Karnataka > Theatre in Karnataka
The first written play in Kannada belongs to the 17th century A.D. It was titled 'Mitravinda Govinda' and was written by a Mysore Court poet called Singararya. It was an adaptation of Sri Harsha's Sanskrit Play 'Ratnavali'. As the literary scene in Karnataka was dominated over-whelmingly by Sanskrit almost everyone could understand Sanskrit plays and as all the Kannada poets modelled their poems on great Sanskrit poems, they took pride in composing poetry than in writing plays. Thus Sanskrit plays were the only ones available until the 17th Century. Gradually the writing of plays in Kannada by eminent Kannada writers picked up. Looking at the situtation in a historical perspective, we see that writing of plays was at a time considered vulgar and of cheap taste. A revolutionary change came over the Kannada people's theatre when the stories of the two Sanskrit epics- the Ramayana and the Mahabharatha- were made available to them through in oral tradition. The hold of these epics on the psyche of illiterate common people can be gauged from the fact that to this day the majority of the themes of their plays come from the stories of these epics. Dance and music predominated such plays. Gradually plays were written to placate gods to bestow goodwill on the subjects were written, this give rise to Yakshagana, Bayalata, Krishna Parijata and many other forms of folk theatre. The British colonialists also contributed in a great way for the development of the theatre. They brought with them theatre troupes, which performed plays of Shakespeare and other popular plays in English. Encouraged by this, translations of these English plays appeared and they were staged successfully. Gradually, to cater to the people's tastes, plays with a lot of dance and music in them were written. In the early days, people of low castes, who worked as labourers in the day time were illiterates, used to perform on the stages. Gradually it changed and all sorts of people started acting in plays. Many literates started performing and another fact was that earlier, only men used to appear on the stage. After a time, changes in society encouraged women also to appear on the stage. Professional drama troupes started touring the state and performing at different centres. Some very old troupes like the Gubbi Company toured the state successfully. They made a name even in the neighbouring states and flourished. In North Karnataka, the companies like the Konnur Company, the Shirahatti Company, the Vishwa Gunadarsha Company, etc,, who had talented actors and singers like Yallamma, Gurusiddappa, Venkoba Rao, Garooda Sadashiva Rao, Master Waman Rao and others, gained prominence. In Southern Karnataka, there were eminent people like Varadachar, Gubbi Veeranna, Mohammed Peer, Malavalli Sundaramma, Subbayya Naidu, R. Nagendra Rao, Hirannayya and others. Thin stories, uninspiring dialogues and melodrama notwithstanding, these artistes held the audience spell bound by their melodious voices and irrelevent comedy. In spite of all this, failing to respond to growing social consciousness and unable to compete successfully with cinema as a source of entertainment, commercial theatre slowly disintegrated. The latter part of the 19th Century and the early 20th Century were the best times for the commercial theatre.
Amateur theatre was the theatre of the educated people. It catered people of refined tastes and it has variety in subjects. Kalidasa's Shakuntala was translated into Kannada by Basavappa Shastri in the Mysore court. These plays required educated artistes. This movement helped in bringing to light more and more educated Amateurs. In 1909, Amateur Dramatic Association (A.D.A.) was started in Bangalore, Bharata Kalottejaka Sangha (1904) in Dharwad, Young Men's Football Association of Gadag etc., The movement got a fillip in the second decade of the 20th Century when Kailasam (Bangalore) and Narayanrao Huilgol (Gadag) wrote their first original plays. To begin with, they were a protest against the melodramatic commercial theatre. Secondly, they touched current social problems; and thirdly, they did away with music, dance and irrelevent comedy. Kailasam was a genius with his ready wit. Vasudeva Vinodini Sabha, Kannada Amateurs etc., were the new groups. There were playwrights like Ksheerasagar, A.N. Krishna Rao, Parvatavani, Kaiwar Raja Rao, Sri Ranga and others. In the earlier years, the amateur theatre was mostly a theatre to be heard. The amateur theatre was a protest against the artificiality of professional theatre. The language of the dialogues was as near the colloquial style as the pompous, artificial dramatic rhetoric of the commercial theatre was farther from it. It was this which brought about an intimacy between an audience and the play. After Independence, amateur theatre saw a spurt of activity. Academies were established, subsidies were granted, drama festivals were conducted and compititions were arranged. National school of Drama established in Delhi trained some aspirants from Karnataka along with others. Sri Ranga introduced them to the Kannada amateur theatre. In the commercial theatre the audience used to watch a great actor or listen to a great singer in that particular troupe but in the case of amateur theatre they went to watch the play itself. The latter part of the twentieth century was a period of assimilation of various Western ideas on theatre and following some of their practices regarding theoritical activity. Due to these inputs, contemporary theatre movement gained momentum. In 1945, Parvathavani's 'Bahaddur Ganda' (a transcreation) was staged 150 times continuously in which child prodigy Yamuna Murthy, the first lady artiste to appear on the Amateur Stage, played the lead role. Among the playwrights of the romantic period, Sriranga and G.B.Joshi could understand the new wave of theatre and wrote plays accordingly, and this happened after 1955, the reason being a change of outlook with the advent of freedom to the country.
Among the present day playwrights Girish Karnad, Lankesh, Chandrashekar Patil, Chandrashekara Kambara, B.C. Ramachandra Sharma, A.K. Ramanujan, Keertinatha Kurthakoti, N.Ratna and Puchante are the important people who contributed to the movement. New directors like B.Chandrashekar, B.V.Karanth, M.S.Nagaraj, K.V. Subbanna and N.Ratna rose to the occasion, plays like 'Yayati', Tughlaq', 'Kelu Janamejaya', Teregalu', 'Jokumaraswamy', 'Appa', 'Kunta Kunta KuTuvatti', 'Neelikagada', 'Neralu 'Brahmarakshasa', 'Ellige', 'Yamala Prashne' etc., are important and popular even to this day.
Sriranga has been a pioneer in this field. He has about 45 plays to his credit and all his plays reflect social situations in the state. 'Harijanavara', 'Prapancha Panipattu', 'Sandhyakala', 'Shoka Chakra', Kelu Janamejaya', 'Nee Kode Naa Bide', 'Swargakke Mure Bagilu', and Agnisakshi' are some notable plays of Sriranga. The contributions of others are equally significant. Among them G.B.Joshi, Girish Karnad, P.Lankesh, Chandrashekara Kambara are very important. Some plays worthy of mention of these writers are Sattavara neralu, 'Ma Nishada', 'Hayavadana', 'Anju Mallige', 'Hittina Hunja', 'Kranthi Bantu Kranthi', 'Sangya Balya', 'Baka', 'Neralu.', 'Neeli Kagada', 'Jokumaraswamy' etc. Read more on Theatre of Karnataka
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