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Abstract
This dissertation is a study of the Terukkuttu, an important traditional genre of theater in South India. It deals with the style prevalent in Tontaimantalam and focuses on the Terukkuttu's esthetic development and ritual importance.
After an introduction to the research area, the central structuring strategy of the form is discussed. This is the curtain entrance through which all new characters in a performance enter the performing area. It is divided into two phases, one characterized by the third-person narrative perspective and one characterized by the first-person. The placement of these entrances throughout an all-night performance makes it clear that despite a predominance of the first-person, the Terukkuttu is framed by the third-person perspective. This appears to link this genre of theater conceptually, and perhaps historically, to genres of sung narrative(Pattu) that employ overwhelmingly the third-person.
The literary corpus of the Terukkuttu focuses almost entirely on the most important Tamil version of the Mahabharata called the Villiputtur Paratam. This Paratam appears to have developed around the cult of Tiraupataiyamman, the worship of Draupadi as a Tamil village goddess(Amman). It is through the involvement of the Terukkuttu in the enactment of these Paratam episodes that this village theater form's ritual significance becomes clear.
This study shows that the Terukkuttu itself embodies a ritual process that is at the center of its most important context of performance, a festival called the Paratam that is essentially a ritual enactment of the Mahabharata at a village shrine to Tiraupatiayamman. This process is analyzed according to a conceptual framework pioneered by Victor Turner in which rites of passage can be broken up into three distinct periods: separation, liminality (communitas), and re-aggregation. It is the passage through liminality that is most important to society. Its redefinition of a society is what allows the society to continue.
The Terukkuttu in embodying this process in the Paratam festival transforms narrative into enactment creating sacred time and space in which Tamil villagers renew and relive their mythology, and simultaneously experience the communitas that allows their complex, tension-ridden society to continue. Theater in this context affirms our oneness but also our individuality.
