There are already a number of pioneers of the theatre who have begun to mould a new tradition out of the old. A great deal of the dance drama perfected by Uday Shankar at his Almora centre, as well as the shadow plays he created after his first revivals of interest in the dances of India, are cases in point. The Rhythm of Life was, for instance, an amalgam of motifs taken from the rich storehouse of people's memory and transformed through the organization which Shankar had borrowed from Europe�

The adaptation by the various language groups of the Indian People's Theatre Association, of the ancient Tamashas and Powadas in Western India and the folk forms of Andhra illustrate the same process.

In this context let us take the surviving folk forms of Andhra in South India and see what use has been made of them by the People's Theatre. The main forms current there were as follows:

(1) Burrakathas (bardic recitals and folk songs);
(2) Harikatha;
(3) Veedhi Natakan (open-air dramas);
(4) Regular plays;
(5) Choruses.

Burrakathas or bardic recitals, were the most popular of all folk forms. The context of these was generally supplied by a racy poetic and prose narrative like the Ballad of Venkataramani, the boy who ate his mother's ears�During the prolonged decay which marked the history of feudal society when the position of the village bard had become reduced to a mere hanger-on at the nobleman's court, the bardic recital became the heritage of the beggars�

I have had occasion to see how the groups of the Indian People's Theatre Association in Andhra have rescued this form from the ignorant, who practiced it as a formula and how, by composing new ballads with fresh social content, they have combined with the natural vigour of the old form a new urgency of conscience, without diminishing any of the gaiety and joy which is inherent in the form itself�

The newest ballads composed for Burrakathas display a variety of thematic content from the life of the peasants to social reform and the Bengal famine�The traditional use of Harikatha was for the narration of stories from the epics and the Pauranas. Song, prose, poetry and dance were all interwoven by the artist who was called Haridas, servant of Vishnu. The people's theatre groups have taken over several Haridases and written up popular themes of everyday life in the convention of the Harikatha narrative�

Singing mendicants are a common feature of life in India but they abounded in Andhra, dressed in strange garb, wandering through the land, fortune-telling, selling medicines�Here, as in dealing with other folk forms, the Indian People's Theatre Association has retained the old style but changed the content.

Instead of diagnosing bodily ills, the mendicants now diagnose social diseases, prescribe appropriate methods of healing�and (thus) rousing the community to action. The fortune-teller now foretells the fate of whole peoples and nations in terms of social analysis�

For centuries, Veedhi Natakam, or the open-air stage, seems to have been used by itinerant dramatic troupes in the villages of Andhra. But with the coming of modern Western drama with all its paraphernalia of elaborate stage-sets and footlights, the convention fell into disrepute in the eyes of the more snobbish town-dwellers. The taboo was further encouraged by the movies.

But, as in the neighbouring Tamilnad where the open-air play Teruvukk-kootu was popular the Andhra open-air stage employed a highly developed technique like the Kathakali of Malabar, being only less complicated in regard to the make-up of the actors. Now this is forming the basis of the modern play.

A play called Hitler Prabhavan, the downfall of Hitler, was written in this Veedhi Natakam style and was an enormous success� Kolatam, the popular folk dance of Andhra, was like the 'garba' of Gujerat, a vigorous and muscular effort. This, and the more feminine Lambadi and Bathakamma dances are now being used as the basis of dance dramas and ballets which retain the costume and the steps of the original but evolve patterns which can awaken the aesthetic emotions at a higher level�

To me the energy and seriousness with which the Andhra Indian People's Theatre Association have transformed their folk-forms is an example of what could be done in the other linguistic zones�