Kannada theatre seems to have come a full circle

Resurgence of a new kind
The Hindu

Kannada theatre seems to have come a full circle
REVIVAL Ranga Shankara is drawing theatre audiences in a cultural zone defined by the middle- to upper-middle-class Bangalorean

Kannada theatre is finding a revival of an extraordinary kind. The plays that are finding favour with the enthusiastic audiences are not new plays, translations or "remakes" from Marathi theatre. The plays are the Bangalore-grown social comedies of T.P. Kailasam. Who could have imagined such a thing?

For the uninitiated, the name T.P. Kailasam means a legend of the Kannada world. His songs and plays in Kannada and English make a unique treasure of our literature. His plays, in a highly-contextualised comedy-of-manners style, wrenched the Kannada stage from the traditional, social and mythological narratives and placed it abruptly in a cosmopolitan, modern time-space with all the attendant conflicts. The extraordinary point about the enthusiasm about Kailasam is that he died in 1946.

"There are two or three reasons for it," says eminent stage actor C.R. Simha, who has been part of another revival of Kailasam more than a generation ago. In 1983, Simha devised a one-actor show, Typical T.P. Kailasam, along with the late playwright Narasimhan. Simha has done hundreds of shows of Typical TP... ("I stopped counting after 150!" he says) both in India and abroad. The show continues to draw audiences even now, so Kailasam's relevance is not so newfound after all.

But Simha feels there is a new context for it, even if it plays on the sub-conscious of the audience. One reason, Simha feels, is that in the arts — literature, music or even fashion — the response comes in waves or cycles. A revival is always a possibility. But in the specific case of Kailasam plays: "you just go there and respond to the feeling in them. Kailasam's plays are about human emotions, relationships... they are without `isms'," says Simha.

Here and now

But it is not that Kailasam is all witty dialogue and no message. Crucially, Simha points out, the plays address a social context that is absurdly so here and now: The English-Kannada mixture of the plays and the cosmopolitanism that creates conflicts with traditional values, juxtaposed so effectively in family settings. The emerging new woman, asserting her intelligence and understanding of her society and demanding respect, poised against the fading old widow, with shaven head and in traditional red, would find her metaphorical equivalent in the economically independent young woman today.

Young stage director and actor Balaji Manohar, who could be credited with chancing upon this revival of Kailasam, says the shows runs full, even with many repeat runs. "When I did BanDavaaLavillada BaDaayi in February this year, I felt it was so relevant. What I liked in the script was that the language gave me a context to culture and meaning to so many lost words... it was so colloquial," he says. Manohar observes that the audiences are mostly led by the elderly, followed by their children in their mid-40s, who in turn bring in their own young to acquaint them with nostalgia.

But Simha's understanding of it is different. In Tollu-Gatti (Hollow-Solid), Simha points out, when the self-centred high achiever son is counterpoised against the socially integrated but academically poor brother, there is a new contextual meaning. "The pursuit of car, career, money, position... when parents and the world around suggest to the boy who didn't make it to an IT career: `You are a failure!' the Kailasam play poses, `Are you?'" argues Simha. "When the woman in Ammavra GanDa refuses to be treated like a doormat, you see the relevance," he says. Even if the interpretation is not explicit, the audience can sense it, he feels.

It may be relevant to point out that the revival is associated with Ranga Shankara: the hall, in location and artistic positioning, places itself between an old Bangalore and a surging, ultra-cosmopolitan new Bangalore. The theatre, for the first time in the city, is pulling audiences for non-Kannada shows in a cultural zone that is defined by the middle- to upper-middle-class Bangalorean. In a sense of "positioning," the zone extending from old Basavanagudi, through Jayanagar and into J.P. Nagar, and their surroundings, is the middle-class city through the three generations that Balaji Manohar talks about.

"For an audience that hasn't heard it before, the dialogue of T.P. Kailasam brings energy and vitality... they find it in the wit and the humour... in all the wisecracks," says Simha. There is no question. For a person who grew up on Kailasam humour, this is the stuff of legend. But even for me, having seen Simha on stage doing a Kailasam play more than 35 years ago, the speech on the responsibilities of a corporator (Home Rule), the sarcasm of the widow towards pretentious foreign names (Jnaana Villa is the name of the house: "Must you broadcast it?" she asks) and the mindless craze for the English language (Huttadalli Hutta) are eerie in their sudden new significance.

If you are in the mood, I could do a full evening of Kailasam anecdotes. Or go watch him. It's on again.