Indian theatre and its evolution
Over 2,000 years have passed without a break in the history of Indian theatre. Ancient India produced a comprehensive guide to theatre called Natyashastra, credited to Bharata, almost simultaneously with Aristotle’s poetics. This work served as the foundation for Indian theatrical styles for centuries to come.
This indicates that a rich legacy of performance practise existed long before a piece like this did.
For more than a thousand years, Indian aesthetic philosophy and practise were influenced by the aesthetic theory of rasa.
A significant body of Sanskrit drama written by prominent playwrights like Bhasa, Kalidasa, Shudraka, Vishakadatta, Bhavabhuti, and Harsha was also produced during the first century. This body of work is comparable in scope and impact to other strong theatrical traditions around the world.
Western classics like Shakespeare and Lessing were also adapted.
Parsi theatre, now known as proscenium theatre, was performed indoors as opposed to traditional folk and tribal theatre. A potpourri of melodrama, humour, romance, and social commentary is produced by this theatre to amuse the metropolitan middle and working classes.
Before the advent of cinema, this style of professional theatre presented by professional groups, sometimes travelling, was the only source of mass entertainment. It originated in newly emerging metropolitan towns like Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai in the late 19th century. Their productions set the standard for Indian cinema with their focus on song, spectacle, and melodrama. By the 1970s, popular cinema had mostly replaced entertainment theatre, with the exception of few regions like Maharashtra and Assam.
The experiments of the IPTA (Indian Political Theatre Association) were linked to socialist realism. IPTA was a group of intellectuals on the Left who were also artists. Even though its forms differed from region to region, they were all committed to the idea that theatre can be a force for social change. Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Maharashtra, Bengal, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala were the states with the largest movements. The socialist realist works of Howard Fast and Maxim Gorki had a significant influence on the North Indian variants of IPTA. This sort of theatre is exemplified by Bhisham Sahani. In the South, efforts were made to harmonise traditional forms with social messages. The most well-known of these plays is Ningal Endai Communist Akki (You Made Me a Communist), a Malyalam production.
In many areas, amateur theatres emerged that had no clear ties to communism but were yet committed to social change. Even though it wasn’t as well-liked as entertainment theatre, it preserved the function of drama as a critique of life. One of these theatres was the Prithvi Theatre, established in 1944 by the actor Prithviraj Kapoor. It was converted to a whole theatre house after 1962 and is still in operation today.
The theatre landscape underwent a dramatic upheaval shortly after India gained its independence in 1947. The effects of IPTA started to fade. Entertainment theatre suffered a setback as a result of competition from more widely seen film genres. Major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Bangalore continued to see a thriving amateur theatre scene.
The Shri Prithviraj Kapoor Memorial Trust & Research Foundation is the parent organisation of the Prithvi Theatre. The Prithvi Theatre depends on the support of individuals and corporations devoted to the growth of the performing and fine arts for its existence as a wholly non-profit organisation.
The rise of drama school theatre following the foundation of the NSD( National School of Drama), an independent institution supported by the state, in Delhi, was another significant development in post-Independence theatre. Ibrahim Alkazi, the first director of NSD, laid the foundation for this distinctive theatre organisation. He designed the curriculum and planned the instruction and production of the new school following the strict lines of contemporary Western theatre aesthetics, drawing inspiration from RADA in the UK, where he received his training. However, his successor, BV Karanth, who was trained in the Karnataka Yakshagan traditions, Indianized theatre practises by putting age-old methods to use for contemporary productions. In essence, the work of multiple generations has been distinguished by the dialectics between Western and Indian methodologies.
Indian theatre has had various incarnations in the post-independence era, supported by the state and private sources from India and beyond but always energised by unique skills, influenced by influences from the West but also reverting to native resources. Modernist playwrights like Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sarcar, Dharmaveer Bharati, Mohan Rakesh and Girish Karnad, Chandrashekhar Kambar, P Lankesh, and Indira Parthasarati were produced during this time, and their works have been performed and studied worldwide. These playwrights infused the theatre with a thematic focus on modernist angst and tremendous formal rigour. Younger writers are now tackling issues like identity crises and the effects of globalisation in many locations.
The Sanskrit theatre tradition, folk theatre tradition, and western theatre tradition are the three main influences on modern Indian theatre. The third is truly the one that can be claimed to be the foundation of contemporary Indian theatre. Now a days there are various theatre groups across the country and many theatre acting institutes from private to goverment institutes , we all can found the evolution of acting theatres .
