Keremane Shivananda Hegde was literally born into Yakshagana. A fifth-generation artiste from coastal Karnataka, the 64-year-old today leads Sri Idagunji Mahaganapati Yakshagana Mandali, the troupe his ancestors established in 1934 in Gunavante, a village nestled in the Western Ghats. “The late-night Yakshagana shows in my village would go on till dawn. My father, grandfather and uncles would all be performing, and I would keep requesting them to take me in,” recalls Hegde. “When I was 12, I finally scored a small role of Abhimanyu from the Mahabharata.”
At Delhi’s Kamani Auditorium, where Hegde recently staged a Yakshagana performance based on the marriage of Shiva and Parvati, the darkness on stage mirrored dusk settling over a rice field on Karnataka’s coastline. Amid pulsating drum beats, performers emerged with a raw immediacy.
This dance-drama form, finds its earliest mention in a 16th-century inscription, though scholars often trace its evolution alongside the Vaishnava Bhakti movement. Traditionally performed overnight in open rice fields, it adapted mythological tales into immersive spectacles. Unlike conventional theatre, Yakshagana evolved without rigid scripts. Much of its dialogue continues to rely on extempore narration, accompanied by elaborate face paint, towering leaf-structured headgear and vigorous movement.
Hegde belongs to a lineage deeply associated with preserving the form in what he calls its “purity”. Yet, innovation has shaped the family’s contribution. His father, the legendary Keremane Shambhu Hegde, transformed Yakshagana by introducing time-bound performances instead of night-long stagings. He also reworked performance grammar by approaching dance movements through the psychology of individual characters, adding emotional depth to the form.
Hegde himself introduced dramatic staging techniques, including the gradual unveiling of protagonists concealed behind a green curtain before entering the performance fully. The tradition continues to evolve with his son, 31-year-old Keremane Shridhar Hegde, the sixth-generation artiste in the family, who has experimented with collaborative duets between Yakshagana, Bharatanatyam, and Sanskrit ballet.
Over the decades, Yakshagana has travelled far beyond coastal Karnataka. Yet, the growing visibility comes with anxieties. Hegde worries that the form is increasingly reduced to visual spectacle, stripped of its deeper ritual and performative complexity. For him, the survival of the form lies not merely in preservation, but in its emotional core. Beneath the elaborate makeup, mythological characters and booming percussion, he believes Yakshagana endures because it continues to speak to something fundamentally human.