Ganesh Prabhu/The Hindu

• As many as 19 students participated in the month-long workshop on theatre
• The Hindi episode will also be staged in Mysore and New Delhi
• Culture: A scene being performed from the episode of ‘Chitrapata Ramayana’ in Udupi.

Udupi, Dec 21: If you had any doubts about a Yakshagana “prasanga” (episode) being performed in Hindi, it was all set to rest by the second year students of National School of Drama (NSD), New Delhi, who performed the episode of “Chitrapata Ramayana” at the Yakshagana Kendra here on Wednesday.

As many as 19 students of the NSD were at the kendra to participate in the month-long workshop on “Traditional and ritualistic theatre”. They were trained in Yakshagana for the past 19 days. In the first week they learnt the steps of Yakshagana, in the second week they were taught about the “odolaga”, “prayana kunitha” and “yuddha nritya”.

The main plot of “Chitrapata Ramayanana”, written by Hosathota Manjunath Bhagavata, was translated into Hindi by Tippeswamy. According to principal of the kendra Bannanje Sanjeeva Suvarna, even after the translation, some fine tuning to the script had to be done so that the Hindi words could fit in the Yakshagana format.

‘Rhythm’

During the performance, the Bhagavata (singer-director) Satish Kedlaya sang Hindi songs, which were written in Kannada. Some of the dialogues were laced with humour. The preliminaries (“purvaranga”) of the episode such as “kodangi vesha”, “balagopala” and “peethike stree vesha” were brilliantly executed by the students. “They worked hard and were trained for 12 hours a day. To get the ‘tala’ right, I had to use English numerals. Since they had the knowledge of ‘raga’, ‘tala’ and rhythm, it was not difficult to train them. We taught them the ‘sapta talas’ and requirements of the ‘prasanga,” said  Suvarna.

What do the students feel about their experience? Dushyant from Fatehabad in Haryana, who played the role of Rama, said, “Initially, I found it difficult to learn the dance steps, but as I acquired proficiency in them, I could feel its vibrancy.” Ashish Nijhawan from Kashmir, who played the roles of Bharat and Valmiki, said that the transformation of characters was brilliantly brought out in Yakshagana. Tauqeer Alam Khan from Hardoi in Uttar Pradesh, who played the role of Shurpanakha said, “Yakshagana has rich costumes and make-up and it takes time to get used to it. We could catch the ‘shruthi’ and bring out the flavour of Yakshagana in Hindi.”