On a constant journey of transcending languages, Yakshagana has now been performed in Marathi, probably for the first time.
A team of amateur Yakshagana artistes from Udupi, including a software engineer and some Ph.D scholars, teachers, students and others, performed the first of three Marathi Yakshagana shows scheduled in Maharashtra, at Sawantwadi on Saturday, May 11, evening.
The performers, comprising six women and other men, who did not know Marathi learnt it in a span of three months with rehearsal and staged ‘Abhimanyu Kalaga’ or Chakravyuha ‘prasanga’ (text with songs) written by poet Devidasa in 1695 A.D. The team members were trained by senior Yakshagana ‘guru’ Bannanje Sanjeeva Suvarna who manages Yaksha Sanjeeva Yakshagana Kendra in Udupi.
The Kannada script of the ‘prasanga’ was translated into Marathi by Vijaya Phatarpekar, an 83-year-old retired Professor of Physical Chemistry at Sawantwadi, who had studied at Karnataka University, Dharwad and who has his family routes in Sirsi of Uttara Kannada.
Mr. Suvarna, who was trained in Yakshagana by multi-faceted personality and Jnanapith awardee late Kota Shivarama Karanth, told The Hindu that about two decades ago, he (Mr. Suvarna) had used Yakshagana in a Marathi drama. “It was a mixture of Yakshagana and drama and not a pure Yakshagana performance in Marathi,” he said.
Mr. Suvarna and Mr. Phatarpekar said that according to their information, it is for the first time a Yakshagana has been performed in Marathi.
Earlier, Yakshagana had been performed in Sanskrit, English, Hindi, Malayalam, Konkani, in addition to Kannada and Tulu.
20-member Udupi team
Mr. Suvarna said that the 20-member team which performed for 1.45 hours comprised 10 ‘veshadharis’ (actors), three musicians, four make-up artistes, two helpers and a team leader.
“None of them knew Marathi. It was Mr. Phatarpekar who travelled to Udupi several times during the rehearsal and taught them the nuances of Marathi,” Mr. Suvarna said.
A team member and performer, Shantanu Suvarna said: “The songs were sung in Marathi by Bhagavatha Karthik Bhat, a second year pre-university student from Hebri, who had never spoken Marathi before.”
Challenges in translation and performance
“I found it difficult to translate the songs of the original text written in old Kannada. Hence I took the help of a Kannada pundit at Gokarna before translating into Marathi,” Mr. Phatarpekar told The Hindu from Sawantwadi.
“Adapting Marathi to the singing style of Yakshagana and finding the suitable words for the songs was a challenging task,” he said.
“The performers picked up Marathi very nicely and very quickly,” Mr. Phatarpekar added.
Adyata Bhat of Udupi, a software engineer who played the lead role of Abhimanyu, said the performance was really challenging though she has been learning Yakshagana for the past 17 years. “I wrote Marathi dialogues in Kannada script and memorised them. It really helped,” said Ms. Bhat, who is a performer of both Badagu Thittu (Northern style) and Tenku Thittu (Southern style) schools of Yakshagana.
For Anjali S. Menon from Kerala, who is doing her Ph.D in Manipal and who performed the role of Shalya, both Kannada and Marathi were new languages. “I developed interest in Yakshagana after seeing some performances in Udupi and Manipal as I had learnt Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi,” she said.
The team performed the same ‘prasanga’ at Vengurla on Sunday evening and will perform at Andurle on May 13.
