Classical Sanskrit drama production

With so many arts events on campus this week, we might take the highly-charged collaborative atmosphere for granted. It's more difficult to do this, however, when you see an event so out-of-the-ordinary that it stops you and demands your attention.

"The Little Clay Cart," a classical Sanskrit play performed in English, will be presented Nov. 10 at 2:30 p.m. and Nov. 11 at 11 a.m. in the Cellar Theatre. The play will be performed by the Epic Actors' Workshop, a not-for-profit theatre organization in New Jersey, and directed by Farley Richmond, a professor in the department of theatre and film studies. Both performances are free and open to the public.

Owing to certain features of structure and language, scholars believe that "The Little Clay Cart" was composed no earlier than the first century B.C. and no later than the fourth century A.D. In the prologue of the piece, accolades are showered on its author, King Sudraka, by the stage manager.

Sudraka composed the play in the form of a prakarana, one of the 10 major forms of dramatic composition in ancient India. According to the Natyasastra, the oldest surviving source of dramatic composition, a prakarana may have a hero who is a Brahmin, or aristocracy, a maximum of 10 acts and a story that is invented. "The Little Clay Cart" possesses all of these requirements. It often has been compared with Greek new comedy because of its host of city characters and fast-moving and complicated plot.

"Our production makes use of a wide variety of theatrical conventions found in ancient and modern India as well as those on the tiny island of Bali, an outpost of Hinduism," said Richmond, who regularly travels to the Indian subcontinent and Asia. "Given the number of characters that make an appearance in the play, we chose to use Topeng masks from Bali to represent most of the minor and a few of the major characters. This keeps the company smaller and allows individual actors to work with many different characters wearing a variety of character masks."

These will be fantastic performances, not to be missed.

Image: The villain and maid from "The Little Clay Cart", courtesy of the Epic Actors' Workshop.