A play searching for the long-lasting Kannada theatre character Khanavali Chenni

A scene from the play Challenge Darling by Nirdiganta.
| Picture Credit score: HANDOUT EMAIL

Challenge Darling, an experimental play on the lives of ladies firm theatre actors from the Sixties-80s, produced by Prakash Raj’s theatre incubation centre Nirdinganta and supported by India Basis for the Arts (IFA), might be carried out on the Shoonya, Centre for Artwork and Somatic Practices, Lalbagh Street, on November 18.

The Kannada play traces the journey of a bunch of performers who set out on a seek for their ancestry – girls performers on whose shoulders their work stands. Of their search, they come across an iconic character known as Khanavali Chenni who dominated the stage along with her hilarious double-meaning dialogues and sexual innuendo. Whereas looking for the actress who performed Chenni, they meet a number of different actresses who’ve their very own tales to share. Will this group of performers ultimately meet Chenni? How will their search finish? What is going to they uncover? Challenge Darling is a meditation on feminine sexuality on the crossroads of censorship and tradition. 

The play is predicated on a two-year analysis mission the place the director, Sharanya Ramprakash, interviewed a number of feminine performers, vamps, comedians, and heroines of the Kannada firm theatre. It freely mixes analysis with fiction to fill within the inconsistencies of historical past. Challenge Darling juxtaposes video testimonials, picture essays and soundscapes from this analysis with music, dance, puppetry and clowning because it seeks to rewrite Kannada rangabhoomi’s girls performers again into the cultural historical past.  

Talking to The Hindu, Sharanya Ramprakash says that the play was her was personal seek for skilled ancestry “Challenge Darling began with a analysis grant from the IFA, my proposal was a examine on the unrelenting misogyny in Kannada theatre. We now have been doing theatre written by males for very lengthy, and I used to be certain that again in 60s and 80s feminine actresses protested not directly or the opposite. This mission was my very own seek for our skilled ancestry. We began the analysis in the course of the pandemic, we went round Hubbali, Dharwad, Davanagere, Tumkur, Gubbi, and just about throughout Karnataka searching for actresses from firm theatres.“

“Throughout our visits we had been to theatre maker, Prakash Garuda’s residence in Dharwad, and he had his personal archive on Kannada firm theatre. As we went by no matter he had, he picked up a video tape and performed it for us. He didn’t say what it was and simply requested us to attend, that’s once we discovered the character of Khanavali Chenni in a play of the identical identify, and she or he was iconic. We learnt later that this character was a aspect position in a play known as Bus Conductor, it turned so well-liked that the play was renamed Khanavali Chenni,“ Sharanya added.

A scene from the play Challenge Darling.
| Picture Credit score:
HANDOUT EMAIL

The character Chenni spoke about points that might not be spoken by heroines in performs and cinema. The character addressed points like pleasure, marriage, youngsters, girls’s our bodies and much more. Sharnaya says that the character was so iconic that for a few years all of the reveals would run houseful and the character turned so well-liked that it appeared in Kannada cinema too. “Many well-liked Kannada theatre actresses like Chindodi Leela of KBR Drama Firm, Nagrathnamma and Manjulamma of Stree Nataka Mandali, Rameshwari Verma, Helen Huballi and Sumathi Shree, Umashree and Malthi Shree performed Khanavali Chenni, which later turned a well-liked character in Kannada cinema too within the 80s and 90s.” 

Carried out by Shrunga B.V., Surabhi Vasishta, Shobana Kumari, Shashank Rajashekar, and Matangi Prasan, Sharanya says that it was necessary to have male actors in a feminist piece of labor like this, “What’s fantastic about this play is that some actors within the play have been practising theatre for greater than 20 years, they take a look at their historical past and reply from right now. All of the actors have been extra like collaborators on this play.“

Tickets for the present can be found on BookyMyShow and the Shoonya, Centre for Artwork and Somatic Practices box-office.