Loka Shakuntala
The stylized colours and costumes were used for the king, the queen, the hunter chief, Mathali, Sarwadamana and the raakshasa (the giant). Since different characters had to be made up differently following the scheme of colours and costumes prescribed for each type, we could bring on the stage the entire gamut of colours and costumes made use of in yakshagana. (In yakshagana, the costume prescribed for a heroic woman engaged in war involves wearing what is known as kase seere; that is, wearing the sari in such a way that both its hems-pallava-are pulled in between the legs from the front to the rear and hitched up at the waist so that the sari wraps the legs like the limbs of a pair of trousers facilitating easy movement. The queen Hamsapadika created as a woman hailing from the mountain regions that practice a bohemian lifestyle was made to wear this costume. The young girl wearing kase seere and a headgear suggestive of horns became a symbolic deer.) Other characters were made-up in colours and costumes that looked natural to them. (This convention is followed in Yakshagana also). In all, we decided upon stylized costume for six characters and realistic (natural) dresses for the remaining twenty or so. This was very much in tune with the ground plan.
Beginning with the bows and arrows, we reduced the properties of the characters and of the stage as well to the very minimum and used them suggestively (symbolically) in the true yakshagana style. In come four or five places, we used with minor changes the small-screens that are used in yakshagana when a character appears on the stage for the first-time.
The play was performed in an open air theatre, on a open air platform. The spectators could sit on almost all the three sides. There was a tree adjacent to the platform. That was used a part of the stage. A screen, eight feet high, was fixed at the rear of the stage. Following Prasanna's suggestion, we painted this screen, and continuous with it, the floor of the stage as well, with dull white colour. A door was fixed on either end of the rear-screen to facilitate entry and exit. A small dias of about one and a half foot height was built just adjacent to the rear screen to seat the bhaagawata and the instrumentalists. Placed in fronts of this dias was a small platform about half a foot in height. And placed on this platform as is the practice in Yakshagana was a small table that was to work as the chariot, the throne or a plain seat to sit and so on, depending upon the contest. The lighting arrangement was simple. The tree-shades were made to fall on the rear screen only during the first half because of the ashrama scenes in it. The colour schemes in terms of light was a follows: the first part started with light blue, when moved on to deep orange, and then finally turned into the red of the evening; the second part started with deep blue, then moved on to deep orange, and then on to red, and then turned blue in the final scene. And all of a sudden, there was this deep orange again, at the last moment of the epilogue (bharatavaakya).
In short, this was the audiovisual structure of the textually evolved ground-plan and its 'fallouts' viz., dialogues, songs, dances, colours, costumes and so on.
It was my desire to be able to show the audience the memory-oblivion love-story of Dushyanta and Shakuntala in the main, and on etching of the cultures and lifestyles of the people belonging to different classes and communities in the background, and the ashrama culture and the courtly culture in the foreground. In all, the play was rehearsed for thirty-five days. For the first two weeks, but only in the mornings, the songs and dances of yakshagana were practiced. In the next three weeks both in the mornings as well as evenings, the play was practiced in full. Actually, I felt that the training period was too short and, in addition, I was also worried that I had no knowledge of Hindi.
Looking back I feel surprised that this production was possible at all in such a short period and in spite of many limitations. Hence it is only natural that I name the resource personnel that made it possible. One: Manjunatha Prabhu, a good artists with years of experience, and Gopala Heranjala, a teenager with unusual competence for his age-these two Yakshagana experts helped the production by imparting necessary training. Two: the students who had already had training for three years, worked for this production with love and devotion. Except for playing the mridangam and the chande, the students did everything including bhaagawathike, that is, singing the Yakshagana way.
Many a times, it was actually their unbridled enthusiasm that guided me in moulding the play. The vague picture of Hamsapadika I had in my mind, took its concrete shape when I happened to see a girl perform the yakshagana dance in her own way. The dance performed by a boy from Ladakh could very well match that of the best of our yakshagana artists.
That I was directing the play did not make me feel unduly proud at any time during the production; this I recall now. We keep mouthing endlessly the cliche that drama is group work. But to realise it is actual practice is exhilarating indeed.
*This production note for LOK SHAKUNTALA was written by K.V. Subbanna for the NSD production of 1986. It has been translated by Jaswanth Jadhav from Kannada to English.
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