Celebrated Novelist Yashwant Chitthala’s play ‘Shikari’ was staged as part of Rangayana’s weekend show at Bhoomigeeta last evening. The mid 1970s play, adapted and directed by Prakash Belawadi, is being staged at Rangayana since Aug.20. The next show will be on Oct. 22 (Sunday) at 6.30 pm.
In a short interaction, at Jaganmohan Palace in October 1994, Yashwant Vithoba Chittal (Chitthala), the eminent Kannada novelist told me that Nagappa’s character in Shikari in several ways is expected to demonstrate the meaninglessness of life, beyond the meaning one is willing to ascribe to it. Unlike Camus, for Chitthala it is that meaninglessness that constitutes the absurd which gets integrated into the worldview the novel ultimately provides. Besides, on first impression, Chitthala provides certain parallels with Kafka, in the suggestion that baffling complexities lurk behind a visibly spare narrative style and a general detachment that surrounds it. The Rangayana Mysore repertory has senior actors who have been exposed to the best theatre in India and the West including off of Broadway (New York) have had the honour of presenting the finest fictional classics in Kannada with varying themes like Devanooru Mahadeva’s Kusumabale, U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Samakara, Ravindranath Tagore’s Gora, Shivarama Karanth’s Sarasammana Samadhi, Poornachandra Tejasvi’s Krishnegowdana Aane, and even Kuvempu’s Malegalalli Madumagalu. Prakash Belawadi’s intervention in Rangayana has taken the institution to another milestone by bringing Chitthala’s Shikari on stage. The stage version written by Prakash Belawadi himself, provided the base for the August 20th production directed by Belawadi at Bhoomigeeta, Rangayana, Mysuru. The director and his team deserves a bouquet with several flowers of achievement in stage management, expertise of K.J. Pawan in providing lilting melodies to capture the times, the imaginative genius of Sankeerthi in costumes and the masterly work of Mahesh Kallatti in lighting.
