JC ROAD:With about 70 actors who performed across four stages through the night, the theatre adaptation of Kuvempu’s Malegalalli Madumagalu is gearing up for a third run, at Kalagrama, and this time with a `30 lakh budget.
The close to 50 actors who have performed in the previous two runs at Rangayana in Mysuru and in Bengaluru two years ago, will be joined by 30 NSD Bengaluru students, who will introduce the various folk art forms that they have been learning over the past five months.
From what City Express has heard, the seasoned and new actors might even alternate playing major roles from show to show.
“We’ll have actors from across south India speaking the Malenadu dialect. That’s the magic of drama. We have a student from Kerala who plays a Malayali pundit,” said director C Basavalingaiah, who now heads NSD Bengaluru, which is presenting the play in collaboration with the state government’s Kannada and Culture as well as Information and Public Relations departments.
While its director feels that the cast and crew have to bring Malnad alive for the audience, set designer Shashidhar Adapa said that this was realistically not possible to accomplish. “We can bring elements from there -- parts of the houses, the betel nut trees, the undulating landscape -- that remind the audience of the region. This time, the sets will be more actor-friendly. Elements won’t get in the way,” he said, adding that one of the stages, for which a water body had been created, would change locations. “Kalagrama has a lake, so we’ll have it around that. And we’ll have a real boat carrying a dog and another character.”
The dog, said K Y Narayanaswamy who has adapted it for the stage, is a hero. “When it disappears, people shed tears for it.” What’s more, the canine was awarded `10,000 for the last set of shows, Basavalingiah shared. But that apart, the Jnanpith laureate’s novel defies convention, the two said: there are no heroes, no heroines, no villains; there are people. In Kuvempu’s words, “Yaaru mukhyaralla, yaaru amukhyaralla.” (No one is important, and no one less so.) Narayanaswamy reinterpreted it on another level, however. “There are five major women characters but the actual madumagalu (bride) is Malenadu -- how she was acquired and changed by modernisation and commercialisation,” he said.
Some of the artistes present at Ravindra Kalakshetra for the meet sang a few songs. This prompted composer Hamsalekha to reveal that he planned to recreate his music. “This is a play, not a musical. There should be music in the play; the play shouldn’t be centred on the music,” he said.
Basavalingaiah hopes to raise close to `2 lakh through tickets (priced at `200, with a `50 or `100 discount for school and college students).
“We did it the last time, so why not? We’ll use this money to pay all the artistes. People performed for free in the seventies, but now, it isn’t right to ask it of them.”
This is the first public performance for his students since they enrolled for the acting diploma, and he believes that this will provide them with ample exposure. “It will help build confidence, and 20 shows is a lot. We’re rehearsing for 20 days since longer than that would have proved too expensive,” the director said.
Malegalalli Madumagalu, every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from February 16 to March 21, at Kalagrama, Jnanabharathi, allatahalli Road. The play is nine hours long and will have two intervals. Tickets are available at Kalagrama and on Bookmyshow.