Recently a request came in from a reader (!) to share a bit about how this project and my work in Nepal came about. Many of you have heard this story before, but many more have not, so here it is.
In the spring of 2013, about to graduate with a Bachelor’s in English, I had no plans for afterward – no job lined up, no dream job ideas, no aspirations really. I had gone to college with the intention to learn as much as I could – which I did – but without any serious thought as to what might come afterward. The year before, I had studied for a semester in Senegal, and that experience truly changed my life. I was still holding onto this feeling that I wanted to do something related to cultural exchange or international development or aid or something – anything – that would allow me to live in exciting foreign countries. I wanted to keep learning languages and understanding other cultures and being outside of my comfort zone.
When I learned that a few of my professors had an organization in Nepal and that they were open to volunteers, I decided to jump on it. I saved up money for a few months and then moved to Nepal for what was meant to be a five-month experience – after that, I thought I’d go into the Peace Corps in Morocco, and then something else would come up. Fast forward a few months into my volunteer stint, and I landed a job teaching Theatre and English at an International Baccalaureate high school in Kathmandu. I had already fallen in love with Nepal and was excited by the prospect of having a salary and a job at a fancy school, so I gave up the Peace Corps in Morocco dream and stayed put. (Fun fact for regular readers: this is when I bought my first bike in Nepal, the Baby Blue Commencal.)
Part of my job as an IBDP Theatre teacher was to teach my students about world theatre traditions. The IB has a list of “prescribed” traditions that students can choose from when doing a particular research project; this list includes forms from China, Indonesia, Greece, Egypt, England, Japan, and more. All interesting and beautiful theatre forms, to be sure. But after a few years of teaching this unit, I began to wonder why there were no Nepali traditions on the list; certainly Nepal had its own forms of theatre, no? I started to dig around, and I found that, while there are traditional theatre forms in Nepal, there is limited accessible academic information about these forms. I don’t know whether that is the reason behind the IB’s omission of Nepal from the “prescribed list,” but it planted a seed in me.
Gradually I became involved in Kathmandu’s theatre scene, working as an actor, director, and managing director. It started as a way for me to be a better theatre teacher – one must practice what one teaches, after all – but pretty soon I was hooked. I made friends, I found a community, I learned about a huge complex bustling world in the middle of this tiny-giant capital city. I got caught up in my journey to “be an artist.” But still I wanted to know: what are Nepal’s traditional theatrical forms? Where is the literature on these forms? Who is practicing them? Why doesn’t the world know about them in the way we know kabuki or kathakali or Victorian melodrama?
I left Nepal and my teaching job with these questions and moved to NYC to try my luck at being a theatre artist in the Mecca of theatre. I worked in a jazz cocktail bar and tutored some very special kids while taking theatre training with SITI Company and sitting in as an intern with The Wooster Group. I spent four years of savings and had the time of my life being anonymous – truly anonymous – for the first time ever. In a city that is no better or worse for me having been there, with millions of people who know nothing about me and care even less, I did a little bit of theatre and a lot of learning and growing.
But soon it was time to return to Nepal, for what was meant to be a short trip. A play I’d directed was invited to tour India as part of the National School of Drama’s Bharat Rang Mahotsav (International Theatre Festival), so I went back to revive the play and take it on tour. In the meantime, a few well-timed conversations with colleagues and friends rekindled this question of Nepal’s traditional theatre forms. I realized that I could put together a plan to answer this question myself, and I got started on my first Fulbright US Student Researcher application. I submitted it in early October 2019 and twiddled my thumbs.
After a painful seven months of waiting (which included the beginning of the pandemic – the ultimate painful waiting), I got my response from the Nepal Fulbright Commission. My application wasn’t rejected, but it wasn’t a success either. I had received the dreaded alternate status, which means that I would be promoted to finalist/grantee if and only if another finalist/grantee decided to decline. You know what that means, right? More waiting. In fact, it nearly meant a sentence of eternal waiting, because no Fulbright programs were going forward anywhere in the world at that time because of COVID-19 – everyone and everything was on hold, so even if a finalist/grantee had declined their slot, there would be no point in promoting me from alternate to finalist/grantee. No one knew anything: was the world ending? would there ever be international travel again? would the US government collapse and eliminate any possibility of granting meager funds to curious Americans who wanted to live and learn in other countries?
Anyway, you all know all about that. I held onto my alternate status proudly, and then worked even harder and submitted a new (much better) application for the next cycle. When I got the acceptance letter in April 2021 telling me that I was a finalist/grantee, it was a mix of euphoria and dread. The world still seemed in the throes of the pandemic; no Fulbright programs had been resumed in South Asia, though some had started in Europe and other wealthier parts of the world; I still wasn’t vaccinated; Nepal was in the midst of an extreme lockdown due to rising cases. How much longer would I have to wait for this grant? What else would I give up for this thing that seemed so important to me?
As it turns out, the time I waited and the things I gave up were hard, but worth it. A year later, in April 2022, I arrived back in Kathmandu, this time not on my own dime but sanctioned by a little spin-off body of the US government that said my idea was cool enough to earn some meager funds to see it through. And here I am, nearly halfway through (weep!) my grant and already panicking about the next step.
But let’s not talk about that, shall we? I have an update for you all. This research project was meant to have two main parts to it: 1) to research and document two traditional Nepali dance-drama forms, ghatu and mani rimdu; and 2) to develop an original piece of theatre that explores through a creative rehearsal-research process what can be the relationship between traditional theatrical forms and contemporary theatre. As you know, I have been deep in my research of ghatu, and I am slowly shifting my attention to the second, creative half of this research project. In the meantime, I’ve decided not to engage with mani rimdu as another aspect of this research project, for several reasons. While I still would like to research mani rimdu and other Tibetan dance-drama forms, I realized early on that there is not a clear enough overlap or relationship between mani rimdu and ghatu to justify researching both in the same research project. When I wrote the grant application, I thought that the superficial connection between the two would not matter; but when I got here and started talking to people about my project, I realized that even though I did not intend any sort of comparison between the two forms, by researching just two forms you automatically are assumed to be comparing them. Moreover, I found that researching ghatu could be a much deeper and bigger project if I wanted it to be. So I made the difficult decision to let go of my intention to travel into the Everest region and live with Tibetan monks (weep!), and instead I am focusing my efforts on just ghatu – for now, anyway 😉
A hopeful, distant dream is to continue this work, not just with ghatu but with all of Nepal’s many dance and dance-drama forms. Someday I hope to publish an anthology of sorts that details each of these special performative practices, so that people outside of Nepal can learn about the incredible performing arts of this little nation. Perhaps then the IB Organization would be inspired to include Nepal in their “prescribed list.”
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