Classical Sanskrit drama, the theatre of Kalidasa and Bhasa, died as a living stage art everywhere in India except Kerala, where the temples kept it as ritual. A Kutiyattam performance is chuvadu, an offering: it takes place inside the temple compound in the kuttampalam, a consecrated theatre structure whose stage is treated with the reverence of an altar, it is preceded by rites, accompanied by the temple lamp that burns through the performance, and its audiences traditionally understood attendance as participation in worship. The art itself is one of astonishing elaboration. Where the Sanskrit text gives a line, the performance tradition gives that line hours: the actor unfolds its meanings through netrabhinaya, the trained expressiveness of the eyes, through the codified hand gestures, and through the convention of nirvahanam, in which a character retells the whole backstory of the moment, so that staging a single act of a play can occupy five, ten or forty-one nights. The mizhavu, the great copper drum played by the Nambiar community, is itself a consecrated instrument, installed in the theatre like a temple fixture.
Women perform: the Nangiar actresses hold their own solo tradition, Nangiar Kuttu, one of the oldest continuous female performance arts in the world. The plays staged are the classical repertoire, with the acts of Bhasa's dramas and the comic interludes of the vidushaka, the jester who speaks Malayalam and satirises the audience, folded into the ritual frame.