Ratan Thiyam: A titan of Indian theatre and the guardian of the North‑East's cultural soul

New Indian Express

23-07-2025

Ratan Thiyam, who passed away on July 23, was the Bhupen Hazarika of Indian stage.
Like the late great cultural icon, Thiyam—a master auteur—mounted his greatest works from the North East—through the Chorus Repertory Theatre based in Manipur at the foothills of the eastern Himalayas. His Theatre offered a sanctuary where actors were also dancers, musicians, painters, and seekers.
The physical isolation of Chorus Repertory was deliberate; it allowed a kind of focused artistry rarely possible in settings based in cities. This reflected in the performances his "Theatre of roots" offered. The plays he staged were not spectacles but meditative, immersive experiences rooted in timeless truths.
The acclaimed playwright and director's work was rooted in ancient Indian dramatic traditions, especially the Nāṭyaśāstra, as well as in the narrative and visual vocabulary of Meitei performance forms. His use of silence, martial movement, masks, minimal dialogue, and ritual repetition created a distinct style that felt at once ancient and modern.
A poet and philosopher too, Thiyam crafted performances that were visual symphonies, where every light cue, every chant, every stillness served the deeper metaphysical structure of the play.
He wrote silence into his plays. He drew beauty out of brutality. He choreographed stillness as if it were action. His visual compositions— torches against darkened skies, chorus lines moving like wind through reeds—remain etched in the memories of those who witnessed them. The audience left his plays not excited, but transformed.
Thiyam believed theatre must transcend slogans and provoke deeper reflection. His plays never shouted, but they lingered, raising disturbing questions.
While some critics accused him of being aloof from contemporary politics, he actually wasn't. When violence erupted in Manipur, he returned his Padma Shri in protest. He was unafraid to speak up against policies and politics that threatened the cultural or human fabric of his region.
He frequently called upon civil society and religious leaders to take responsibility for communal peace, especially during the ethnic unrest that plagued Manipur in recent years. For him, cultural diversity was not an abstract principle, but a living reality to be fiercely protected.
Great works all
Each of Thiyam's productions was a carefully constructed universe, months, sometimes years, in the making.
His Chakravyuh (1984), based on the Mahabharata, became a landmark in Indian theatre history. A searing depiction of war, it won the Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival and catapulted Manipur onto the world stage.
In Andha Yug and Uttar Priyadarshi, he returned to mythic tales of moral collapse and spiritual reckoning.
His Ritusamharam, adapted from Kalidasa's poetic celebration of the seasons, turned natural cycles into meditative cycles of rebirth and loss.
Nine Hills One Valley explored the fragile coexistence of Manipur's hill and valley communities, and When We Dead Awaken adapted Ibsen into a deeply introspective, eastern idiom.
His adaptations of Greek tragedies such as Antigone (Lengshonnei) and The Bacchae were localised into Meitei culture, reimagining Western classics through the philosophical and performative language of Manipur.
Even Shakespeare's Macbeth found new resonance in his theatre.
From Manipur to Delhi and back
His roots in Manipur, where he was born on January 20, 1948 in Imphal, played a huge role in shaping him.
The region's rich martial, ritualistic, and storytelling traditions cast a spell on him. He went on to study at the National School of Drama (NSD), graduating in 1974 under the mentorship of that doyen of the stage, Ebrahim Alkazi.
But once he completed his course, Thiyam returned to Manipur rejecting the comforts of cultural centres in India's cities and launched the Chorus Repertory Theatre there in 1976.
The decision would transform both his career and Indian theatre itself.
Honours and that Padma Shri he returned
Ratan Thiyam's contributions were acknowledged across India and the world with some of the highest accolades in the arts.
He received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1987 for direction and was honoured with the Padma Shri in 1989, which he later returned as an act of protest and principle.
In 2012, he was conferred the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship, the highest recognition for a practising artist in India.
Before all this, his landmark production Chakravyuh, by earning the Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1987, established him as an international voice in contemporary theatre.
Over the years, honours such as the Kalidas Samman (2005), Bharat Muni Samman (2011), Bhupen Hazarika Award (2013), META Lifetime Achievement Award (2016), and an honorary Doctor of Letters from Assam University (2013) affirmed his legacy across disciplines and regions.
Thiyam also served as the Chairperson of the National School of Drama from 2013 to 2017.
His tenure brought renewed attention to India's regional theatre traditions and the cultural wealth of the North-East. With him at the helm, the National School of Drama engaged more deeply with indigenous forms, and his influence helped legitimise voices that had long remained outside the Delhi-centric framework of Indian theatre.
Devotee of slowness, silence and soul
Ratan Thiyam leaves behind not just a repertoire but a philosophy.
In an age that prizes speed and spectacle, he remained a devotee of slowness, silence, and soul. As the curtain falls on his remarkable life, it rises on a question for all of us: can we still make art with that kind of devotion?
His passing is not only a personal loss for his family, colleagues, and audiences, but a blow to Indian theatre. And yet, in the chorus of Meitei drums, in the quiet chant of an unseen actor, and in the dreams of a stage being prepared in some distant rehearsal hall, his presence still lingers.
(Ashutosh Kumar Thakur is a Bangalore-based literary critic and curator. He can be reached at [e-mail])