A few years ago, renowned theater director and playwright Prasanna “Heggodu” had sworn that he would not travel by air “for its environmental reasons”. Around the same time, he also picked up an iPad, realizing that the Pencil that came with it would enable him to create woodcut-like drawings. So, he started taking his iPad with him on these trips and creating artworks on it while traveling. “These are works that I have done when I was traveling in trains,” he says, pointing to a curated selection of some of these artworks, which are currently on the walls of Gallery No. 4 at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishad, Bengaluru.
This exhibition of digital prints, ‘Playing with Life’, a wonderful blend of both abstraction and representation, which opened to the public on October 30, reflects his half-century long experience with theatre. “I am driven by the vision as an artiste, as an actor-trainer,” says the founder of Samudaya, Karnataka’s renowned amateur theater group, and national president of the Indian People’s Theater Association (IPTA).
He says, “I am actually living the life of a designer in many fields. I have designed theater halls, costumes and sets.” In her second incarnation, as the founder of Charaka, a Heggodu-based handloom cooperative owned and managed by women, says, “I also design clothes and prints. So it’s in me.”
The aesthetic of the artwork, “black and white lines and shapes”, is also a function of his work as a director, says Prasanna, author of . Indian method in acting And acting and beyond“The human form and emotions are what I have been doing continuously for the last 50 years, so I have become a conscious person as far as that is concerned. Even if I see a figure on the wall because water has been dripped on, I can see the whole world in it.”
Figurative images in artworks, whether they be human, animal or flower, almost always make eye contact with each other, it is also a dramatic strategy because “there is no drama if your character is not looking into the eyes of another character,” he says. “So there is a huge influence of theater on these paintings.”
Prasanna is also the founder of Charaka. , Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
His composition method, he admits, “is crazy. I fill the canvas with all kinds of images and then make connections,” he says, walking toward a print of a priest carefully lighting a fire, a few yards away from a tree. When he first created this image incorporating all these elements, he was “sure it wasn’t perfect.”
It was only when Prasanna returned to the picture about a month later that he realized what it should be, and he added letters representing mantras and used lines to surround the entire scene. “The final ideological material comes last.”
The reason for creating this collection of artwork – each piece has a base price of ₹ 7,000, and 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 specialization in direction.
“The institution I have made my soul, the Indian Institute of Educational Theater in Mysore, is in dire need of funds. “Governments are not willing to pay because they do not understand the concept.”
Prasanna’s artwork is deeply influenced by his association with theatre. Photo Courtesy: Preeti Zakaria
According to the website of the Indian Institute of Educational Theater (IIET), a flagship initiative of IPTA, the initiative seeks to transform education systems by incorporating theater into the school curriculum, “fostering an environment where children can grow and discover their true potential through learning through teaching.”
Theater in Education (TIE) is not just for school students. IIET currently offers workshops and training in three languages to diverse populations including students, teachers and teacher trainers, theater professionals, women’s groups, development professionals, artists and activists. “This institute is trying to prepare a buffer program. We are in research, development and training.”
In his opinion, such an institute could help create jobs for artists across the country, who come into their creative profession “with a very specific dream…to express their own little truth”, but often find themselves and their dreams struggling to stay afloat in big cities.
So this institute is trying to create a system in which trained actors will contribute to schools that have adopted theater in their curriculum, for which they will receive regular income, and will also be able to pursue their art in the outside world in their free time, he explains. Prasanna believes this financial buffer is clearly important, given his sober assessment of the state of the world at large and the arts in particular.
“There’s no drama if your character isn’t looking the other character in the eye.” Photo Courtesy: Preeti Zakaria
In this fast-paced, highly mediated era, where the threat of AI looms large, initiatives like this are more important than ever, noting that “children are stuck on their mobiles, which is a serious crisis.”
In his opinion, while there are still some brave people trying and fighting for good productions, theater is struggling because “entertainment has become everything: culture, religion, politics.”
Unlike the 1960s and 1970s, when Prasanna started theatre, and “communication and expression were still quite intact”, we have now become a “super-fast civilization” which, he believes, is heading towards destruction. “And if civilization is going to die, how can this silly little expression of civilization survive?”