Its the end of me (at least I defended myself with kalaripayattu)

Description:

On Monday, we were given the exclusive opportunity to have a personalized workshop on kalaripayattu body movements that are animal fighting strategies taught from native Kerala, India. Valentina Vela, a graduated IB student gave us a three-hour session emphasized on kicks, hits, position transitions, respiration maintenance and combat to construct coherently scene 8, the great battle. Throughout school play rehearsals, we focused fully on developing the scene 8 to take advantage of Valentina’s presence and knowledge regarding original Kathakali combats. 

Analysis:
Same theatre tradition, same acting convention lesson. Except the main difference was the depth of learning, the leg strength we had to acknowledge in order to do professional Kerala transitions, kicks, stage combat and kalaripayattu animal positions. We began by doing yoga and kicking warm up activities to embrace better the future body movements, which were going to be taught and to have control of our respiration in order to maintain these postures perfectly. By doing the warm up activities, we learned three types of kicks: nerengala that involved kicking frontally, virungala, which was kicking in the form of a circle, and cornegala that was a quick kick directed to each corner. After doing the general warm up, we did actual Kathakali stage combat which was an amazing and unique experience for me. Previously, while sketching the scene 8 before Valentina’s intervention, we were doing a regular battle with no knowledge of the actual theatre tradition. With Valentina’s help, we were now more in touch with our theatre tradition: Kathakali. Thus, accomplishing our main aim, which was to stick to the theatre tradition as closely as possible since several established acting conventions were being broken such as the inability of speaking, the prohibition of portraying death scenes (only the final battle) and others. 

During practice, we did various transitions of different animal postures such as lions, horses or snakes, the different type of gala kicks, combats. Despite the suffering and discomfort of exceeding our leg capacity, stretching all our muscles and after that, these producing painful aches we still need to have perseverance in following correctly our theatre choice: Kathakali. An example was when Valentina taught us an animal sequence incorporated with a variety of gala kicks. There was a constant change between the different postures, from horse to snake, from lion to horse. There was neither stopping moments, breaks nor resting periods to calm down. Instead, we developed our elasticity abilities since we had to challenge ourselves in going beyond our comfort zone since as Valentina same said, “If it doesn’t hurt, the exercise isn’t done correctly”.For instance, I being Indrajit needed to do a ritual where all my source of power, my fury from within is released to burn Hanuman during the final battle. Before I did not know completely Kalaripayattu, I would have only done perhaps a circle distorsioning my chest as usual where I would finally release my fire with exaggerated hand movements or mudras. However, having kalaripayattu as inspiration, it opened my possibilities of creating an abstract sequence where animal postures with nerengala kicks where explored. To add a sparkling touch of Indrajit, I decided to add a distortion of the body with hand movements and exaggerated fury face expression to intensify Indrajit’s compulsivity and devilish appearance. I must admit, i finished with leg aches later since the entire transition happened in the same low leg base position. As a result, we learned about commitment and perseverance, which is not shown by all school play members. When placing in practice, some students were either complaining or bragging about these difficult postures and quick transitions. While warm up, they got tired very easily, which is crucial for preparation since if they can’t handle a regular warm up, then how will they maintain in a complex posture that is required? I admit it, it was hard at the beginning; coming back home was all about “ouch, my legs hurt” but after adjusting to the pain and reflecting on my learning of this amazing acting convention it was definitely an experience worth living because it had brought us one step closer to native Kerala, an fantastic Indian tradition, Kathakali theatre. If we are automatically breaking acting conventions of Kathakali theatre, than how can an adaptation of an Indian epopeya be identified?

Confidence and trust. Two exceptional memories. Two concepts acknowledged. By participating in Valentina’s workshop, we learned that kalaripayattu was based on trust and confidence. Battles and combats were staged as if they were realistic fights, whether than failures of attempting one. The key mentality when stage combating with kalaripayattu movements is that “hit if you are going to punch and defend as if you were going to be actually punched”, from that I discovered that if both persons involved in the battle put dedication and concentration, strength and speed; this “fake fight” can actually look pretty real and frightening. Therefore, the commitment of doing correctly the kalaripayattu postures and stage combat learnt will help impressively the play since we will be able to transmit the correct idea to the audience: a terrifying, intense atmosphere where warriors and demons are fighting for power and survival.  The Kerala corporal movements (kalaripayattu) will highlight powerful moments and at the same time painful deaths. I noticed this when with some monkeys and demons we actually sketched our mini battle that would happen during the great war. By imagining and practicing the fight, we incorporated the five areas of the body we were taught where is adequate to hit: the temple, neck, abdominal, forehead and finally the stomach. These five sections of the body are core for doing kalaripayattu, according to Valentina, because that is the only way where the attacker can direct exactly with strength the punch or kick and where the defender can perfectly block it because these parts can be healed by the same partner you are fighting against. While practing with one of the monkeys, we trusted ourselves that both would actually hit the other one since the other one will be able to defend it. Therefore, our battle became a success due to the the confidence we had between eachother and the intensity we placed in our movements. For instance, a sequence we market was that: I would kick him in the abdominal and he would fake fall while  he would then, hit me in the neck and I would fake fall as well.

Another value Kalaripayattu taught us was definitely teamwork, as Valentina stated, “The best of you is the same as the worse of you”. This statement has been clearly witnessed not only in daily situations but it is a perfect value that we will use in the future. An example would be when constructing the final battle; we had to make mutual fights occurring at the same time. Commitment is essential from all actors since not all of them have the same passion, activeness or natural ability as others in doing kalaripayattu. Due to this, if the actors don’t act as an ensemble, a team, the energy will be completely lost. This is something we definetly want to avoid because without assistance, our progress will be lost. Therefore, all actors must work together, fix each other’s mistakes and move on without leaving the worst of all because as Valentina said “The best of you is the same as the worse of you “Instead, the battle is considered the highest point where energy and strength are combined in battles. The fights are needed since it will show the concept of the triumph of good vs evil, a key characteristic of Kathakali theatre and our concept. 

Connection:

When being in Valentina's workshop, I connected and identified partially myself with her since I was previously in her same position, teaching kalaripayattu to others. However not as in depth as her due to my lack of experience in practicing this indian theatre tradition. Another connection I made was that when she was teaching, similar movements that I had learned before such as the elephant and the horse were taught in her workshop also, however the difference was that the posture was always in a very low base position which i didnt knew before.

Reflection:

Kalaripayattu is about caring for one another, having trust and confidence in your mate and fighting with determination. It was quite amazing to have an actual martial art expert like Valentina teaching is on an one on one specialized class for three hours only on staging combat. Taking advantage of this opportunity granted by Valentina gave us an extreme close up to our selected theatre tradition: Kathakali because not only we know about it now, but also we were able to apply the body movements of kalaripayattu taught by master Valentina into our very own school play. For instance, I being Indrajit needed to do a ritual where all my source of power, my fury from within is released to burn Hanuman during the final battle. Therefore, i added kalaripayattu positions to seem more alike to our theatre tradition.Finally, as I had said before, kalaripayattu is definitely not easily to manage and many people find it difficult to do so. How will they maintain in a complex posture that is required if they can’t do the warm up without complaining? How will the play be a successful Indian traditional school play if the closest convention we have can’t be done by the actors due to lack of commitment, tiredness or passion?