Contemporary indian drama "theatre of india”

The documentary is based on “ Theatre Of India”. The documentary is very informative it tells us about the history of theatre that how all this was started. Our theatre was started with Sanskrit drama ages ago they said about Kalidas and Bhas these were the torch barriers of our journey on road to civilization. Despite bharats clear concept of stage craft our ancient Sanskrit theatre envidebly went through its phase of deco dam all the foreign invasions in the country, political turmoil and changing conditions in every sphere of life must have been responsible for the royal patronage, the debacle stage of Sanskrit and spoken play. During these difficult times I think it was the common man who preserved our theatre sometimes without knowing he was doing this through ritual to pray to god or play for entertainment or both, sometimes with social or political aspects. We have different kinds of theatre in different regions of our country, for instance we have yakshagana in Karnataka, ramleela in the north, jatra in Bengal then tamasha in Maharashtra and krishnatam in kerala . But what I found different in these plays were that in all kinds of plays only men were there to perform and in many clips men took women get up for the play but in tamasha I found women were also performing and singing. However, there were also different types of make-up in different dramas.

At that time the east India company first pitch in Calcutta about 300 years ago. This was the first time the britishers have stepped into Indians soil bringing with them the staging of entertainment as they knew it. This was the time when audiences from the cities started flocking to performances in Calcutta theatres. Some of the great artists like Girish gosh appeared in these plays, they use enormous sets and gorgeous costumes especially in the historical sets. The Parsi theatre had dance, music and drama in large measure. Both the acting and delivery of dialogue was very theatrical, this influenced even cinematic acting we can see one of the film like yahudi featuring the noted actor shohrab modi goes ones an ideal of parsi urdu stage . The Parsi company in Pune was more than a 100 years ago.

Patli influenced the pioneer Marathi dramatics Anna Sahib Kiloskar. Kiloskar’s formative years were spent in Karnataka it was natural therefore he was inspired by form such as yashagana. In Maharashtra, there were kathakars and kirtankars as explained by P. L Despande . They were the people who told stories from the effect of a particular situation they took it to singing. They put across the situation in the song and it was found out more effective. Our first musical dramatics Anna Sahib Kilosakar was a kathakar, he was the one who introduced songs in our theatre. It was a wonderful situation everyone had a treasure within and they poured it into the drama. All the different types of dramas have songs and different ragas. After sometime most probably after independence, Indian theatre was fighting a losing battle with a talky film. Theatres were transformed into cinemas and audiences forgot their exclusive loyalty to drama but we also have giants like Pritviraj Kapoor who bought their earnings into purposeful theatre.

The contribution made by Indian people theatre association during this period was highly significant in the early forties and some of the young directors actors like shambhu and tripti mitra who has always been moved by a socio political ideology of a theatre. According to them there should be art with a purpose, art of the highest quality so that it deals with all struggles of the society. Most of the famous main stream and experimental directors contributed for the revival of theatre in Bombay for instance, Ali Marzaban the comic genius of the Parsi and Gujarati theatre, embrahim alkazi with the INT, bhalba khelkar with a PDA etc. Utpal Dutt, Embrahim alkazi, Vijay Tendulkar , Vijaya Mehta , B. V Karanth, Ratam Thiyam , Kavalam Narayana Panikka , Nisar Alana, Badal Sircar all these were the well-known artists , directors they have contributed a lot in Indian drama Theatre is somehow which focuses on all the topics which the society goes through. We have to keep in mind there should be an effective political propaganda and it has to be popular it has to reach as many people as possible especially in a country like ours where most people can’t read and write.

They cannot read but they can hear a dialogue so theatre has to be popular. In order to make the theatre more effective we have to master the essentials of the theatre esthetics and ensure that the core idea or your weapon should be sharp so that the theatre should be an effective propaganda. Now, what next I found that people are strongly rooted in their own culture, the culture of the classical Indian theatre, then the contemporary Indian theatre of all the regional languages. The theatre or drama should be in terms of social influence it should be meaningful and relevant which I saw in the documentary. The one more thing I saw in the documentary and it is also mentioned by Vijaya Mehta about the human relationship and about the woman identity to define the Indian women hood. In the documentary it was amazing to saw that the character has been very much strong and naturalistic. After watching this documentary I saw some of the history also for instance, the Sati Pratha, then the anti-war problems and the social problems like Dalit’s theatre. It’s a social protest demonstrated in the forms of effective theatres. At the end, Indian theatre shows every sign of development of drama and also how the drama go through these centuries, now, as long as human interaction and human communication is possible it’s going to survive.