Opening Scene

by Adya Rangacharya Shashi Deshpande

Yesteryear's giant of Kannada literature, Adya Rangacharya - or Shriranga, as he came to be known - had many such epiphanic moments. That was how the child of an orthodox Brahmin jagirdar family went from watching, at first wide-eyed, village aatas put up by farm labourers to critically observing full-fledged natakas in the cities, taking in the theatre scene in London to finally writing - and often performing in - more than a hundred skilfully developed plays. There was no genre of writing that Shriranga did not touch. Creative writer and critic, he also penned a vast body of scholarly treatises on subjects that ranged from drama to philosophy and philology. His English translation of the Natyashashtra remains the definitive source of reference for most students of theatre. But as his memoirs reveal, his first and most abiding love was drama they record, without pomp or sentiment, the genesis and development of a brilliant Kannada dramatist. His daughter Shashi Deshpande's translation and her introduction to her father's life in theatre will bring him under the spotlight for a whole new audience.

185 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Anbu · Rating 3 out of 5]

My knowledge on theatres and dramas are very minimal and it is zero on Kannada theatres. I bought this book because the translator was Shashi Deshpande and also it was interesting to see the book was a dramatist’s memoir. The book turned out to be a good read. It was very interesting to know about the Kannada and Marathi theatres pre-independence. It also covered some of the dramas the author (Shriranga – A prominent Kannada Dramatist) got to watch in England.

The drama, the second part of the book, was equally good. The radical story and the post-modernist way of involving the dramatist and the spectator as part of the drama was so intriguing. To think that this drama was written in 1950s makes me wonder how advanced this person was.