Kattaikkuttu: A Rural Theatre Tradition in South India

＂This is the first book to offer a clear introduction to Kattaikkuttu (or Terukkuttu), a vibrant, vocal and physical outdoor Tamil theatre tradition. It describes the theatre’s characteristic heroic nature as expressed through its principal, male kattai characters, explores its history, social status and ritual context, and examines the production of all-night plays. It traces the theatre’s disentanglement from its organic embedding into the social and ritual village organization and its transition towards a more autonomous and more professional theatre form during the last 150 years, providing case studies of all-night plays, and examines more recent developments in the form＂--

Hanne M. de Bruin is Programme Director and co-founder of Kattaikkuttu Sangam, a center for performing arts in Tamil Nadu, India, where Kattaikkuttu is performed and artists are trained in its traditions. From 2016-2018 she was a Fellow at the International Research Center for Interweaving of Performance Cultures, Berlin, and in 2019 a guest-lecturer at Ashoka University, India. Her previous publications include Kattaikkuttu: Flexibility of a South Indian Theatre Tradition (1999), Karna Moksham or Karna’s Death (English translation of an Kattaikkuttu play, 1998) and the co-edited volume Between Fame and Shame (2011).