How can theatre be filled with 50-year-olds?" This desire to give a platform to the "brilliant young minds working in theatre today" helped frame the theme for this edition of Ranga Shankara's annual theatre festival, says its curator, Surendranath. He also happens to be the artistic director of Bangalore's best known venue for plays. Titled Samprati: A new generation directs Girish Karnad, the festival will on go till October 27. "Of course, Karnad having recently completed five decades of writing plays came as a boon to us, and this is a tribute to his work," says Surendranath, a graduate of Delhi's National School of Drama. "Karnad is the most important playwright in India. When we were in college he showed us how to look at life and interpret it in theatre. His plays are being performed even 50 years after he first wrote them," he says.
The festival is thus a combination of the new and the classic - a "bridge between tradition and modernity". It is an opportunity for the next generation of directors who, as Surendranath says, would not even have been born when Karnad wrote his first play Yayati (1961), to present their vision of the iconic playwright's works.
The eight directors from Pune, Pondicherry, Delhi, Thiruvananthapuram and Bangalore, among others, were chosen based on their interpretation of the plays they had sent to Ranga Shankara when contacted for the festival. Apart from Uney Purey Shahar Ek, based on Karnad's latest play Baked Beans on Toast, which was staged earlier this year by Pune's Aasakta, all the other productions will be brand new, conceived and written for the festival. All of Karnad's classics, from Nagamandala to The Fire & The Rain, will be staged over the course of 10 days, beginning with Tughlaq in Kannada by Bangalore's Samudaya. "This will be a landmark in the landscape of Indian theatre," says Arundhati Nag, founder of Ranga Shankara who has now, in her own words, passed on the baton to Surendranath. The directors, she says, have been given complete artistic freedom to interpret the plays according to their vision and although they are young, would already have directed at least four to five plays.
Elaborating on this year's edition of the festival, Nag says the directors have been invited to stay back and watch the other plays so that there could be dialogue and collaboration. "Troupes that perform at festivals usually stage their play and then leave immediately. But we are giving them an opportunity to stay on," she says. In addition to the main plays being staged, one of the evenings will also see various theatre groups from Bangalore enacting different scenes from Karnad's plays. Apart from the plays, there will also be seminars, film screenings and a course on art appreciation by critic Sadanand Menon. The seminars include a discussion on the portrayal of women in Karnad's plays and "Girish Karnad on stage" in other languages. Vijaya Mehta, one of the panelists for the latter, directed his Hayavadana in German over 35 years ago. "So there will be discussions in mother tongue and other tongues," adds Nag with a chuckle. Eight of Karnataka's best known artists would also be unveiling works inspired by Karnad and his works. "Yusuf Arakkal, for example, has drawn a portrait of Girish that will be unveiled at the festival," she says. It's not just the plays that matter at a theatre festival that matters but also the ancillaries, she says.
The playwright himself has been extremely supportive, says Surendranath, who has worked with him in television. "I asked him rather gingerly what he thought of the idea - in fact, I mailed him. And he replied saying a playwright could ask for nothing more!" He has also given his assurance that he would be present every day, and conduct a session on how he writes, he adds.
Nag's own association with Karnad began from the 1970s, when she met him on the sets of the Kannada film Ondanondu Kaladalli, which he was directing, and her husband, the late Shankar Nag, was acting in. But despite their long association, she hesitates to call him a 'friend' "His stature is such that he can only be a mentor, not a friend. I still think twice about what I say in front of him," she laughs.
For the full schedule of the festival, log on to www.rangashankara.org. Tickets available at www.bookmyshow.com and www.indianstage.in
