The World of Hanumān

Abstract

The author gives a full-fledged report on a performance of Aṅgulīyāṅkam lasting 29 nights that she witnessed in 2012 at the Nepathya centre in Moozhikkulam. She posits interesting connections with the different cultural devices used during the performance, especially the ritual ones, and she shows that there is no opposition between ritual and aesthetic, but, on the contrary, that it is precisely the ritual aesthetic that permits the smooth world of Kūṭiyāṭṭam to work. The anthropological approach offers an in-depth reflection on the idea of ‘continuous’ and ‘non-representation’ as triggers of the motility and constant need of sustaining action in and of Kūṭiyāṭṭam: linearity, directionality and causality become merely one out of a myriad of options. She describes the traumatic life experiences that the audience relives during and after the twenty-second day’s performance. Even the actors tell of changes in their mode of consciousness on stage and during the entire period of the play.