BENGALURU: From May 24 to May 27, 2018, just a little over a year before playwright Girish Karnad passed away, a four-drama festival of his plays was held at Chowdiah Memorial Hall as a tribute to him on completing 80 (just five days before, on May 19). The uniqueness of the Karnad Natakotsav (or KaNa) Festival was not lost on Karnad. After the festival, a deeply moved Karnad described it in just one word – “Unprecedented”.
Its uniqueness lay in the fact that although the festival was organised by Karnad’s fellow community members – Konkani-speaking Chitrapur Saraswats – the plays were staged in four languages – Taledanda in Kannada, Nagamandal in Hindi, Agni Ani Paavsu (Agni Mattu Male) in Konkani and Tughlaq in Marathi.
This multi-lingual experiment meant that the plays would not get the same set of audience on all four days. But it served the purpose of exposing each play to a different set of people, according to Gautam Ubhayakar, a theatre actor-director who retired as a scientist from Defence Research & Development Organisation, and who was one of the brains behind this concept.
“The idea of the festival was: Kannada, because it became his adopted mother tongue and Karnad mainly wrote his classic plays in Kannada and was settled in Karnataka; Hindi, because he won national awards; Konkani, because that was his mother tongue; and Marathi, because he was born in Matheran in Maharashtra,” Ubhayakar said.
The festival was organised by the century-old socio-cultural association, Canara Union, along with Maharashtra Mandal, another institution.
The plays were staged by four amateur drama groups – Taledanda, directed by Sandeep Pai, under RangaSiri banner; Nagamandal, directed by Gautam Ubhayakar under Ankur banner; Agni Ani Paavsu directed by Shantaprasad Herenjal under Bhumika banner; and Tughlaq, directed by Sujay Ghorpadkar under YUVA banner.
The powerhouse behind the planning was an entrepreneur involved in modular kitchens, Shashank Sanade. He, along with Ubhayakar and artiste Anand Nagarkar, were able to make it a reality.
“We thought we should attempt something that was never tried to pay a befitting tribute to Girish Karnad,” said Sanade. “But getting a cast together for one play being difficult, it would have been a Herculean task to do the same for four. Luckily, Maharashtra Mandal agreed to do Tughlaq in Marathi and RangaSiri decided to put up Taledanda in Kannada,” said Sanade, adding that Nagamandal and Agni Ani Paavsu were staged by members of Canara Union themselves.
“The scale meant that we would have to stage it at the 1,000-plus seater Chowdiah,” he said. “I started working out the costs and projecting revenues to ensure we don’t go out of pocket. We appealed to philanthropists and culturally-inclined foundations to contribute so we could subsidise the ticket costs.”
The organisers feel they were lucky the festival bore fruit when Karnad was there. While acknowledging the tribute, Karnad said in a message: “My grateful thanks to the members of the Canara Union for the immense honour of the Natakotsav bestowed on me. Unprecedented!”That was his last message to Ubhayakar, a die-hard fan of Karnad, who has vowed never to delete it from his phone.