Rose Schwietz ’13, Mendota Heights, had heard about the Fulbright Scholarship program while she was a student at UMN Morris, but didn’t apply to the program until 2019.
After completing her English degree at Morris, Schwietz had been teaching theatre at a Nepali high school. She became curious about the country’s traditional theatre forms but discovered that there were very few resources about the topic.
She decided if she couldn’t find the resources, she’d create them. And since many of the people she met in Nepal were current or recent Fulbrighters, she submitted a proposal to research seven dance-drama forms across Nepal.
It took a couple of tries to become a Fulbright finalist but Schwietz was selected in 2021. However, her project was significantly delayed due to the pandemic, and she wasn’t able to begin until March of 2022. During that delay, she narrowed her focus from seven to two dance-drama forms.
“I intended to first conduct field research and documentation of these two forms, and then to create and direct an original piece of theatre inspired from the forms and the research. Once I actually arrived and started my research process, I realized I could do better work by just focusing on one dance-drama form instead.”
With her focus now entirely on sati ghatu naach, Schwietz spent several months in a rural village called Nalma.
“I documented the five-day ritualistic dance-drama through writing, photos, and videos. I also spent time getting to know the villagers, interviewing those who are somehow involved in the process of sati ghatu naach, and learning more about the ethnic Gurung people who developed and carried on this practice.”
Schwietz made a short video and presented a poster on her field work at a research conference in Kathmandu, in addition to writing two papers that she hopes to publish.
The other main part of her Fulbright grant was to create and direct an original play from her research. Schwietz worked with a team of local theatre artists to develop Deurali Daandi, which tells the story of a fictional village in which there are no men anymore due to a mysterious epidemic that forced the men to leave. The troupe performed for two weeks for nearly 1500 people in Kathmandu, and the closing performance was attended by special guests from Nalma who are sati ghatu naach practitioners.
The people of Nalma have made the difficult decision to no longer continue practicing sati ghatu naach as of May 2022 for various reasons, which Schwietz said made her experience that much more meaningful and also heartbreaking.
“I was unprepared for how deeply this dance-drama form moved me and how significant it is to the people who practice it. Outside of the Gurung community, very few people in Nepal, or in the world, know about this dance-drama form, but it is one of the most beautiful, surprising, frightening, incomprehensible things I have ever witnessed. Being witness to the final performance of sati ghatu naach in Nalma has made my desire to study and document other dance-drama forms in Nepal that much stronger.”
