Miscellaneous - This Day That Age   

dated June 24, 1956: The Indian stage

Mr. Egon Vietta, German author and critic, now in Madras, gave a warning to Indian dramatists against aping the cinema and pleaded for the revival of the ancient dramaturgy with a simplified stagecraft. Addressing a meeting at the Music Academy, Mylapore, on June 22, he said the ancient tradition was actually lost in the present-day theatre in India. It was very strange that while he as a foreigner was able to appreciate the potentialities of the ancient Indian stage, these traditions were not properly utilised by Indians themselves. In the plays which he witnessed in some of the metropolitan cities in the country, he found there was too much emphasis on the technical side and scenic splendour. This bane of copying the cinema should be stopped and simplification of the stagecraft, as it was in ancient days, should be adopted if the Indian stage were to regain its pre-eminent position. Mr. Vietta said there was little difference between the ancient Indian stage and the present German stage.

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