Trinidad Guardian

One of the sur­viv­ing In­di­an folk dra­ma in T&T is the Ram­leela, which many call Ramdi­la, and is held dur­ing the weeks pre­ced­ing the cel­e­bra­tion of Di­vali at sev­er­al venues through­out the coun­try. It is es­ti­mat­ed that there are at least 30 groups that per­form Ram­leela an­nu­al­ly, and the num­ber is grow­ing. Oth­er sur­viv­ing In­di­an folk dra­mas in­clude Kr­ish­na Leela and the Sar­wan Ku­mar Dance Dra­ma; and some years ago, Harischan­dra, Prahlad, Sar­wa­neer, Ras­man­dal, In­dar Sab­ha, To­ta Maina, Kansa Leela and Al­ha Roodal. Most of these folk dra­mas seem to have dis­ap­peared, and one of the ma­jor fac­tors that con­tributed to their de­cline was the im­pact of Hin­di cin­e­ma from In­dia and the birth of the In­di­an or­ches­tras, which im­i­tat­ed the songs and mu­sic from Bol­ly­wood.

Street the­atre

The Ram­leela is an adap­ta­tion, in the full sense of the word, of the pop­u­lar and ini­tial ver­sion of the Ra­mayana. It is held for ten days at most venues. In the dra­ma it­self, which has been de­scribed as street the­atre, there are songs, mu­sic, dance, ac­tion, cos­tumes and spe­cial ef­fects are in­cor­po­rat­ed. This year, amaz­ing scenes were wit­nessed on a jour­ney to the var­i­ous Ram­leela venues. At the first Fe­lic­i­ty Ram­leela grounds the com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy was used. Spe­cial ef­fects, such as the sound of thun­der, dra­mat­ic mu­sic and the haughty laugh­ter of Ra­vana were gen­er­at­ed from the com­put­er and am­pli­fied through the loud speak­ers. In this re­gard, the Fe­lic­i­ty group is a pi­o­neer.

At Pierre Road, the pro­duc­ers used sep­a­rate mi­cro­phones, and in­di­vid­u­als on stage added their own blend of spe­cial ef­fects to com­ple­ment the "play­ers" on the Ram­leela Grounds. The in­flu­ence of this fea­ture can be traced to the vis­it­ing Ra­mayana Bal­let group from In­dia at the Di­vali Na­gar in 1986. At the Hin­du Prachar Kendra, many adap­ta­tions take place, in­clud­ing the one of a well dec­o­rat­ed mo­tor car as part of the en­act­ment of the mar­riage cer­e­mo­ny of the Ram­leela. It was in­ter­est­ing to note that the ages of the "play­ers" ranged from four to 18. Cred­it must be giv­en to the Kendra for en­cour­ag­ing, nur­tur­ing and train­ing the youths to par­tic­i­pate in Ram­leela.

Fund­ing chal­lenges

Ram­leela cel­e­bra­tions take place with lit­tle State sup­port. News­pa­per ar­ti­cles stat­ed that for 2009 the fol­low­ing grants were giv­en by the State for Ram­leela: Hin­du Prachar Kendra-$9,000; Mc Bean and Av­o­cat-$8,000; Cedar Hill and Dow Vil­lage-$15,000. In most ar­eas, this is clear­ly not enough fund­ing. Most Ram­leela groups are forced to raise funds on their own. It was re­fresh­ing to hear Cou­va South MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh's de­c­la­ra­tion of Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment of $1 mil­lion to up­grade fa­cil­i­ties at Dow Vil­lage Ram­leela site.

Over the years Ram­leela has im­proved es­pe­cial­ly as train­ing cours­es were con­duct­ed by UTT, Hin­du Prachar Kendra and Swa­mi Sushilji Ma­haraj of New Del­hi, In­dia. Par­tic­i­pants were trained in stage man­age­ment, act­ing, di­rect­ing, dance, cos­tumes, de­sign­ing and make up.