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Lasting innovations

B.V. Karanth's dedication to share his insights on theatre with the aspiring groups of actors was enterprising. P.S. BHATT recollects his extended discussion on contemporary plays on his visit to Vijayawada

MUSICAL NOTES Karanth (extreme right) with his friends Chatla Sriramulu (middle) and Vasudevan Pillai

In any country theatre was like a republic in itself, unsettled and unruffled. There were too many Aristotles at play. He vitalized play with music. As a director of National School of Drama, Delhi, and repertoire of Bhopal's Bharat Bhavan, he influenced a generation of theatre activists around the country.

On the turf of play production in our country B.V. Karanth's efforts to project the solidarity of the text and mould the music to underscore the subtext, initiated some lasting innovations. At least in the South, eighties were his years of triumph, when his ideas from the `Yakshagana' and folk schools of music established a new visual dimension to the Indian plays on the stage. But for him, the Thiyyams, Gogois and Prasannas would have been lurching without cutting edges for their tools.

I watched Karanth's works at Delhi. I saw him directing the rehearsal of Chekov's play at Bhopal, waving his hands in the air from the empty gallery to disapprove some movements of the `Three Sisters' on the stage. I refrained from talking to him then. He was instrumental in bringing the South Indian Theatre Festival comprising six plays to Vijayawada in October 1990.

Reinventing music

Once the element of music entered our conversation, there was no let up in Karanth's observations. I was sorry about the demise of poetic plays like the `The Cocktail Party.' Karanth was spontaneous. "We call them musicals. We have numerous plays of their genre in our regional languages. In dramatics, there is such thing called poetic drama, at least in Kannada language. I am to do a musical called `Kailasam.' There is nothing like inventing music. But we reinvent things, which are already there. In all our old plays music prevailed upon other aspects of theatre presentation. Panikkar wanted music to follow the movements. In the past, music was plated on the lyric. Now we make music an integral part of language of theatre movement. We have now plans for sound production, effects of instruments, effects of dialogue and poetry. We do reinvent various uses of music. A viewer must be trained to use his ears to hear all the sounds."

"Was Lankesh, a Kannada playwright, as penetrating as Rangacharya?" I asked quietly to verify the tilting scales in favour of Lankesh. For Karanth, Lankesh was bestowed with a high degree of creativity. His `Sankranthi' was a good work for him. As the times moved the paradigm shift was more acute to allow Lankesh to stand the test. I always felt psychological interpretation of a play was eclipsed even by coherent music on the stage.

But Karanth disagreed, "In my `Satta Vara Saralu,' a psycho analytical play, two characters sing out lyrics of Purandara Dasa to show their predicaments as self-narratives.

Even news captions are set to music and sung by the actors to project their sad state of affairs. There are five kinds of narratives used in the play."

Exalted position

Did he find his productions related to contemporary situations? For him, even a mythological might touch the present moorings through dialogues, levels of suggestion and parables. "Were their plays that stood the test of time?" I asked him. He was not large hearted. "Not many I think. Only `Tuglak' by Girish Karnad and `Andhayug' by Dharam Veer Bharathi could retain some energy to communicate. These are presented regularly," he said with a smile.

Adult suffrage was no windfall to the intelligent like him to secure any exalted position. Personal discomforts sensitised him from his ambitions. He was driven to regional chambers before he died. Yet his tunes call on the moves of the actors on the stage, even now. Perhaps, for some more time to come.

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