural atmosphere in the light of media, economic, and
political changes. Furthermore, the study reveals that discourses surrounding the plays and their
stylized brand of humor, especially debates about frivolity and vulgarity, point to fundamental
contradictions in identities projected within and outside of the community. The geopolitical
importance of the emerging Indian middle class and its pivotal role in the still-developing global
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culture of the 21st century underscore the need for research such as this into the values,
aesthetics, aspirations, and allegiances of this growing segment of the Indian population.
Sabha Theater is a community theater, with audiences bound not only by their language,
religion, and class, but also by their high caste status as Brahmins. Sabhas have been the main
sponsors of classical music and dance performances along with some dramas and the occasional
film, debate, or religious discourse since the 1928 founding of the Music Academy of Madras.
They organize entertainment for their fee-paying members, and each sabha has its own identity
and focus based on the tastes of the founders and response of members to each year’s schedule.
Second Honeymoons, Jurassic Babies demonstrates the social and ideological significance of
regional language popular theaters in developing and projecting community identity. I argue that
the influence of the sabhas extends beyond their narrow target audience, however, as these
cultural organizations are key players along with the press and the academy in creating a notion
of “good” taste in Chennai. All three of those fields are dominated by the high-caste Tamil
Brahmin community, which thus both constructs and embodies the idea of good taste in the city.
Brahmins, as the most powerful taste-makers (in Pierre Bourdieu’s sense) in Chennai, are
influential in shaping middle-class culture in the city. In contrast to other scholars (Singer 1972,
Hancock 1999), I argue that Brahmin identity is best visible not in tradition and ritual, because
performances of the classical arts and the response of connoisseur audiences to them reveal an
ideal that is frozen in time. I look instead to something much more fluid and spontaneous:
humor. Jokes are cued, but it is common for them to fall flat or lose relevance over time. So
when audiences actually laugh and find intended jokes funny, these performances can offer some
insights into non-idealized self-conceptions of the community of observers who are responsible
for the creation of taste in Chennai.
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Unlike classical music and dance, which are valued because of their adherence to
“tradition,” Sabha Theater is a more recent development that has not remained static, instead
reflecting shifts in the political and social identity of the elite Tamil Brahmin community in
Chennai. In the early post-colonial period, when discussions of Indian national identity
dominated public culture, Tamil Brahmins chose to emphasize their regional and caste identity
with Tamil-language plays, and thus began the Sabha Theater genre. It was one of the new
dramatic traditions that started in the post-Independence period that favored dialogue over other
aspects of production, borrowing more from the British theater than from the Parsi, which isn’t
surprising given that Sabha Theater actors come from elite backgrounds and have western
educations, steady incomes, and secure social statuses. Elite amateur drama was not a new
phenomenon in the post-World War II period; elites had been translating and adapting western
dramas for elite audiences as early as the 1860s in Chennai, as Theodore Baskaran has discussed
in detail. But it was new for sabhas, functioning as a patronage system, to support this type of
drama in this period.
I conclude that such things as the contemporary political climate and development of
mass media have drastically affected live Sabha Theater performances in terms of aesthetics,
personnel, scripts, production, and patronage. The plays I consider part of this genre share a
political ideology and a patronage system as well as a structure and aesthetic. I look at historical,
political, and performance contexts, repertoire, humor, reception, performer, aesthetics, and
performance style in order to historically, politically, socially, and artistically situate the genre.
The plays, several of which I analyze in depth, are part of a multi-lingual world of folk and
experimental theater and Tamil-language television and film, and I clarify how they fit into that
broad media landscape.
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The fact that many people from the Brahmin community choose to become members of
sabhas or attend sabha dramas is not to say that the plays themselves are ideal representations of
Tamil Brahmin culture or of good taste. In fact, the discourse about the plays has created two
factions within the Tamil Brahmin community, the most vocal of which dismisses them as “just
comedy.” I engage with both voices in the course of my examination of these literary and
performance texts in order to meaningfully approach questions about the circumstances in which
the genre emerged, various trends, the drastic decline in audiences in the late 1980s, and how
troupes and audiences are responding today. My research engages a number of methodological
and theoretical issues including the relation between art production and audience; the interaction
of literary texts, live performances, and mass media texts; and the effects of class, caste, and
ethnic/religious identity on the content and aesthetics of theater.
Now I’ll present part of one of the chapters. In this chapter, I analyze the 19772 play
Honeymoon Couple, written by playwright and actor Crazy Mohan (b. 1949) for long-time
theatre artist Kathadi Ramamurthy (b. 1938) and his troupe Stage Creations (founded 1964), as a
typical play that illustrates the basic content as well as structural and aesthetic characteristics of
the genre. I have selected this play as an exemplar for several reasons. First, it is a classic of
Tamil comedy theatre, thanks to both Crazy Mohan’s writing and Kathadi Ramamurthy’s acting.
Second, Stage Creations is average, neither at the top nor the bottom of the current theatre
troupes in terms of either finances or audience size. Third, it exhibits the major traits that in my
analysis constitute sabha theatre as a genre: patronage by sabhas, with their middle-class,
usually Brahmin, audience base; a central theme concerning marriage alliances and/or married
life; scripted witty dialogue with a thin plot and one-liner jokes, often including language jokes
that code-switch between Tamil and English; a socially conservative message; and an “amateur
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aesthetic” that involves minimal sets, costumes, lighting, and two-hour evening or weekend
matinee performances.
Honeymoon Couple has been one of the best-loved of what are referred to as the “pure
comedies” that became popular during the peak of sabha theatre from about 1965 to 1985, and
are still the most numerous and best attended plays in the city. Because fixed audiences made up
of the sabhas’ members are linked to particular venues, plays must shift locations for every
performance and troupes provide their own sets, props, and sound and light equipment, a system
that has led to a minimization of all of these accoutrements. Sabha members are generally
middle-class Tamil Brahmins, a community that is notorious for its social conservatism as well
as for its high levels of education and appreciation of traditional culture (see Fuller 1996, Chuyen
2004, Hancock 1999, Singer 1972). This means that while individual scenes can toy with
challenging social norms, in the end the message of the play affirms traditional values, especially
with regards to marriage alliances, but concerning everything from generational norms to gender
roles and class, caste, and regional divisions. These are performances designed to amuse and
entertain, not to teach, and they should resolve noncontroversially.
The genre developed as it did in the early 1950s in response to factors both politicohistoric and artistic. On the political front, India gained its independence from British colonial
rule in 1947. The decades leading up to this moment were dominated by a strong nationalist
movement that was led by English-speaking elites throughout the country, and in Tamilnadu, the
leaders of the independence movement were almost entirely Brahmin members of the National
Congress Party. Fearing that the minority Brahmin community would simply replace British rule
with its own, non-Brahmins throughout Tamilnadu started a regional, Dravidianist separatist
movement (see Geetha and Rajadurai 1998; Irschick 1986). Some of the strongest non-Brahmin
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leaders of the 1940s, including C. N. Annadurai and M. Karunanidhi, were also playwrights and
screenplay writers. They produced a number of anti-Brahmin themed plays and films that were
widely viewed throughout the state (see Hardgrave 1965; Rajendran 1989). I argue elsewhere
that these attacks led Brahmins to reaffirm their values by developing positive images through
live theatre targeted at their own insular community. There was no movement to justify the worth
and contributions of the Tamil Brahmin community to the majority population; sabha theatre
was developed instead. The plays work to humanize a community that has been demonized by
political opponents and allow its members to maintain their self-respect and confidence.
Additionally, it allows members of this community to sit side by side in the theatre and share the
experience of the play, which develops the bond between them (see Rudisill 2007).
On the artistic front there were a number of forms that influenced the development of
sabha theatre including these anti-Brahmin Dravidian plays as well as the popular Parsi theatre
and its local imitators, commercial film, folk theatre, and English drawing room comedies. Most
popular theatre in Tamilnadu leading up to sabha theatre belonged to either the folk or Parsi
traditions. Folk theatre and Dravidian theatre were both associated with low classes of
performers, from whom sabha-goers wished to distance themselves. Folk theatre shared with
Parsi theatre a love for spectacle, costume, and music that had mostly moved into the film
industry and off of the urban, proscenium stages by the 1940s. As film became more mainstream,
it made less sense to pay for the spectacular Parsi-style extravaganzas by expensive professional
troupes when low-budget amateur performances were available. Sabha theatre developed in part
as a reaction to these forms, but it also borrowed from them. Parsi theatre, while best known for
local historical and mythological plays, also reflected influence from colonial British theatre
practices, adapting both English plays and novels for the Indian stage. It was also common for
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farces satirizing contemporary society to be performed on the stage after the main drama (see
Gupt 2005). The British influence is also visible in Tamil theatre in particular, through the work
of Pammal Sambanda Mudaliar (1873-1964), who is widely regarded as the founder of elite
amateur theatre in Tamilnadu. Sabha theatre is part of his theatrical lineage. In his
autobiography, Mudaliar, a lawyer and judge, credits the English-language plays staged by
Europeans with giving him his first respect for the theatre and writes disparagingly of the Tamil
plays performed near his boyhood home: “When I compared the costumes and make-up of the
English actors with those of performers in Tamil plays, I could have no liking for either the
Tamil plays or these performers” (Mudaliyar 1996: 26). Many of these English plays were in the
style of the comedy of manners, and in addition to the less extreme costumes and make-up, likely
endowed the developing genre with its emphasis on both witty dialogue and elite characters.
The most common plot line in sabha plays is organized around the Tamil proverb yiram
poy colliyvatu oru kalyattai cey. “Make a marriage, even if you tell a thousand lies,”3 and the
most common themes are marriage alliances and/or married life, which continue to resonate with
the middle-class urban audiences. Honeymoon Couple has a plot with a slight twist, that it is
okay to tell a thousand lies if they result not in a marriage, but in a honeymoon. The marriage, in
this case, occurred twenty years ago, but the honeymoon did not follow. This allows for humor
based on the inversion of roles and a clarification of what is appropriate for people of different
ages in Tamil culture with regard to love, sex, and romance. It is the aged, forty-five-year-old
man, wearing dentures, who is longing for a honeymoon with his mortified and reluctant thirtyeight-year-old wife, while their children stay chastely at home to attend college.
Sabha plays, in general, are scripted, not improvised. Troupes are organized around a
central figure who may be either the playwright (Crazy Mohan’s Crazy Creations, Cho
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Ramasamy’s Viveka Fine Arts, Marina’s (T.S. Sridhar’s) Rasika Ranga, K. S. Nagarajan’s Kala
Nilaiyam) or the lead actor (S. Ve. Shekher’s Natakapriya, Kathadi Ramamurthy’s Stage
Creations, Y. Gee. Mahendran’s United Amateur Artists, Purnam Viswanathan’s Purnam New
Theatre). New troupes generally start when an actor or writer who has been part of another
troupe becomes famous enough to earn a chance from the sabhas to draw audiences on his own,
the way Kathadi branched off in 1964 after ten years with Cho Ramasamy’s Viveka Fine Arts.
They may take with them some actors from the old troupe and also find friends and family
members to join them in their new endeavor. Occasionally, as in the case of Rail Priya or
Dummies Drama, a troupe of all unknowns will appear.
Playwright-centered troupes tend to adhere much more closely to the written script than
actor-centered troupes. Actor-centered troupes own the rights to plays by several different
writers. Kathadi, for example, has a collection of unpublished plays handwritten in long
notebooks, covered with marginal notes and stamped with the seal of police approval. The
concerns of producers and audiences, who mostly represent the very specific community of
middle-class urban Tamil Brahmins, also actively affect the format and content of sabha plays.
Kathadi Ramamurthy’s plays, like most sabha plays, are meant to be heard and/or seen,
not read. Very few plays are published, partly because they represent a troupe’s cultural
property, but mostly because the writers and actors believe that their work is only effective in
performance. Attending a performance is social; it is an enjoyable escape, but why would anyone
read a string of jokes on a page? I was asked. A much more common way to fix a play has been
to record a performance text on film. Not only has Honeymoon Couple been popular with
audiences for thirty years as a live performance, but also on television as one of Doordarshan’s
“Sunday Dramas” in the early 1980s, and as a DVD since its release in 2007.
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The dialogue is the most important component of the sabha comedy plays, which means
that it is essential for the audience to be able to hear, and a poor sound system can ruin a play
since most actors are amateurs who are not trained in voice projection. Kathadi uses three long,
low microphones across the front of the stage, which are less intrusive to the performance, but
also less effective, than a set-up like S. Ve. Shekher’s where there are four standing microphones
into which actors speak directly. Critic M. Tangarasu (2000: 93) has lamented that Tamil theatre
is at the sad state where it is enough for two or three people to stand on stage and say lines that
the audience can laugh at.
Kathadi’s timing is perfect and his interaction with Sri Lalitha, the actress who usually
plays opposite him, has been polished over their many performances together. He tends to stick
to his scripts pretty closely, though he knows where he can cut if necessary, and when jokes have
lost their relevance. Kathadi is widely respected, and considered to be one of the best comic
actors the Tamil language has ever seen. In a 2003 article for The Hindu titled “Hooked on
Humour,” drama critic Kausalya Santhanam writes that “[f]or quite a few years now, the
monopoly of success on the Tamil stage has been that of the experts with the appealing pun,” and
most of the experts she names (S. Ve. Shekher, Crazy Mohan, Cho Ramasamy, Kathadi
Ramamurthy, Mouli, Nagesh, Thangavelu, Bosskey, the United Amateur Artists) are from the
sabha theatre. Tamils are proud of their language play, and those who master it are much
appreciated. Santhanam, a Tamil herself, says without reservation that “Tamil Nadu has some of
the best comedians/ennes in the country. For, this is a city where even the cab driver and the
rickshaw man are masters of the ready quip and the instant retort. The Tamil people have a talent
for the right word.” The paradox is that although most Tamils would agree with this positive
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representation of themselves as funny, they will also use the derogatory slur “just comedy” when
discussing the plays.
Language jokes, which Gabriella Eichinger Ferro-Luzzi (1992) has shown to be the most
popular type of Tamil joke, are an important window into the self-identity of the Tamil Brahmin
community as revealed in sabha theatre. While Dravidian politicians were agitating against
Hindi and Sanskrit, these Brahmins were writing and enjoying plays in Tamil, complete with
Brahmin dialect speech and jokes that turn on knowledge of English. The plays may not make
the audiences more “cultured,” but many of the jokes assume a certain level of education and
cultural competence, including knowledge of English, current events, and classical performance
arts as well as mass media. Tamil-language theatre, like the Marathi-language theatre discussed
by Mahadev Apte (1992), demonstrates ethnocentrism and pride in language and culture.
Middle-class urbanites have a conflicted relationship with the English language, and
clearly the title of Honeymoon Couple is in English, a language that functions as a marker of
education, class, and wealth in India. The English title is essential to the humor in Honeymoon
Couple, where “honeymoon” is not just a foreign word but also a foreign cultural concept. This
blending of languages and cultures provides for a lot of humor. Sabha comedies are particularly
fond of “code-mixing” jokes that blend two languages and require competency in both. The
Tamil reiterates that they are Tamils above all else, and proud of it; the English shows that
viewers are both cosmopolitan and multi-lingual. One code-mixing joke that audiences find
particularly funny in Honeymoon Couple and that is also directly related to the foreign concept
of a honeymoon is as follows. Ramani is trying to convince Rukmani to go on a honeymoon with
him. He is getting adamant and annoying, and she snaps and retorts, “Fine. Go on a honeymoon
if you want to, but I’m not coming.” To which he responds, “Don’t you know anything? If I go
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alone that’s not a ‘honey’ moon but a ‘tai’ moon.” Tai means “alone” in Tamil and also
happens to rhyme with “honey,” making the joke funny on several levels. First is the cultural
concept of a honeymoon, which has nothing to do with the literal meaning of the word. It implies
a trip taken by a newly married couple and is, by definition, not something that one does alone.
Second, the rhyme is clever and creates slippage between the two concepts of “honey” and “tai”
which are set up as opposites although they are not. It also allows the two languages to blend
together in a way that sounds natural to the ear and requires the listener to pay attention in order
to catch the joke.
The pure comedy plays that sabhas tend to favor as the most commercially successful
consist of extremely thin plots that string together a series of jokes. This type of humor is
generally discussed in a dismissive manner in Tamil culture, but cleverness and wit are clearly
appreciated by audiences, who continue to laugh. It is important to note that the plays do actually
have plots, despite many accusations to the contrary. In contrast to these plays, there are comedy
shows in Chennai that really are nothing but jokes. For example, the Humour Club International
frequently sponsors programs that consist of “jokes, humour music, miming, magic, skits and
ventriloquism” (Vijayalakshmi 2003) and performers like M. T. Vedantham conduct hour-long
humor shows that consist of “50-60 non-stop jokes” (Bhuvaneshwari 2003).
Honeymoon Couple is a good example of the hypothesis that although techniques, genres,
and themes may be cross-cultural, humor is rooted in particular cultural contexts. In his work on
humor in Marathi theatre from 1970-1990, Mahadev Apte argues that “[w]ithout the shared
cultural knowledge and conventions one cannot appreciate humor even by oneself, nor can one
communicate it to others” (1992: 38). There are, of course, different degrees of appreciation, and
the relationship between culture and humor can work in both directions. It is possible to
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understand and appreciate humor after gaining cultural competency, but it is also possible to
work from the humor to a deeper understanding of culture. This can work because “humor
functions as a barometer, albeit a rough one, of what makes a society tick and what its major
sociocultural attributes are” (Apte 1992: 14).
Traditional notions of marriage and family are still central to modern imaginings of
Tamil culture (see Trawick 1990, Uberoi 2001), and this has been fodder for the dramas. Farley
Richmond, writing in 1990, commented that “[i]n Madras one may find plays that are concerned
primarily with family and social issues” (402), and this is still true today. Ideas about what it
means to be “modern” or “middle class” are, as Sanjay Joshi (2001) helpfully argues, fractured
and often contradictory due to the way the differing traditions and ideas about appropriate social
relations found in different parts of India are combined with ideas of the modern.
I have translated a great deal of Honeymoon Couple from Kathadi’s handwritten and
much-annotated notebook, and it is clear that like many of his plays, it has undergone changes,
but Ramani in Honeymoon Couple is one of his most reprised and best-beloved characters.
Ramani hates to work and spends all of his time trying to get out of it by making up lies and
excuses to tell his wife, his boss, his colleagues, his creditors, and anyone else who will listen
Instead of working, he wants to go on a honeymoon. The idea is so crazy that he tells his wife
Rukmani that it came to him in a dream. Although Ramani wants to go on a honeymoon, and
argues that this is a perfectly natural desire for a middle-aged man, he still feels the deep-seated
cultural pressure against it. Rukmani is mortified by the whole idea, and he is not immune. Even
though there is plenty of evidence of his own embarrassment on the subject, Ramani scolds his
wife, saying that it’s not as if she’s eloping, since she’s going on honeymoon with her own
husband, and “What’s there to be ashamed about in that? (atula ea avamam?)” (Mohan
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1977: 91). The manager of the Ooty (a hill station west of Chennai and a popular honeymoon
spot) bungalow, makes it clear that the idea of an older man on a honeymoon is not just
laughable, but actually offensive to the general public, who would consider him to be a rascal
without modesty (vekkala keavan), a rascal without shame (mala keavan), and loose in
the head (lsu) (Mohan 1977: 128). At the very end of the play, Ramani and Rukmani decide to
come clean. The play ends when the raja (who as I will discuss below is mistakenly linked with
the hero) grabs his chest and screams as if the couple have given him a heart attack with their
confession of honeymooning, but in a replay of an earlier scene involving Ramani, he has only
been bitten by an ant.
It is made clear in Honeymoon Couple that marriages, honeymoons, and babies are
appropriate only to the young in the specific world of Tamil culture. Ramani protests, scolding
his colleagues: “Che! You are all so conservative. In America they have new marriages at age
fifty and go on honeymoons. You are still so old fashioned.” This argument, that Americans are
progressive and Indians backward, is not particularly effective in conservative Tamil culture,
which often criticizes the practices of a corrupt America where young women flirt with boys and
dress immodestly and people marry and go on honeymoons late in life only to get “die-vorced.”
There are many jokes that recur in the sabha plays over and over, thus offering a glimpse
into Tamil Brahmin cultural values. One recurring theme has to do with confusion about
people’s names. Central to Honeymoon Couple is a joke about how confusing it can be when
people have the same name. Ramani’s best friend at the office is named Rahottaman and it just
so happens that there is a very rich Maharaja who also lives in their neighborhood whose name is
often shortened to Rahottaman. The Maharaja Rahottaman owns a bungalow in Ooty and has a
P. A. (personal assistant) named Ramani. The theme of confusion overlaps in this instance with a
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joke about doctors. When Ramani sends his friend Rahottaman to pick up his heart x-rays from
the lab, he is given Maharaja Rahottaman’s x-rays to take to the doctor. The Maharaja has
serious heart problems and after seeing the x-ray the doctor fears for Ramani’s life, telling his
family to do anything he wants, or his heart may give out. (This is why Rukmani finally agrees to
go to Ooty on a “honeymoon.”) The Maharaja’s P. A., on the other hand, is given Ramani’s xrays at the lab and the confused doctor thinks there’s been some kind of miracle. Doctor jokes
are always popular, and the doctor’s office is the second most frequently used set, right after the
living room. The joke is sometimes about incompetent doctors, who have patients thanks to nonmerit-based reasons like family connections, and sometimes exploits anxieties about doctors’
motivations, as they make a living only when people are sick.
A second anxiety of this community involves money. The viewers of sabha theatre
almost without exception would say they were “middle class,” a category that Sanjay Joshi
(2001) argues is “primarily a project of self-fashioning” (2). This self-designation, as
convincingly demonstrated by many scholars (see Mankekar 1999, Dickey 2000, GangulyScrase and Scrase 2009, Fernandes 2006, and Brosius 2010), is largely dependent upon
appearances and possessions as well as morals. In order to keep up appearances, therefore, many
“middle class” Tamils will cut corners in private, but if they are caught they will be exposed as
“misers” in a community where generosity has always been a commendable trait (see Ramanujan
1985: 291-292). Tamil Brahmins make fun of misers, but respect those who opulently display
wealth.4 Ramani cannot get this right and goes into a great deal of debt over expensive imported
toiletries which are hidden away even from his wife, making him an object of ridicule, not
respect.
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The jokes keep the tempo fast-paced as does the structure of the plays, which are
typically divided into twenty to forty short scenes (Honeymoon Couple has seventeen). The
structure and aesthetic of the performances are based on the premise that both performers and
audiences are working people who participate in theatre for fun, not money. Instead of lasting all
night like most folk dramas, sabha performances (of dance, drama, or music) are limited to
approximately two hours. When the actors work all day in an office, it is difficult for them to
spend a lot of time rehearsing, applying makeup, or dressing in elaborate costumes, as is required
for most genres of professional and folk theatre in India.
As most sabha plays concern the lives of everyday families, they allow for quotidian
language and costumes. M. Tangarasu (2000: 93) remarked derogatorily that one of the
conveniences of sabha theatre is that people can rush straight from the office and onto the stage
in the evening. This is part of what distinguishes this type of theatre and these actors from
“professionals” who need to earn their living on stage. The “costumes” say very clearly that
acting is a hobby, not a profession. For the most part, the characters of sabha plays are ordinary
folk and they dress in ordinary clothes, though perhaps more flamboyant than usual. Particular
characters, however, like the raja in Honeymoon Couple, have special costumes that are
excessively exaggerated for comic effect. The same balance of everyday exaggeration is there in
the acting, which Farley Richmond describes as “realistic” with a “melodramatic tendency”
(1990: 415).
The sets and lighting are equally uniform and spare. Most troupes rent their sets from two
designers (Padma Stages and Kumar Stage), so the same generic living room will be seen at
different plays by different troupes. It usually consists of a painted backdrop with a door to the
back and possibly a window with the addition of two plastic chairs in the center of the stage.
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Some troupes (Stage Creations and Natakapriya are good examples) will special-order painted
curtains to use as backdrops which will represent a garden, bus stop, or other location. This
amateur theatre uses only focus lights. Theatre veteran A. R. Srinivasan told me (2004) that they
only light the stage from the front because they do not have enough lights to do more. He also
mentioned that United Amateur Artists once attempted different lighting, but it created problems
with their sets as the measurements of the individual theatres were so different.
Conclusion
My analysis of the form and content of sabha plays through the lens of Honeymoon
Couple offers insights into the particular culture of the community with which it is most
popular—both as creators and consumers—Chennai elites, especially middle-class Tamil
Brahmins. The plays employ what I call an “amateur aesthetic” that developed in the early 1950s
as a response to several factors, including the popular Parsi theatre, commercial film, folk
theatre, nineteenth and early twentieth century British theatre, and regional caste-based politics
and plays. This aesthetic is based on the premise that both performers and audiences are working
people who participate in the occasional drama for fun. Most sabha plays concern the lives of
everyday Tamil Brahmin families, with the logic of family situations pushed to the extreme. My
reading of Kathadi Ramamurthy’s Honeymoon Couple illustrates the flamboyant quotidian
nature of the pure comedy plays that focus on fast-paced dialogue filled with jokes, puns, and
allusions and works from that humor to a deeper understanding of middle-class Tamil Brahmin
culture. Some of the community characteristics revealed by my analysis include a concern with
caste and class status, gender and generational roles, status symbols and anxiety about money,
and the value of good names and reputations, doctor/patient relationships, and generosity.
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