Kherai of the bodos: Their imagination of the world

This study has been primarily set in the theoretical perspective of people's culture in general and that of an ethnic community's performance-making process in particular. The ethnic group referred here is the dominant Indo- Mongoloid group, the Bodos of Assam. The framework used is that of theatrical performance and the analytical tools employed are dramaturgical. It attempts to show how an ethnic group engages itself in conserving, through creation and recreation, a traditional performance inextricably linked to a religious ritual facing extinction. In the process, the study also seeks to examine the group's engagement in using the possibilities of theatre as a mode of cultural production. This has also paved ways for questioning conventional orthodoxies and has created new challenges for both the community members and the performers in making sense of the emergent forms and contents of the performance.