Play, Theater, and Nondualism: A Philosophical Meditation

The attempt here is to meditate philosophically on the nature, meaning, and significance of the conceptions of play, theater, and nondualism and to articulate further the metaphysical interweaving and symphony of these concepts with particular reference to the domain of social ethics. After a brief analysis of the philosophical notion of nondualism and its description of reality as fundamentally nondualistic, the essay dwells on the possibility of play and theater as the epiphany of the Self and its forms and contends that the pluriform images are the apparent other of the nondual self. Then, moving on to the domain of social ethics, the essay ventures to imagine theatricality as an incarnation of social ethics and attempts to show that nondualism and untouchability are diametrically opposed to each other in both theory and practice. Augmenting this discussion, the essay dwells upon Theyyam, the celebratory divine dance form, and indicates how it takes one to the ethical imaginary by radically subverting the socially exclusionary practice of caste hierarchy.