Kerala director Prasanth Narayanan to remake Swapnavasavadatta in Kannada
Thiruvananthapuram: Prasanth Narayanan, theatre director from Kerala, is directing the Kannada version of Bhasha’s Sanskrit play Swapnavasavadatta. Prashanth who has earlier directed several noted plays including superstar Mohanlal and Mukesh in Chaya Mukhi is directing the play for Rangayana, the theatre wing of the Karnataka Government. The play will be staged in Tagore Theatre as part of the ongoing national theatre festival of the PRD (Public Relations Department) on March 22. Swapnavasavadatta is the best known of Bhasha’s works.
Mr Narayanan told Deccan Chronicle that Kavalam Narayana Panicker had earlier directed the Sanskrit version of the play. Rangayana, the theatre wing of the Karnataka Government, had ensured that technicians and artists who were employed there got decent wages, Mr Narayanan said. He added that Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac, in the current budget, had announced that a permanent venue would be set up for the exhibition of plays on a commercial basis ensuring minimum wages to the artists.
The story of the Sanskrit Drama in six acts starts with Kausambi ruler King Udayana’s feelings for Princess Vasavadatta, the daughter of his captor and rival king of Ujjaini, and their elopement on an elephant. The drama revolves around the sorrow of Udayana for his queen Vasavadatta, believed by him to have perished in a fire, but was actually a rumour spread by Yaugandharayana, a minister of Udayana to compel his king to marry Padmavati, the daughter of the king of Magadha. This was to get the support of Magadha to make the kingdom stronger. Though he married Padmavati as per the wishes of the minister, he still pines for Vasavadatta, who appears in his dream. Vasavadatta returns to the palace as a maid and the climax is a happy ending.
Bhasa’s plays had been lost till T. Ganapati Sastri came upon 13 Sanskrit plays, that were used in the Koodiyattam plays including Swapnav-asavadattam, Pratigya Yaugandharayana, Pancharatra, Charudatta, Dootaghatotkacha, Avimaraka, Balacharita, Madhyamavyayoga, Karnabhara and Urubhanga, from the house of an astrologer in Kaduthuruthi and also from palace archives in 1912. Due to the similarity in the language, experts came to the conclusion that the dramas were by a single author. As the authorship of Swapnava-savadattam was already established, all other plays were also attributed to him. As per a sloga attributed to poet Rajasekhara, a group of scholars wanted to test the real worth of Bhasa’s works and burned them all. Only Swapnavasavadattam survived, according to the sloga.
