A 12-day workshop by Samudaya for theatre directors is currently under way here in a bid to rejuvenate the theatre movement in rural areas of the State.
Samudaya state joint secretary K.S. Vimala said the workshop began on October 10, and will continue till October 21. Samudaya was the first radical theatre movement in Karnataka to fight the internal Emergency in the 1970s through cultural activities such as street plays and jathas.
Twenty activists from different units of Samudaya are participating in the workshop.
Resource persons
Sripad Bhat is the director of the workshop and noted theatre personalities such as Chidamabara Rao Jambe, Prasanna, Sudhanwa Deshpande, Suresh Anagalli, Iqbal Ahmed, A.M. Prakash and Damodara Naika will be resource persons.
“Participants will be introduced to important literary texts and convinced on the need to rejuvenate theatre at the grassroots,” Mr. Bhat said.
He said the theatre movement in rural areas in the State had been badly hit by electronic media and there was a need to train directors who could restructure the movement.
“Those trained by established theatre schools are reluctant to focus on rural areas,” said Mr. Bhat, who heads the Chintana Ranga Adhyayana Kendra in Honnavar. Because of his efforts, Seshagiri, a small village in Hanagal taluk, has become an important centre for rural theatre.
“When I read out the script of Ushaharana, a play by Shantakavi, during a theatre workshop for unlettered agricultural labourers in Seshagiri, they could memorise it without any difficulty,” he recalls.
The play was staged at least 20 times and residents there have built an auditorium by spending Rs.80 lakh to take forward theatre movement.
“Technology is dominating creativity. We have to blame the theatre education, which of late has started depending more on technology than people. Actors have been groomed to use theatre as a stepping stone to join the visual media,” Mr. Bhat said.
Discounting the general perception that the theatre movement was losing its sheen owing to the onslaught of the visual media and migration of theatre artistes to other fields, he said: “It may not have the grand narratives and grandeur of 1970s, but theatre is vibrant in rural parts of the State.”
The workshop is on at the Jaibheema Bhavan near the Kannada Bhavan, Bangalore.
