Theatre director Ratan Thiyam, one of the most outspoken proponents of freedom and personal identity, dies in Imphal

Indian Express

6 days ago

More than a month after ethnic violence, between the Meitiei and Kuki-Zo people, erupted in Manipur in 2023, the Ministry of Home Affairs announced that it was setting up a peace committee that would have Chief Minister N Biren Singh and 50 others, such as Padma Shri-awardee theater director Ratan Thiyam, as members. Thiyam was not having any of it. Telling the Prime Minister Narendra Modi that it was time that he spoke up and showed a strong political will, Thiyam rejected the invitation to join the committee. 'A strong political will is needed to solve the problem. If it is not done, where will the people go?' he had said.
With the passing of Thiyam in Imphal on Wednesday, India has lost one of the most outspoken proponents of freedom and personal identity. For the world of art, especially theatre, it is a deep loss as Thiyam was one of the masters who reinvented the stage with every play and made even seniors practitioners think.
Anuradha Kapur, a theatre maker and the former director of the National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi, India's prominent academy for theatre studies, says that Thiyan made them relearn. 'In the 1950s and '60s, theatre practitioners believed that words were the primary means to tell a story on stage. Thiyam staged Chakravyuh in 1984, and made us aware of a composite theatre image, which uses visuals, image-making, vocalisation, sound, costume, lights, percussion, costume and movements, to create absolute magic. To me, this is the heart of theatre,' she says.
In Uttar Priyadarshi, the entrance of an elephant is presented in a language of light, in which certain body parts, such as an arm or the top, were lit up and the rest hidden in darkness. 'Instead of denoting damage or injury, the use of light from various angles made the body look poetic. Many of Thiyam's images remain in one's mind as a kind of jewel glittering in the memory,' says Kapur.
Thiyam was one of the leading figures of Theatre of Roots, a post-Independence movement of decolonisation in which artists returned to their culture and traditions to create works. Kapur remembers watching plays in which the actors glided over the stage with movements drawn from Manipuri traditions, such as Thang-Ta. 'He played with very fluid movements and redefined movement in drama. The plays had choreography and music but were not musicals. Thiyam broke the bounds and was able to make us look at the proscenium as a framed space of magical images,' she says.
It is significant that Thiyam, who spoke six languages and understood eight, made plays only in Manipuri and presented these without subtitles all over the world. He was one of the earliest directors to regularly show his plays on international platforms. Thiyam was the first winner from India of the prestigious Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh International Theatre Festival in 1987.
Was Thiyam's intuitive understanding of the elements of performance due to his birth? His parents, Manipuri classical dancers Thiyam Tarun Kumar and Bilasini Devi, were on tour in Nabadwip, West Bengal, when Thiyam was born. He grew up travelling with them, playing in green rooms and the wings as some of the most powerful artistes of Manipur went over their lines and craft. 'I was soaking it all in, though I didn't realise it then. This was also the time that I learned to observe people, from the pedestrians to the policemen,' he once said. Thiyam honed his craft at NSD, where he also became a Director.
Thiyam's politics, to a large extent, came from books, especially those of Che Guevara. As a child, he dreamed of travelling to Cuba to become a revolutionary. Thiyam carried the zeal into his life in theatre. He created plays when 'ideas start knocking on my head and giving a kick to my buttock'. As an artist, he was affected by events in society and this is what his plays revealed. His great tragedies, Karnabharam (1976) and Urubhangam (1981), showed the antagonists of the Mahabharata, Karna and Duryodhana, as heroes. The people of Manipur were locked in a struggle against security forces – and Thiyam's plays forced audiences to reconsider their stereotypes of heroes and villians.
Thiyam's son, Thawai Thiyam, says that the director was planning to stage a Greek play, before his health deteriorated. While we do not know the details of this project, Thiyam left an urgent message for the audience way back in 2020, when global warming was not a buzzword. He had staged Lairembigee Eshei (The Song of the Nymphs) for the closing ceremony of the 21st Bharat Rang Mahotsav, the international theatre festival organised by NSD. In the play, a hedonistic king, who fells trees and destroys nature, is cursed by mother nature with an incurable disease. 'It may be helpful for us to go back to nature and try to understand what it wants to give to you. Nature provides us with a lasting form of pure energy but we are ignoring it,' Thiyam had said at the time.