Ninasam, founded in 1949 as an amateur cultural organisation, will turn fifty at the turn of this century. Ninasam Theatre Institute, begun in 1980 with objectives of a more formal kind, is now 17 years old. Ninasam Tirugata, an itinerant theatre repertory, formed in 1985 with the alumni of the Theatre Institute and with the aim of taking the best of world drama to the people of our state is now into its twelfth year.

Many times in these years I have felt a urge to travel back in time and recover with a greater clarity - an advantage that a retrospective normally provides- the specific springs of inspiration and strength that came to sustain us through all these long years, and through the many crises, and complications that are only inevitable in the life of any organisation. Unfortunately, however, my powers of recollection have not been what they used to be in the past, with the result that at present my memories have come to be indistinctly fused and sometimes even confused with one another, some of them today surviving more as myths and lore of a personal kind than as exact facts.

One such recollection of mine concerns my first reading of James Brandon�s �Theatre in South-east Asia�, published, if my memory serves me right, around 1966-67, just at the time when Ninasam, after its nascent high - tide of activity and a subsequent period of ebb, had once again begun to find a renewed vigour. Brandon was a man who had carried out an extensive study of the theatre forms of Asian countries, particularly Indonesia, in the 1960�s. One specific point which Brandon had argued out with corroborative facts and figures in his work came as a great and pleasant surprise to us then. From whatever we had read, and had heard from those fellow-countrymen who had visited those countries, we had come to form a strong impression that theatre-culture in Europe and the United States had grown beyond any possible comparison with that of our own. We had heard that in those parts of the developed world governments, local town and city councils, and even private industrial houses were providing patronage and financial assistance to theatre troupes, and that the primary welfare aid of the British Government went towards bread and the second, towards theatre.

Brandon�s work, however, gave us a completely different picture. There he conclusively demonstrated that if one were to take into account the ratio between a nation�s population and the number of active, professional theatre troupe there, such a ratio in the case of Asian nations was about 20 times higher than that of either Europe or the U.S. This newly-discovered fact that theatre culture was so much more stronger in our own countries than in the so-called developed part of the world had brought us a wonder as well as a sense of pride.

This, however, was a thing read, wondered at, and forgotten a long time ago; it just sprang back to my memory once more now. Coming to India�s own case, it is said that Bengal and Maharashtra stand at the forefront of theatre-culture here. Regions like Kerala and Manipur, for their part, have been treasure troves of theatre-tradition since ancient times, and have preserved traditional forms to this day, Justifiably earning an eminence precisely for this reason. Against such a rich background, Karnataka, can, at best, be regarded as a region with a median average incidence of theatre activities. Even so, it displays a theatre-culture of a dense and plentiful variety.

A quick, cursory glance provides ample proof of this. The South and the North Kanara districts have the Yakshagana form which within its own limited geographical domain of three or four districts has had a life of such splendour that far surpasses that of even the Company theatre which reigned supreme over the entire state for about five decades. In fact, between the two, Yakshagana came to influence the general life of its community far more intimately, intensely and deeply. Like rice, gruel, and coconut oil, Yakshagana, too, has become a natural and indispensable part of everyday life in these districts, cutting across barriers of caste, creed, and class. The daily routine life, interaction, and collective and individual memory and carry unmistakable echoes of the rhythm and diction of Yakshagana. Besides the numerous well-established and famed performing troupes - melas, got together by the laymen of nearly every village. Professional communities life fishermen and boatmen have even come to evolve distinct Yakshagana styles of their own, and a still more astounding case is that of the Siddis, a Negroid tribe brought into India from alien shores during colonial times, which too, has a Yakshagana sub-form of its own. Not only villages, towns and cities, too, reverberate with the drumbeats of Yakshagana, be the occasion a religious festival, a social gathering, or a school or college annual day. And, when the monsoons begins and brings to a halt the outdoor performances, or if there is a group of enthusiasts who can do everything except dance, there comes up the alternative form of �taalamaddale�, Yakshagana without its dance, costume, and make-up elements. At times of festivals nearly every open field, frontyard and verandah in a village turns into a taalamaddale stage. Sometimes there are even �little, melas� consisting of a mere three or four amateur artists who, braving a lack of financial capacity to get up a regular troupe, instead themselves travel door to door, providing �little� performances. And, migrant workers from the coastal areas who have come to settle amongst us amidst the Sahyadri range of hills just cannot fall to sleep without hearing a yakshagana song, even if it has to be one sung to themselves in their rustic rude voice.

Such passion for the traditional performing arts is to be found all over Karnataka. If my region has its yakshagana, the northern regions have their own respective and unique forms like doddaata, sannaata, dappinaata, Shri Kirishna Parijatha, and Sangya-Balya, to name only a few. Sadly, they have not enjoyed the same publicity as yakshagana has, but nevertheless, they all match it is terms of beauty, vigour and popularity, and are as integral to life in their respective areas as are rotti, bhakri, and chuteney. For their part the southern districts have their moodalapaaya, puppet plays, and other little theatre forms. All in all, there could be about fifty such traditional forms in today�s Karnataka, all still living, still flourishing, as if they had originated in contemporary times and not in yester ages. This living canopy of some fifty flowering creepers covers more than half of rural Karnataka.

There is another legacy, too, that of the Company Nataka. Two separate branches of it began and grew to a golden age in both the southern and northern parts of the state in the first half of this century. That glory was of a comparatively short duration but its intensity was immense, with several companies and actors becoming living legends over the entire state.

People not only used to watch company theatre productions but also tried to emulate them as well, with their own tabla and harmonium, wings and painted backdrops, in almost every village and town. Despite the company theatre suffering a decline over the last three or four decades its imitations, however, are still played out with the same enthusiasm as before. Villagers still hire a �master� to teach them theatrical intricacies; get professional actresses to act in their local productions so as to enhance their prestige, and sometimes invite famous actors as guest artists for the lead roles.

Countless individuals, whole families, entire communities were thus possessed by a passion for theatre. In north Karnataka, for instance, families of �chimna�s� (professional actresses) exclusively devoted to theatre camp up. In other areas, I have heard, there are households, perfectly respectable in conventional social terms, who follow the practice, as if it were a �vow�, of turning over their first daughter to the acting profession. In some instances, of course, the �devadasi� and the �veshya� communities take part in theatre activities.

It is an uncommon love that some of our people have for theatre. Shri K.V.Shankaregowda, one of our most illustrious senior political leaders was as fervently committed to theatre as to political and social work. He had even taken, the story goes, a very talented harmonium �master�, then working in a company, to his home and granted him a permanent means of livelihood - a few acres of fertile land - just so that the latter could stay there and teach theatre arts to the people around. It is doubtful whether he had ever spent that much money even while contesting the state assembly elections. He was one who believed that ascending the throne as Dasharatha on stage was as important as ascending to an M.L.A.�s or a minister�s position in real life.

Another person, who was from our neighbouring taluka of Sirsi, spent his entire ancestral property in satiating his appetite for theatre. Till his last breath he continued working in theatre, undaunted by and uncaring for the precarious penurious situation he had driven himself into. Materially he lived an utterly poor life, of course, but on the other hand, playing, nay, living the characters of Gautama Buddha and Samrat Shahjahan on stage, he flooded the hearts of his fellow-beings with compassion and pathos.

Apart from the above-mentioned two - the traditional theatre forms and the Company Nataka there exists a third form in Karnataka, that of modern theatre. It has by and large been an amateur endeavour. Born amidst schools, colleges, and universities in the Southern districts, and on the other hand amongst social and cultural organisations in the northern districts, this movement came to receive vital infusions from some of our greatest literary personalities like Kailasam, Shivarama Karanth, and Shriranga, to mention only a few, who not only wrote plays for the purpose but also engaged themselves with work of the organisational and promotional kind as well. Though this modern school still essentially remains within the parameters of the amateur enterprise, it is equally true that it marked an important turning point in the history of Kannada theatre. It has in recent years come to gain national as well international recognition through the works of artists like B.V.Karanth.

Whatever be the individual history of each of these strands, it is a fact worth noting that the traditional, the Company, and the modern theatre forms never remained insular in Karnataka. On the contrary, the three of them have forever had a living interaction, fighting one against the other as also drawing influences and inspiration one from another, always bringing about a strange admixture or a meaningful and creative confluence. This natural process of mutual conflict and assimilation is what has ultimately constituted the general body of Kannada theatre culture as one finds it today.

Evidence of this synthesising, integrating process are scattered throughout the history of Kannada theatre. For instance, a pioneer like Bellary Raghava was initially deeply interested in and influenced by Western theatre. Later in his life, he came to evolve a distinct mode of his life, he came to evolve a distinct mode of his own by fusing the former with the format of the local Company theatre. Another pioneer, Kailasam, maintained a very intimate relationship with Company theatre even as he was subjecting to biting ridicule its excesses, and trying to strike out a new path. The great Shivarama Karanth, born and nurtured in the heartland of yakshagana, later began to explore other kinds of possibilities in the traditional form. He also wrote and staged plays of his own in the Company Natak mould, attempting to reform the mode itself. Not resting content with all this, he experimented with other newer modes, drawing elements from the Western performing traditions as well. Still later, he returned to yakshagana and made bold new alterations and adaptations it, bringing, in the process, world fame to it. These are only a few examples of a very broad kind, and if one were to go deeper into the specific details of the elements these three modes imbibed from and imparted to one another the list would be a long winding, and probably a never-ending one.

I have indulged in this preamble, quite lengthy as it is, only to establish a seemingly simple but vital truth which simply cannot be glossed over. Every cultural process or movement in always initiated and sustained basically by the community. Conventional opinion, however, tends to ignore this self-evident truth, and argues as if a theatre or a cultural movement has only a feeble life and that it can manage to survive only owing to single-handed efforts made by some solitary individual, or organisation, working furiously away in some specific place. This can only be a �pathetic fallacy� of a different kind, to say the least.

Now, to leave those general utterances and to come to my personal theatre experience, which, in fact, was what I wanted to share with you: My village, my region, my community were no exception to the larger process I described above. They, too, had their own share of native performing arts which formed part of our childhood life. At a certain point of time, however, we of the new generation, began to feel that they were all old-fashioned�, fascinated as we were by modern was, at that time, the �new wave�.

The spell exercised by Company Natak in those days was quite extraordinary. People - villagers, townspeople, me, women, and children- would all converge - walking, riding bullock/carts, bicycles, or buses - upon Sagar, the taluka town ten kilometres away, to watch productions by Company troupes, of which there used to be not one but many, some of them camping for as long as two to three months at a time. Their theatre experience only half-complete they would then complement it by their own attempts at theatre art, forming their own amateur groups, and trying to recreate in their own modest manner whatever had seized their minds and hearts while they watched the professional performances. Some of these amateur enterprises would vanish within a short time while some others would manage to survive for long years.

These attempts, localised and insignificant as they might seem, nevertheless contain an interesting history of their respective communities and territories. Around 1942, the time I joined school in a neighbouring hamlet, the very first school in our parts, a man named Achyutharao wrote and produced a play entitled �Vishama Vivaha� for his local amateur group. I had, as the title itself suggests, a �revolutionary� theme, and this little detail, I think, is only indicative of the many �little revolutions� taking place in many little villages of India at that period of time. Equally significant was the fact that those amateur artistes who staged the play were all those who were actively engaged in the modern public institutions of the village then like the middle school, the cooperative, and primary land development bank. This was one experience which every clearly showed to me the meaninglessness of such artificial distinctions that we usually make among our life/activities as politics, religion, society, spirituality culture, agriculture, theatre, education, and so on. Such a reductionist classification is probably a cursed legacy that modern Western education has bestowed upon us. To this day, Western scholars, and their Indian �shadows� continue to futilely and even foolishly debate whether theatre originated in religious rituals or magic and sorcery, or as a materialist response. Leave alone theatre, even our Vedas Upanishads, Adipuranas, and other ancient literary works are all, as simple common sense shows, an amalgam of ethics, metaphysics, moral, and working principles of everyday life. We would only be destroying this holistic perspective of our tradition if we were to try and separate these strands of the fabric of life. This negative, reductionist tendency is, once again, an unfortunate consequence of growing urbanization whereby urban �masses� begin to lose that vital sense of �community� that villages are enriched with and hence, start treating art and culture more as exhibition items than as worshipful observances as the village communes do. James Brandon came very close to this point when he showed that Eastern nations were more rich in theatre traditions than modern western ones.

Even a routine theatre activity in a small community affords undeniable proof of this community-consciousness. Any such activity naturally entails a dimension of close, intimate communication and communion. In such little communities one has a foreknowledge of one�s co-artistes as well as one�s audience. One�s choice of a play to enact, the style to employ, the interpretation to the provided are all governed not merely by one�s own personal preferences but more by the collective conscious or unconscious of one�s community. Caught in such a tension, one is constantly compelled into seeking compromises, and if possible, to explore creative resolutions. It is thus not a mere theatre context but a collective socio-political-cultural context where individual choices have to be tempered with a genuine and profound respect for one�s own flesh and blood, kith and kin, co-beings in the very midst of whom one has to live out one�s life, and act out one�s convictions and concerns. This dual commitment, on the one hand to one�s own self, and on the other to one�s environs, is, in fact, what transforms the seemingly mundane act of staging a theatre piece into a sociocultural process, one which is constantly evolving and is at the same time helping to evolve one�s own self as well as one�s community. It thus becomes a living dialogue from being a simple �dramatic dialogue�, and ultimately a �communion� involving every single individual. In this way, theatre assumes the form of an alternative, implicit communication as contracted with the direct communication, dialogues, or debate in the practical, everyday life context, turning itself into a �paralanguage�, which is what an art form essentially has to be.

Such a framework of half-reality and half-materiality affords a certain pleasant freedom. As I have myself seen, a young man once precluded the possibility of a scolding by his parents over his personal preference for intercaste marriages by loudly proclaiming arguments supportive of his belief not at home but on stage, in the convenient disguise of a character in a play. Another youth who used to smoke furtively in real life blew clouds upon clouds of smoke as a character on stage, right in front of his parents. It was a convenient pretext all right in both the instances, but at the same time it also prepared the parents towards a later acceptance in real life of the natural freedom of children, after treating them to a �little shock� initially during the theatre experience.

Another very interesting aspect of such a theatre experience is that these communities do not indulge in �academic� critical exercises after watching a production. They simply cannot afford to spend time over it, constrained as they are by a thousand quotidian duties. Nonetheless, whatever they have experienced, felt and thought as regards a play gradually percolates into their subconscious where solidifying layer upon layer, play after play, year after year they assume a form and a meaning of their own, which, in most cases, of course, people can only hint at but not consciously or formally articulate. At another level, this process of internalization also involves an �inner dialogue� within each simple individual, invisible, silent, but real all the same. This, I think, is probably what our ancestors tried to define as �rasaanubhava� - art experience.

The richness of such an experience stands out all the more when one compares it with the present-day ideas of theatre like street-theatre, propaganda-theatre, or theatre-in-education. These forms - acknowledging that they have great achievements to their credit- emphasize external, overt dialogue, perhaps at the cost of that �inner, silent, self-dialogue� of the traditional forms which, as regards long-term impact, is more potent and more enduring. A scene in Valmiki Ramayana where Sita trying to convey a point to Rama, says to him �Smaraye na tu shikshaye� (I am only trying to remind you, and not teach you) tellingly illustrates the fundamental strength of traditional theatre�s mode of communication.

Agreed that one cannot find great theatrical or dramatic achievements in those little communities. However, one should never forget the fact that a work of art best conveys itself to us primarily in an intimate environment of which one�s parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends form inseparable parts. Art, like love, is first and best experienced in the lap of mother, in the warmth of family. Love of one�s state, language, and nation, like appreciation of the art of one�s own nation and of the world can follow only from the initial, intimate experience.

Modern Western theatre has fallen prey to a great illusory idea like �intimate theatre�, vainly arguing that physical proximity by itself can evoke emotional and mental intimacy. For us Easterners, however, intimacy and involvement and identification do not necessarily follow from such a restricted and literal technique but rather from proximity of hearts. This is precisely why Sanskrit Theatre does not have the concept of �prekshaka� (spectator) but rather that of �sahridaya� or �samajika�.

Such a process of �social sublimation� is intrinsic to any community theatre activity. I still vividly recall how slaves to our passion for theatre, we used to try and subsume and reconcile every daily life dissension among our folk just so that those differences would not interfere with our theatre activities and that we could go on with the show. Thanks to our zealotry, the shows did go on, but much more importantly, in the long run, they helped us grow stronger as a community, and forced us, theatre-mad youngsters to get involved with other kinds of community work as well; such as cooperative societies, local banks, schools, etc.. This is how life and theatre, life and art interact with, refine and redefine each other in little communities like ours.

There was a larger historical process at work, too, in those days. India had just gained independence and there was an unmatched fervour for committed national reconstruction work then. The great Gandhian dream of modern India as a nation of healthy, happy villages fired our imagination, belonged as we did to a cluster of little hamlets. It was a vision at once microcosmic and macrocosmic, envisaging peace and development for the villages and thereby assuring the entire world of the same. It was an extraordinary and yet utterly practicable utopia and decentralization, nonviolence, freedom and democracy, embracing in one sweep every single human being as well as the whole of mankind.

This multidimensional historical context, I think was the spring that gave birth to and nursed Ninasam, which, in my humble view, is nothing more than one of the numerous little streams emanating from that original source.

That the passage of Independent India, and concurrently, that of my village and my community into the modern era has not been as smooth and fulfilling as foreseen and foreplanned is a fact I would be the first one to admit with all due sorrow and wrath. Temptations, false dreams, empty aspirations have all distracted us from our chosen path. Nevertheless, despite all this, I continue to draw hope and faith from that great dream of Gandhi�s time which to this day keeps providing succour to countless little villages, communities, and institutions like my own.

I am aware, only too well aware, that all this might seem a piteous romanticisation and a vain glorification of our old rural community life. It is, however, not so. I was one of those who rose up in anger and disgust at the age-old misery and dirt in our country, and still am. I t would, I recognize, only be reactionary and suicidal to try and reinstate or reinforce the old life-system, just as it used to be. All that I am endeavouring to do, with my immediate fellow-beings, is to explore those positive possibilities in that old way of life that could show us a new and meaningful path.

I conclude by quoting an excerpt from a letter of 1945 from Gandhi to Nehru, since I feel that it would very appropriately articulate what I have so far been so much struggling to do:

"You will not be able to understand me if you think that I am talking about the villages of today. My ideal village still exists only in my imagination. After all, every human being lives in the world of his own imagination..."


*The above essay has been written by K.V. Subbanna. It has been translated by Jaswanth Jadhav from Kannada to English. The essay has not been published to date. Interested publishers may get in touch with K.V. Akshara at [email protected]