Young and the old

Kattale Belaku and Ninneya Naale, staged as part of Kannada Natakotsava at Ranga Shankara, fore-grounded complex and profound ideas from well-known texts

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VASP’s Kattale Belaku and SARC’s Ninneya Naale were among the seven plays that were staged as part of ‘Kannada Natakotsava’, an initiative of Ranga Shankara that sought to bring young directors and actors to the fore. While Kattale Belaku was a stage adaptation of veteran playwright Sriranga’s original text by the same name, Ninneya Naale took a cue from the character of Draupadi etched by H.S.Venkatesha Murthy in Uriya Uyyale and constructed a text of its own. Both plays were, therefore, grappling with complex ideas and characters- not all of which were easy to handle on stage. The former managed to do justice to the debate outlined by Sriranga but the latter struggled to merge Venkatesha Murthy’s Draupadi with its narrative.

In Kattale Belaku, a renowned playwright does not wish to write anymore. No amount of coaxing seems to be able to convince him to pen his next play because he believes that nothing inspires him anymore. Directed by Vinay Shastry, this play, with its impeccable comic timing and strong performances, kept the audience engaged throughout.

So, a producer and a manager from a theatre company set out to cajole the defeated playwright to write a play for them. In order to fuel his creative mind, they suggest multiple scenarios that could work as a prospective plot for the play: a married woman who runs away with her lover, a couple who contemplate suicide after being thrown out of the house by their parents etc. What is remarkable is that as and when these story ideas are described to the playwright, the same scenes take place around his house.

Are these characters actually real people and is the playwright oblivious to the world around him? Will he be inspired if he just observes people around him? Or, are the characters in real life inspired from those in novels, crime sagas and epics? Should the playwright instead, look for an idea within the literary ambit?

The play does not believe in providing answers to these questions. In fact, towards the end of the play, the playwright is heard saying that he will not write until he is truly inspired. So, in a sense, the play does not resolve his search for a muse. This is the beauty of Sriranga’s text and Kattale Belaku brings it out well.

Ninneya Naale is the story of Madhubala and her grand daughter. Their lives mirror each other in many ways. So, Madhubala’s past becomes her grand daughter’s future as suggested in the title. The play appeared rather ambitious in its scope. It sought to discuss, among many other things, the predicament of women, their choices, expectations of them etc. And at regular intervals, it tried to squeeze in snippets from Draupadi’s life too. However, the link between their story and Draupadi’s was missing. Further, the audience barely anticipated the rather dramatic turn that the personal stories of the two characters took towards the end of the play. Madhubala’s lover Lakshmana ended up marrying her daughter and thereby fathered Madhubala’s granddaughter. This is revealed only in the end of the play. But this portion and the scenes depicting Draupadi’s turmoil did not appear to have any relationship with each other.

The actors too could have fared better. There were some moments of the play which bordered on being melodramatic and lost appeal. What was remarkable though was the effort that was put into set design in both these plays. Music too complemented the productions satisfactorily.

Taking a complex text and transferring it on stage is no mean feat and the team of Ninneya Naale under Avinash Shatamarshana’s direction deserves credit for that. However, the challenge before them was to ensure that some of those profound ideas in the text are not lost in translation.