Studies in Performance: Performance Studies that commands the attention of the people. The performance style of the Ramlila, we are told, is an 'amalgamation of the wordless tableau, thejhanki, and processional drama'. During the Ramlila the people of Ramnagar move from place to place, remembering, celebrating and participating in god's history. Whenever the Ramcharitmanas describes a geographical change such as moving to Janakapur or to Kishkindha, the spectators, 46 actors and props move to another part of the town space. So when Rama is exiled, the spectators following him through mud and sludge are also in exile, and as he moves away from Ayodhya, they move further away from the centre of the town. When a spectator walks three kilometers to see a lila, a transformation takes place in him as a spectator. He becomes, as Kapur suggests, a pilgrim, and his journey becomes metaphorical, physical and spiritual. At the heart of this whole activity, Ula, play, ritual-theatre, is the notion of transformation, which Kapur emphasizes. Things, people, events are transformed instantly, without recourse to realism, and it is the people's imagination that facilitates these transformations. If, as Kapur says, gods sacralize the Ramnagar space they also secularize it. For there is buffoonery, laughter, wonder, camaraderie, worship, physical movement and lethargy that accompany this mammoth spectacle which is watched on an average by 20,000 people and on special occasions by about 40,000 to 100,000 spectators. If the Ramlila commences in August, preparations for it begin almost a year in advance. Little brahmin boys auditioned by the Maharaja of Benaras, the official patron of the Ramlila, are groomed to play the roles of the four brothers in the Ramcharitmanas written by Tulsidas. The little boys, we are told, are transformed through ritual rites of passage, such as the Ganesh puja, to become svarupas, or vessels, or embodiments of gods. For the thousands who watch, the svarupas are gods in flesh. How does this happen? Spectators, it seems to me, are trained to see the svarupas in this way through repeated participation-in the Ramlilas, through learned emotional responses, a point Kapur does not emphasize. She suggests, instead, that the creative imagination of the spectators, coupled with the actual make-up and deportment of the svarupas enables this kind of seeing. The svarupas' faces are ornately decorated with gold, silver and red discs forming half-moon patterns on their cheeks, and they have as well sandalwood dots and lines on their faces, and on their limbs. Their faces are made evocative, fabulous, strange, in order that the spectators may see the face as a spiritual metaphor. Because the svarupas' faces are effaced of all individual characteristics the spectators are able to endow them with their own imaginative desires, thus allowing their own will to play upon, supplement, subtract and magnify the action and words of the svarupas. It is not only the make-up and the creative imagination of the spectators that transform little boys into little gods, but other ritual gestures, such as the arati, carrying the svarupas on the shoulders and showing them as gods, which also help sustain this illusion. The arati marks the end of every evening's performance, when tired spectators after journeying, talking, eating, watching, gather to behold their beloved svarupas Journal of Arts 6* Ideas