Teacher: Brianna Lau

Date: 5 (Friday)

Time: 45 minutes

Preparation:
Lesson Aim for Today: To explore traditional Indian theatre
Student Learning Objective: The student will learn about important aspects of Indian
theatre through the use of jigsaw groups to foster reading to learn, writing to learn, and
teaching to learn.
SOL:
TII.7 The student will examine the development of technical theatre by
1. explaining the effects of technological advancements on theatre production; and
2. analyzing a variety of dramatic texts to determine their production requirements
TII.10 The student will compare and contrast the purposes of theatre in selected historical
periods.
TII.11 The student will identify major theatrical styles, including classical, Renaissance, modern,
contemporary, and non-Western, including
1. identifying universal characters, situations, themes, and ideas in theatre;
2. identifying the use of symbolism and cultural and historical clues in dramatic texts; and
3. describing historical production designs, techniques, and performance practices.

A.
B.
C.
D.

Introduction: Indian theatre, connectedness of theatre

Review: Greek, Roman, Japanese
Lesson Content: Natyasastra, Kalidasa, Rasa, Sanskrit theatre
Questions: What is distinctive about Indian theatre? (L), Should rasa be incorporated or
sought after in other forms of theatre? (Cr)
Teach the Lesson:
E. Activities:
a. Did anybody have something they had a question on from the past week that they
wanted to know more about? (1 minute)
i.
I will work on it over the weekend and bring something in next week.
b. Assign jigsaw groups (four groups of six)
i.
Get into these groups and take one of the papers with the group text on it. Work
together to pull out the most important information and take notes on the handout
provided. (See next page) (R)
ii.
Look at the number written in the top right corner of your text. Everyone with 1
meets here, 2 meets there, etc. These are the groups they will teach the
content to. (Make certain its still four groups of six.) (R/C)
iii.
Fill in your handout with the new information.
iv.
Go over as a class. (20 minutes)

c. Rasa debate: Go over rasa again and debate as a class its place in Western theatre
(7 minutes)
d. Check reflection homework from last night. (Walk around and take note of who has
it.)
i.
This assignment will help you think about what you want to for your project,
because part of the assignment is thinking about how your playwright has
affected the theatre that came about afterwards.
ii.
Discuss ideas they came up with. (7 minutes) (A, C)
e. Get into groups and work on project. (10 minutes, remaining time)
F. Materials Needed: text set, grid handout, resources on the playwrights for them to use
G. Check for Understanding: rasa debate, homework check
Lesson Closure:
H. Conclusion of Lesson: You will have a couple days in class to work on your
presentations before theyre due. You have to tell me exactly which playwright you
choose before we leave next Thursday.
Also be sure to wear good shoes on Monday. Were going to play a review game. And it
will be theatrical.
Reinforcement: This weekend keep an eye out for anything that you think may have been
influenced by some of the theatre we talked about this week. Have a good weekend!

Indian Theatre Jigsaw Groups Worksheet:

Sanskrit Theatre

Shakuntala

Natyasastra

Rasa

Text Set for Day Five:

1. Natyashastra, in full Bharata Natyashastra, also called Natyasastra, detailed

treatise and handbook on dramatic art that deals with all aspects of classical Sanskrit
theatre. It is believed to have been written by the mythic Brahman sage and priest
Bharata (1st century BCE3rd century CE).
Its many chapters contain detailed treatments of all the diverse arts that are
embodied in the classical Indian concept of the drama, including dance, music, poetics,
and general aesthetics. Its primary importance lies in its justification of Indian drama as
a vehicle of religious enlightenment. (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/406618/Natyashastra)
The Natya Shastra is the oldest surviving text on stagecraft in the world. It is
believed to have been written by Bharata Muni between 200 AD and 200 BC.
However there are scholars who believe that it may have been written by various
authors at different times.
It is believed that the Natya Shastra is based upon the much older Natya
Sutras. Unfortunately there are no surviving copies of the Natya Sutras so we have
no way to know for sure.
The Natya Shastra is incredibly wide in its scope. It covers stage-design,
music, dance, makeup, virtually every aspect of stagecraft. It is very important to
the musician because it is the only text which gives such detail about the music and
instruments of the period. (http://chandrakantha.com/articles/indian_music/natyashastra.html)
2. In addition to its extensive, almost tiresome, catalog of practical theatrical matters, the
Natyashastra offers a theory of how theatrical art affects a person. The centerpiece of this
theory is rasa, a frequently misunderstood or misconstrued concept. Much of the reason that
the rasa idea is so often mishandled is that the Natyashastra itself speaks of rasa in vague,
cryptic, or paradoxical ways.
Sometimes the term is translated as flavor. But we should not equate Bharatas term
with the flavor of food.
For Bharata, rasa is not emotion, in the sense that we use the term emotion to talk
about the psychological and physiological conditions of both characters and audiences who
may develop states of sympathetic feeling for characters. Emotion, in Bharatas language, is
bhva (BHAH-vuh), which is the thing that Bharata associates with food and flavor. In
Bharatas analogy, a person tastes the flavors of food, enjoys those flavors, and then feels a
certain kind of pleasure. An audience member experiencesor tastesthe activity on the
stage, including words, gestures, and also feelings or emotions, as though these things were
the flavors of food. The audience member then feels pleasure in his or her experience. This
last feeling of pleasure is what Bharata calls rasa.
Rasa, then, is an aesthetic state of mind that accompanies an audience members
experience of theatrical art and conscious reflection on his or her experience of that art.

Understanding that state of mind is a little more difficult. In rasa, a person stands apart from his
or her self enough to regard his or her self and its experiences as part of the whole
phenomenon of the theatrical event. This meta-self contemplates [the combination of its own
feelings and circumstances and the feelings, circumstances, and theatrical elements of the art]
a single, unified moment. The audience members self, here, is a part of the theatrical
performance, to be savored along with the play.
(http://www.yavanika.org/theatreinindia/?page_id=446)
3. Sanskrit drama emerges in fragments and short pieces beginning in the first century, CE, and
continuing to the tenth century.
The most commonly read and performed examples of Sanskrit drama include plays by
Bhasa, Shudraka, and, especially, Kalidasa. The work of all three of these playwrights comes
within the first three or four centuries of the tradition.
The plays often concern the exploits of the kings and heroes of history. As with the
Greek tragedies, historical figures of Sanskrit drama include mythical persons and the subjects
of epic poetry. Supernatural beings of several varieties play important roles in the stories of
Sanskrit drama. Important characters in Sanskrit dramas also come from the middle and lower
classes, including soldiers, merchants, and hermits and sages. Of the two principal types of
dramas, the Nataka plays feature stories about kings and divine beings. The Prakarana plays
concern stories that revolve around middle-class characters.
With very, very few exceptions, the three hundred, or so, Sanskrit dramas that we have
end happily, with conflicts comfortably resolved. The king and his wife are reunited. The king
discovers a son. The girls discovery of her royal or divine parentage clears the way to marry
into the royal family. Even an exception like Bhasas Urubhangam, which concludes with the
morose death of its protagonist, does not affirm the sense of futility or the nihilistic worldview
that figures so prominently in Greek tragedy.
The action of Sanskrit dramas includes precious little action. Most often, the potentially
exciting moments of a drama occur offstage and are related to characters onstage by way of
messengers, letters, or eye-witnesses who can see what is happening out of view of the other
characters (and out of the view of the audience). Although the plots commonly involve battles,
kidnappings, flying demons, and rampaging elephants, what we get onstage in a Sanskrit drama
is dialogue about kidnappings and elephants, and so forth. Nevertheless, as in many other
dramatic traditions around the world, Sanskrit drama creates and sustains tension through the
plans that characters lay in dialogue with each other, the obstacles that arise to prevent those
plans from coming to fruition, and the ways that characters maneuver to accomplish their aims,
anyway.
The dialogue of Sanskrit drama consists of both verse and prose. Within a single,
unified speech, a character may slip out of prose and into verse and back into prose several
times. Dense with figurative speech and imagery, the verses demonstrate the playwrights
poetic skill. Because the the verse in his play Shakuntala, the playwright Kalidasa, for instance,
is, perhaps, regarded in India more as a poet than as a dramatist.
(http://www.yavanika.org/theatreinindia/?page_id=280)

4. Shakuntala, is Kalidasas best-known play, and, perhaps the best known play of the classical
Sanskrit repertoire. The play takes its title from one of its central characters, a young woman
raised in a forest hermitage. Like others of Kalidasas heroines, however, the young woman is
not merely a hermit. Her forest life is temporary, and she comes into her real identityan
identity of which she is mostly unaware when the play beginsthrough her interaction with a
king during the course of the play.
In the end, the play demonstrates a consistent principle of Sanskrit drama. As opposed
to the Aristotelian vision of dramatic characters to begin in a particular condition at a specific
plot point and develop over the course of succeeding plot points so as to be different following
the climactic culmination of plot points, the characters of Shakuntala have changed little in the
end. The play does have a plot, and the events affect the characters greatly. But the
conclusion of the play finds Duhshanta and Shakuntala and their son going to the palace to live
with each other happily ever after, just as the ascetic in the hermitage promises in the first act.
In Kalidasas play, circumstances of plot may divert the characters from what they are as the
play begins. But the characters are ultimately fixed entities who do not learn through the play
so as to become something else. Instead, characters must return to what they are.
(http://www.yavanika.org/theatreinindia/?page_id=286)
Alternate title: Shakuntala
Abhijnanashakuntala, (Sanskrit: The Recognition of Shakuntala) drama by Kalidasa,
composed about the 5th century CE that is generally considered to be the greatest Indian literary
work of any period.
Taken from legend, the work tells of the seduction of the nymph Shakuntala by King
Dushyanta, his rejection of the girl and his child, and their subsequent reunion in heaven. The
child that is born is Bharata, the eponymous ancestor of the Indian nation (Bharatavarsha,
Subcontinent of Bharata). Kalidasa remakes the story into a love idyll whose characters
represent a pristine aristocratic ideal: the girl, sentimental, selfless, alive to little but the
delicacies of nature, and the king, first servant of the dharma (religious and social law and
duties), protector of the social order, resolute hero, yet tender and suffering agonies over his
lost love. The plot and characters are made believable by a change Kalidasa introduces:
Dushyanta is not responsible for the lovers separation; he acts only under a delusion caused by
a sages curse. As in all of Kalidasas works, the beauty of nature is depicted with an inimitable
elegance of metaphor. (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1256/Abhijnanashakuntala)