K.N. Panikkar: The Theatre of Rasa

Description

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

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Udayan Vajpeyi is a Hindi poet, translator, essayist, short fiction and script writer. He has published two volumes of poetry, three collections of short stories, two books of essays and other miscellaneous publications (including a book of recreated folktales and an account of an extended conversation with filmmaker Mani Kaul).
He has received various awards for his writing, including a Senior Fellowship from the Government of India (1994-96), the Krishna Baldev Award (2001), the Raza Foundation Award (2003) and the Raza Foundation Fellowship (2003). He was Writer-in-Residence in Lavigny in 2000 and Paris in 2003. He participated in the International Book Fair in Paris in 2007. He teaches Physiology at Gandhi Medical College, Bhopal.
Natarang Pratishthan, established in 1989, is a private trust that promotes and nurtures scholarship in the field of modern Indian theatre. The Pratishthan maintains a library and archive that house exhaustive material pertaining to Indian theatre of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This includes books, journals, play-scripts, photographs, seminar papers, brochures, posters, press clippings, audio and video recordings and other rare resource material.
Natarang Pratishthan also engages with the contemporary practice of theatre by organising events such as theatre festivals, seminars, dialogues, exhibitions, etc., by documenting the work processes of theatre practitioners, and through the publication of the longest surviving theatre journal in India, Natarang.

ABOUT THE BOOK
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Kavalam Narayana Panikkar is one of India’s most revered theatre directors. He has been writing and directing plays for the last four decades and even today, remains as energetic and as creative as ever. Panikkar’s involvement with theatre began with him writing poetry and plays. Gradually he began directing plays himself. This was the beginning of a significant career as a theatre director who found new ways of relating to existing traditions. Panikkar’s contemporaneity lies in his continual experimentation and innovation within the broader framework of Indian ways of doing theatre. In this way, his theatre is in constant dialogue with the folk (deshi) and classical (margi) traditions of performing art in India.
K.N. Panikkar: The Theatre of Rasa goes deeper into the styles and sources of Panikkar’s theatre. It includes essays by some of India’s finest theatre writers and thinkers, as well as a long conversation with this master theatre director and a detailed discussion on the production of Ottayan, one his renowned plays. This book will give an insight into not only the theatre of K.N. Panikkar, but into theatre as an art form within a broader framework.