Dr. Monica Mottin is a social anthropologist and a research fellow at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University. Her project within Heritage as Placemaking studies how heritage performances make ‘places’ both in the Kathmandu Valley and in the Janakpur area. Previously, Monica worked at London Metropolitan University and Ruskin College, Oxford (UK). She holds a degree in Philosophy/Modern Languages (English and French Languages and Literature) from the University of Padua (Italy). Monica completed both her MA in Anthropology of Development (2001) and a PhD in Social Anthropology (2010) at SOAS University of London, focusing on how the arts, and theatre in particular, can create spaces for social transformation in social and political movements as well as through international development projects.
Monica’s research focuses on the anthropology of theatre and performance, art and activism, cultural labour, social and labour movements, community mobilization through cultural performances, gender, and sustainable development. She is also interested in critical theory and research methods, in particular ethnography, participatory research, and arts-based research. Monica has published on theatre and on political-cultural work in Nepal and has also worked as a development adviser for INGOs in Nepal, focusing on community participation and social inclusion (agriculture, health, education) and in project monitoring and evaluation.
Research spotlight: Recording heritage performances and folk dramas
As part of her fieldwork on heritage performance, Monica Mottin has documented a number of festivals and folk dramas. In 2022, she observed the Viva Panchami as celebrated in and around Janakpur as well as the Kartik Naach in Patan. In April 2023, she has thus far filmed the Salhesh Mela and Jangali Badshah Naach in the Janakpur area. A few key performances, places, and moments of her archival footage are presented below, along with her comments:
“The video above offers glimpses of Salhesh mela and the naach Jangali Badshah, documented on the14 and 15 of April 2023 near Janakpur. Dating back to the 7th/8th centuries, loknaach, folk dramas that bring forward the precious epics of the Madhes and Mithilanchal areas, are now performed more rarely than in the past and only in village fairs. This art seems to be dying out, and many folk artists have moved to other professions. Performance knowledge is thus getting lost. It was amazing to be able to film "Jangali Badshah" in full, performed over two nights, from 11pm to around 8am without any interruptions, near Salhesh Temple in a village near Janakpur. The Jaimata Naach Party from Siraha are brilliant performers. Here are some images and sounds that I recorded on my mobile, with a better film to come later on.”
“Some images and sounds from the Kartik Naach 2022, short extracts from my recordings. The Kartik Naach is a dance drama performed in the month of Kartik (October-November) in Patan Durban Square. Started in 1641 by King Siddhi Narsingh Malla, it has been performed continuously every year, even through the length of the dance varied. In 2022, the Kartik Naach was performed for 10 days.”
“A day-by-day collection of sounds, images and key places of Vivah Panchami 2022.”
(All videos filmed and edited by Monica Mottin)
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Monica Mottin (2018). Rehearsing for Life: Theatre for Social Change in Nepal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Monica Mottin (2016). ‘Protests, Space and Creativity: Theatre as a Site for the Affective Construction of Democracy in Nepal’. In: Michael Hutt and Pratyoush Onta, eds., Political Change and Public Culture in Post-1990 Nepal, pp. 170–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
In conversation…
You have worked on both heritage theatre and development theatre—are those two ends of a spectrum?
‘Heritage theatre’ can be broadly defined as performance practices handed over from one generation to the next, encapsulating the ethos of a community. ‘Development theatre’ is mostly centred on delivering social messages and may at times include ‘heritage’ elements to appeal to the audience. It does not originate from specific communities; it’s mostly brought in by external agencies. These two may indeed appear at the opposite ends of the spectrum. But, considering how pervasive ‘development’ as an ideology and a practice has become in many countries, I wonder if development theatre itself could paradoxically become ‘heritage’ to a certain extent, being itself the expression of specific socio-historical conditions. But, here, we would probably have to first agree on a definition of what heritage is and who would recognize development theatre as heritage—I’m not sure that theatre artists in Nepal would.
Can you speak a bit about the line frequently drawn between ‘tangible’ and ‘intangible’ heritage? Is this a false binary, and if so, how does your research contest this?
Tangible cultural heritage refers to physical artefacts, historic places, and/or buildings that are produced, maintained, and transmitted intergenerationally. But, in practice, all tangible heritage embodies intangible components, that is, the social practices that unfold in and around them. If we look at Buddhist viharas (monasteries), the physical elements—the buildings—are meaningful because of the rituals and the worship that is sustained within them. The Charya dances that I am studying are performed in rituals inside the viharas. Therefore, the tangible and intangible mutually sustain one another. Part of my research also looks at what happens when Charya dance is detached from the ritual context and the physical monastery and is reworked as a performing art. But it’s too early for me to draw any conclusion about this part now. Generally, I prefer the idea of cultural landscapes, which allows for a holistic understanding of tangible, intangible, and natural elements.