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KATHAKALI DANCE-DRAMA: WHERE GODS AND DEMONS COME TO PLAY. By Phillip Zarrilli. New York: Routledge, 2000; pp. 240. $29.95 paper.
In constructing a comprehensive study of this dance-drama form from Kerala, South India, based more or less on mythological and epical stories, Phillip Zarrilli locates his Kathakali Dance-Drama at the intersection of ethnographic and performance research, oral history, textual analysis, performance documentation, and post-structural analysis. His commitment is to elucidating the unique process whereby a literary text enters the realm of Kathakali performance, where the performing bodies create a narrative parallel with the original literary document. This shapes the structure of his book, which is accompanied by five videocassettes. (These were not available to me and would certainly enhance a reader's experience of Zarrrilli's study.)
In the way he writes about it, we immediately understand that Kathakali is not a cultural "object-to-be-known" for Zarrilli. Introducing this performance form, he quotes his colleague, Prabodhachandran Nayar, who says that Kathakali, like an "ocean of possibilities" (1), can be many things to many people depending on their orientation and focus. Throughout the text, and especially as we journey through the rich history of this form and contemporary developments in it, we sense-and appreciate-Zarrilli's negotiations between different "takes" on the genre, its different audiences, and structural changes. This, of course, does not mean that a culturally specific understanding of this form is absent. Zarrilli also talks about some of the typical ways in which Kathakali is performed and witnessed by audiences in Kerala, for whom-whether connoisseurs of the form or children who know little if anything about its nuances-it is an integral part of social and cultural interaction.
In a historical overview,...