Micro identity conflicts and the aesthetic response of ‘Badungduppa’ theatre

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the theatre experiments of Badungduppa theatre (Assam, India). This theatre group is made up of tribal ‘Rabha’ community actors, a director, and theatre workers, and it incorporates the forgotten aesthetics of the community into its theatre practice and actor training. Over time, the Rabha community has been exploited by the mainstream Assamese society in terms representation, development, and cultural space. Badungduppa has come to practise a form of aesthetic assertion inside a broad range of identity conflicts, and at the same time it challenges the popular idea of theatre through its own aesthetics. While reviewing these elements, this article engages in a performance analysis of the play ‘Rather Rashi’, which is also explored in relation to the position of the theatre group and the community it represents in the larger State of Assam.

KEYWORDS:

• Assam
• Rabha
• theatre
• tribal
• experiments

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Debajit Bora is presently working as a Doctoral Researcher in School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU. His PhD work is looking at the Theatre Historiography of Assam. Earlier he earned an MPhil degree from JNU for his work titled ‘Performing History, Identity and Cultural Politics: The Ojapali Performance of Assam’. His major research interest includes performance and identity, cultural mapping and documentation, subaltern performance and theatre, media studies. He teaches at the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research, Jamia Millia Islamia and also associated with research and documentation cell of Sur Samalaya Resource Centre for Arts.