Tale-danda Godugunuri Prasad When Girish Karnad wrote the historical play Tughlaq, it created uproar in the Kannada theatre, the thrill of which no one has been able to forget. Then he wrote Tale-danda and became the centre of a controversy once again.
Soon after the publication of Tale-danda, a play reading by the dramatist was organised at the Natya Shodh Sansthan, Kolkata. The spell of the drama was enhanced a hundredfold by Karnad’s expressive rendering. The question was raised by someone from the audience. Had any contemporary political event prompted the playwright …show more content…
By all standards, it is an extremely significant play. It stands out as an achievement of a mature Karnad who has travelled a long way from the time he wrote his first play, Yayati, nearly forty years ago. In Tale-danda, he grapples with the issue that encompasses the way of life and the thinking of an entire community. The delineation in the characterization is deliberately blurred so that the focus of attention does not shift from the plot. Karnad succeeds in fully exploring the crisis as the plot gains momentum towards the …show more content…
He agrees that the traditional theatre forms might not capture contemporary reality in all its complexities, but there are specific areas of this same reality in all its complexities, but there are specific areas of this same reality which can be illuminated and ironically commented on through the use of folk forms. Indeed, as chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, Karnad had made efforts to extend support to traditional forms like Chhau and Kudiyattam. However, it is his view that the use of traditional and folk theatre to merely fill up gaps in dramatic imagination could be detrimental to both the forms and to the health of Indian theatre. Therefore, he does not subscribe to the idea of the Indian theatre. He believes in the concept of foreign theatre. But within the subcontinent, “Indian theatre is an abstraction in the same way as India is also an abstraction” is the view he holds. Inside the country, each regional theatre has its distinctive features. It is obvious that Bengali, Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Manipuri theatres exist with their separate identities, characteristics and problems. Karnad’s faith in the power of theatrical techniques derived from the rich indigenous sources urges him to craft plots from the native sources. No better example can be found than Karnad’s own work to illustrate the remarkable depths
Soon after the publication of Tale-danda, a play reading by the dramatist was organised at the Natya Shodh Sansthan, Kolkata. The spell of the drama was enhanced a hundredfold by Karnad’s expressive rendering. The question was raised by someone from the audience. Had any contemporary political event prompted the playwright …show more content…
By all standards, it is an extremely significant play. It stands out as an achievement of a mature Karnad who has travelled a long way from the time he wrote his first play, Yayati, nearly forty years ago. In Tale-danda, he grapples with the issue that encompasses the way of life and the thinking of an entire community. The delineation in the characterization is deliberately blurred so that the focus of attention does not shift from the plot. Karnad succeeds in fully exploring the crisis as the plot gains momentum towards the …show more content…
He agrees that the traditional theatre forms might not capture contemporary reality in all its complexities, but there are specific areas of this same reality in all its complexities, but there are specific areas of this same reality which can be illuminated and ironically commented on through the use of folk forms. Indeed, as chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, Karnad had made efforts to extend support to traditional forms like Chhau and Kudiyattam. However, it is his view that the use of traditional and folk theatre to merely fill up gaps in dramatic imagination could be detrimental to both the forms and to the health of Indian theatre. Therefore, he does not subscribe to the idea of the Indian theatre. He believes in the concept of foreign theatre. But within the subcontinent, “Indian theatre is an abstraction in the same way as India is also an abstraction” is the view he holds. Inside the country, each regional theatre has its distinctive features. It is obvious that Bengali, Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Manipuri theatres exist with their separate identities, characteristics and problems. Karnad’s faith in the power of theatrical techniques derived from the rich indigenous sources urges him to craft plots from the native sources. No better example can be found than Karnad’s own work to illustrate the remarkable depths