A few years ago, noted theatre director and playwright Prasanna “Heggodu” took a vow that he would not travel by air “for my own environmental reasons.” At around the same time, he also took to the iPad, realising that the pencil it came with enabled him to draw like a woodcut. So, he began taking his iPad along on these journeys, creating art on it as he travelled. “These are works I have done when I am travelling on a train,” he says, pointing to the curated selection of some of these artworks, which are currently on the walls of Gallery No. 4 at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bengaluru.
This exhibition of digital prints, ‘Playing with Life’, a striking blend of both abstraction and representation, which opened to the public on October 30, draws on his half-century-long tryst with theatre. “I am visually driven as a performer, as an actor-trainer,” says the founder of Karnataka’s celebrated amateur theatre group Samudaya and the national president of the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA).
“I’ve actually been living the life of a designer in several fields. I have designed theatre halls, costumes and sets,” he says. In his other avatar, as the founder of Charaka, a Heggodu-based handloom cooperative owned and managed by women, “I’ve designed fabrics and prints, too. So it is in me.”
The aesthetic of the artworks, “black and white lines and shapes,” is also a function of his work as a director, says Prasanna, the author of Indian Method in Acting and Acting and Beyond. “Human shape and emotions are what I have been doing endlessly for the last 50 years, so I have become such an aware person as far as this is concerned. Even if I see a shape on the wall because water has dripped, I can see the whole world in it.”
The figurative images in the artworks, whether they be human, animal or blossom, nearly always lock eyes with each other, also a theatrical tactic because “there is no drama if your character is not looking into the eyes of the other character,” he says. “So the influence of theatre on these drawings is immense.”
Prasanna is also the founder of Charaka.
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
His creation method, he admits, is “crazy. I fill the canvas with all sorts of images and then make connections,” he says, walking across to a print of a priest carefully tending a fire, a few yards away from a tree. When he first created this image, putting in all these elements, he “was sure it wasn’t complete.”
It was only when Prasanna returned to the picture, nearly a month later, that he realised what it should be, and added letters representing mantras and used lines to enclose the entire scene. “The final ideological content comes last.”
The reason for creating this collection of artwork — the base price of each piece is ₹ 7,000, and it comes with an 80G donation certificate — is “pragmatic,” says Prasanna, a pioneer of modern Kannada theatre who graduated from the National School of Drama (NSD) with a specialisation in direction.
“The institute that I have made my soul, the Indian Institute of Educational Theatre in Mysuru, is badly in need of funds. “Governments are unwilling to pay because they don’t understand the concept.”
Prasanna’s artwork is deeply influenced by his tryst with theatre
| Photo Credit:
Preeti Zachariah
According to the website of the Indian Institute of Educational Theatre (IIET), a flagship initiative of IPTA, the initiative seeks to transform education systems by introducing theatre into the school curriculum, fostering “an environment where children can thrive and discover their true potential, through learning by doing pedagogy.”
Theatre in Education (TIE) is not just for school students. IIET currently offers workshops and training for diverse populations, including students, teachers and teacher trainers, theatre professionals, women’s groups, development professionals, artists and activists, in three languages. “This institute is trying to design a buffer programme. We are into research, development and training.”
An institute like this, in his opinion, could help generate jobs for performers from all over the country who come to their creative professions “with a very specific dream…to express their little truth,” but often find themselves languishing in big cities, struggling to keep themselves and their dreams afloat.
This institute, he says, is therefore trying to create a system in which trained actors would contribute to schools that have adopted theatre into their curriculum, for which they would receive a regular income, and also be able to pursue their craft in the outside world in their free time, he explains. This financial buffer is clearly important, Prasanna feels, given his rather dire assessment of the state of the world at large and art in specific.
“There is no drama if your character is not looking into the eyes of the other character”
| Photo Credit:
Preeti Zachariah
In this fast-paced, highly mediated era, where the threat of AI looms large, initiatives like this are more critical than ever before, considering that “children are stuck on their mobiles, which is a serious crisis.”
In his opinion, while there are still some brave people attempting to put up good productions and fighting for it, theatre is struggling because “entertainment has become everything: culture, religion, politics.”
Unlike in the 1960s and 1970s, when Prasanna started theatre, and “communication and expression were still quite intact”, we have now become a “super-fast civilisation,” which, he believes, is hurtling towards doom.“And if civilisation is going to die, how can civilisation’s silly little expression survive?”