Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

The story of Nagarathnamma, on stage

— Photo: N. Sridharan

Potent performance: Actors performing ‘Sruti Smriti – Kriti’, a rehearsed reading based on ‘The Devadasi and the Saint – the Life and Times of Bangalore Nagarathnamma’, at the Kalakshetra Foundation in Chennai on Saturday.

CHENNAI: All that has been heard and remembered of Bangalore Nagarathnamma was strung together with song, dance and dialogue to introduce a new creation, V. Sriram’s ‘The Devadasi and the Saint – the Life and Times of Bangalore Nagarathnamma’, here on Saturday.

The rehearsal reading of the book, which is to be released shortly, was scripted and directed by Prasanna Ramaswamy.

‘Sruti, Smriti – Kriti’ at Kalakshetra Foundation exploited the auditorium’s acoustics to deliver a performance sans mikes. The story of a courageous, talented and adventurous woman is a mediated text, the performance insisted.

At one point, the actors seem to break into a squabble on whether one of her actions can be given ‘a feminist angle’.

The reading opened with mock presentations of academics on the ways in which devadasis have been described. These women were literate and highly accomplished, sometimes also patrons of the arts, the actors pointed out.

The story of Nagarathnamma was then told with many little nuggets of information that the Carnatic music fan is sure to treasure. She was proficient in Sanskrit and knew a fair amount of Kannada, Telugu and English.

She was among the earliest artistes to pay income tax. She designed a portable tambura when the existing tamburas proved too cumbersome to take on her trips to various towns to give performances. The author of the book, Mr. Sriram, was among the actors.

The soul of the reading was the occasional powerful rendition of Carnatic ragas, which she had been inspired by or performed, by three young male actors.

Nirmala Lakshman, Joint Editor, The Hindu, said that Bangalore Nagarathnamma was a revolutionary in her way of life and had played a pioneering role in the uplift of devadasis.

It was heartening to note that such kinds of art forms exist at a time when the media was giving space only to those cultural forms that were heavily influenced by cinema, she said.

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