Here, house turns stage for that art-mimics-life experience

As the curtains came down on a play at the nearly half-a-century-old house of G N Shastry at Manchikeri village in Yellapur taluk of Uttara Kannada district recently, there were a few moist eyes among the audience.

Noted Marathi playwright late Jayanth Dalvi’s play ‘Kalachakra,’ with its powerful dialogues, has been bringing out such emotions from its audiences whenever and wherever it’s played.

What was unique at Manchikeri is the experiment that the noted theatre director Hulgeappa Kattimani did: the stage wasn’t set to look like a house, but a house was converted into a stage, where the audience could watch the play - up, close and personal.

Local, amateur artistes

Secondly, the artists were not professionals, but locals who learnt the tricks of the trade while doing their daily chores of areca cultivation and dairy farming over the last two months.

The 15 ‘local artistes’ have performed four shows highlighting the plight of aged parents living with their children but being treated as unwanted and abused.

“A realistic play experiment is being done here with two intentions. Firstly, to revive the theatre culture, which had gone into hibernation over the last few years due to Covid and other reasons. Secondly, the troupe wanted to bring life much closer to the audience through this ‘realistic play’,” said Kattimani.

“We did not use any extra props for the play. The household items were converted into props and just a thin white line separated the audience from the stage,” he said.

The amateur artists, unlike on the traditional stage where they have to say out their dialogues loud, were asked to modulate their voices in such a way that the intimate viewers could feel the characters’ agony, joy and anger as their own, Kattimani added.

According to Dundi Bhat, organiser of the play and president of Rajarajeshwari Ranga Samaja, the experiment was also to review the rich heritage of art in Manchikeri.

“The culture of performing arts was dying in this village that has given several stalwarts of Yakshagana (Jallimane Hegde, Malagimane Subbarayaru) and other forms of art. The experiment of using local talents to perform the play has sure revived it and soon, we will take this troupe to perform on bigger stages across the state,” Bhat said.

The Samaja wishes to take the culture of art to the doorsteps of youth and children, by organising camps and competitions, he added.

Venkataramana Shastry, who is playing the main role in the play, is donning a character for the first time.

“I have seen several plays, but to experience and receive a response from the audience, up close and personal, was completely different,” he said.

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