The present volume has compiled excerpts from a range of writings on theatre that give the reader a view of the varied modes of thinking. They are arranged into six sections, apart from a photo essay. It is not intended to be a history book; but a sourcebook that can lead to a more comprehensive account of Kannada theatre history, or complement the existing history books. Most of the writings in this volume are appearing in English for the first time. The book hopes to be of value to experts as well as theatre practitioners to understand the varied and nuanced narratives within what is normally put together as the history of modern Kannada Theatre.
The Ramayana, one of the two pre-eminent Hindu epics, has played a foundational role in many aspects of India's arts and social norms. For centuries, people learned this narrative by watching, listening, and participating in enactments of it. Although the Ramayana's first extant telling in Sanskrit dates back to ancient times, the story has continued to be retold and rethought through the centuries in many of India's regional languages, such as Hindi, Tamil, and Bengali. The narrative has provided the basis for enactments of its episodes in recitation, musical renditions, dance, and avant-garde performances. This volume introduces non-specialists to the Ramayana's major themes and complexities, as well as to the highly nuanced terms in Indian languages used to represent theater and performance. Two introductions orient readers to the history of Ramayana texts by Tulsidas, Valmiki, Kamban, Sankaradeva, and others, as well as to the dramaturgy and aesthetics of their enactments. The contributed essays provide context-specific analyses of diverse Ramayana performance traditions and the narratives from which they draw. The essays are clustered around the shared themes of the politics of caste and gender; the representation of the anti-hero; contemporary re-interpretations of traditional narratives; and the presence of Ramayana discourse in daily life.
This book looks at adaptations, translations and performance of Shakespeare's productions in India from the mid-18th century, when British officers in India staged Shakespeare's plays along with other English playwrights for entertainment, through various Indian adaptations of his plays during the colonial period to post-Independence period. It studies Shakespeare in Bengali and Parsi theatre at length. Other theatre traditions, such as Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi, have been included. The book dwells on the fascinating story of the languages of India that have absorbed Shakespeare's work and have transformed the original educated Indian's Shakespeare into the popular Shakespeare practice of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the unique urban-folkish tradition in postcolonial India.
The writings of K.V. Subbanna reveal the range, dimension and courage of an intellectual who never, ever, let the pressures of contemporary cultural politics affect his free and open enquiries into the nature of the culture of the land he was rooted in. K.V. Subbanna was an organic intellectual who drew his intellectual powers from a sense of community that was vibrant and alive and never from the context of a centralising nation-state and its dominant quality of homogenizing practically every aspect of social and cultural life. The spirit of decentralisation was what a community symbolised for Subbanna and all his writings – on literature, theatre, cinema, language – engender this vital principle of decentralization. For that matter even the smallest community was, for him, a complex, heterogeneous universe, quite autonomous at one level, yet, at another, an integral part of the entire globe... In other words, for Subbanna concern for the community also meant a deep commitment to the whole world for the two are part of, and grow from, each other. It was this faith in the 'local' and the 'global' that helped Subbanna locate Ninasam in Heggodu while drawing from ideas, thinkers, artistes from all over the world... This book contains three sections comprising several essays and lectures by Subbanna written and delivered at various points of time; an interview that he conducted and two interviews others conducted with him; and tributes paid to him by two individuals who are important cultural spokespersons of our times and happened to know Subbanna quite intimately. An English book by Akshara Prakashana
The book Echoes of Tradition : Exploring Girish Karnad’s Theatrical Pilgrimage is an amalgamation of the Indian theatre tradition and the modern sensibility. It explores the mythological framework, the historic and the folk traditions as used in the works of Girish Karnad. Rooted in the rich cultural and theatrical sensibility the book presents the indigenous and the contemporary aesthetics as woven in the plays of Girish Karnad. The western dramaturgical structure infused with the modern theatrical tradition along with the use of myths and folklore refers to the complexities of the present age and apprehension about future. The book encapsulates Karnad’s experiments with the technique and his how his plays forge a bond between the past and the present.
The Reception of Aeschylus' Plays through Shifting Models and Frontiers addresses the need for an integrated approach to the study and staging of Aeschylus’ plays. It offers an invigorating discussion about the transmission and reception of his plays and explores the interrelated tasks of editing, translating, adapting and remaking them for the page and the stage. The volume seeks to reshape current debates about the place of his tragedies in the curriculum and the repertory in a scholarly manner that is accessible and innovative. Each chapter makes a significant and original contribution to its selected topic, but the collective strength of the volume rests on its simultaneous appeal to readers in theatre studies, classical studies, performance studies, comparative studies, translation studies, adaptation studies, and, naturally, reception studies.
