ABSORBING THE TEXT: EXPERIMENTAL METHODS IN HEISNAM TOMBA’S PLAY SAMNADRABA MAMI

Contemporary Indian playwrights and directors are experimenting with the themes and methods to redefine the theatre. This paper focuses on Heisnam Tomba's Samnadraba Mami /Disjointed Image (2009) and his experiments with language, body movements and music in the contemporary Indian theatre. The objective of the paper is to analyze the play and interpret the success of the experimental techniques. Tomba's play depicts the images of violence under the looming presence of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Manipur and the need for ahimsa (non-violence). The play has few dialogues but the songs, the performers' body language and emotions, transfers the message. This paper situates the play as a careful dramatic idiom that voices the story with the body, music and sound. The play in-fact is an accumulation of embodied memories from the entire north east of India. The text is absorbed by the actors and enacted. The body movements and the melancholic and melodious sounds from the actors, seems to break away from the story but acts as a subtext that embeds the story of alienation of the people of the North East. The paper tries to explore Tomba's way of dealing with grim issues of violence and displacement with the weapons of words, body movements, sounds and music. This paper will also seek to interrogate and examine if the use of these experimental methods can be instrumental in eliciting the political consciousness, helping it to achieve a sense of contemporaneity.