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Yesteryear`s giant of Kannada literature, Adya Rangacharya—or Shriranga, as he came to be known—had many such epiphanic moments. That was how the child of an orthodox Brahmin jagirdar family went from watching, at first wide-eyed, village aatas put up by farm labourers to critically observing full-fledged natakas in the cities, taking in the theatre scene in London to finally writing—and often performing in—more than a hundred skilfully developed plays.
There was no genre of writing that Shriranga did not touch. Creative writer and critic, he also penned a vast body of scholarly treatises on subjects that ranged from drama to philosophy and philology. His English translation of the Natyashashtra remains the definitive source of reference for most students of theatre. But as his memoirs reveal, his first and most abiding love was drama. His fifty years of association with the theatre were full of achievements, one of which was to bring women on to the amateur stage. Generations of actors have Shriranga to thank for investing their profession with a dignity it had lacked.
But Shriranga`s memoirs rarely touch upon such achievements. They record, without pomp or sentiment, the genesis and development of a brilliant Kannada dramatist. His daughter Shashi Deshpande`s translation and her introduction to her father`s life in theatre will bring him under the spotlight for a whole new audience. ISBN: 0143099663
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Pages : 200
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