Girish Karnad Fellowship for Kannada Playwriting
| Photo Credit: Special arrangement
For years, conversations revolving around Indian theatre focussed on actors, directors, and performances. Chiguru X Kusumaale, an upcoming theatre festival in Bengaluru, wants audiences to experience the writer instead. Launching this week at the Prestige Centre for Performing Arts (PCPA) in Bengaluru, the festival is a celebration of new Kannada playwriting, stringing together fresh scripts, live productions, seminars, and so much more.Organised by Bhasha Centre, the festival will take place from June 6 to 14 and showcase nine original plays that have been honed and developed through the Girish Karnad Fellowship for Kannada Playwriting. “It is a celebration of nine new voices on the Kannada theatre stage,” says Vivek Madan of Bhasha Centre.He added the event was going to be a “space for people to come together to hear stories and watch them unfold, and engage in meaningful conversations, workshops and seminars around the finer aspects of making theatre.”
Vivek Madan
Unlike most conventional theatre festivals that focus on finished productions, this one emphasises on the writing process. Created as a tribute to legendary playwright and actor Girish Karnad, the fellowship was created to address a “lack of structured developmental spaces for regional-language playwrights”, say the organisers.Irawati Karnik, a facilitator in the programme spoke about the long-drawn out process it took to get these scripts to where they are. She talks about how important it was to help the playwrights arrive at their own creative solutions, which was far more challenging. The process was also filled with a lot of reworking and refining of content. She says, “Good plays are not written, they’re rewritten.”
