Maati Katha (Earth Stories) – An Object & Material Theatre Performance

Image Credits: Prajwal Gowda

“400 islands across a watery world scattered!”

A region of extreme ecological and environmental vulnerability, the Sunderbans is a vast forested delta area in West Bengal and Bangladesh where great rivers combine and split, before merging into the Bay of Bengal. In this dangerous and magical land, living is about a fragile balance between land and water, forest and field, domestic and wild, human and human, human and non-human, calm and storm. As each stakes claim, as each encroaches upon the other’s space, how does life manage to thrive?

Stories and beliefs form essential anchors for the people of the Sunderbans, with the ‘Bonbibi’ legend looming large in the popular imagination. Bonbibi is said to have come to the ‘Land of the 18 Tides’ to help the people, the tigers, the deer, the crabs, the trees—all beings that cohabit the land. But, only if we agree to the land’s terms. And when she looks away, devastation follows! Episodes from this legend, as well as everyday aspects of Sunderbans life, are depicted by the traditional and contemporary doll-makers of Sunderbans.

Maati Katha (Earth Stories) brings these dolls—originally used for worship, child’s play and display—into the theatre for the first time, combining these art and craft traditions with contemporary object and material theatre practices. The play brings alive the Sunderbans through these clay dolls and the shape-shifting ‘maati’ (clay, mud, soil, earth, land), that not only forms the dolls, but also defines the land and grounds the philosophy of the region. In doing so, Maati Katha invites us to celebrate human resilience in the midst of fragility—a resilience that enables diverse communities to hold together through repeated upheavals of natural calamity and human violence. Bonbibi’s philosophy reigns, “You are all connected: the crocodile, the tiger, water, forest, land, all human beings … All!”