[Reader-list] Urban Sabha Drama - April 2007

[pritham k chakravarthy]

Urban Drama - Pritham K. Chakravarthy
2nd Posting [April 2007]

Ever since Sankaradas Swamigal put together the format for professional 
theatre groups in the early part of the 20th century, the number of tropes 
also increased. The 30s to late 50s saw several traveling groups like Nawab 
Rajamanikam Pillai, Seva Stage, Shakthi Nadaga Sabha, and TKS Brothers. They 
were all groups that functioned from outside the city, Madras, now Chennai 
but made frequent visits wherein they would have long tours performing 
primarily at Ottraivaadi Theater hall in North Madras. Though there were 
other performance spaces available in the city like Rasiga Ranjini Sabha, 
Mylapore Fine Arts, Parthasarathy Swami Sabha, and Music Academy, these 
halls primarily fostered shows of carnatic music and Barathanatyam. Theatre 
very rarely found space here mostly because staging a professional drama for 
their audience was a costly affair. Early 50s it became a fashion in public 
offices like Accounts General, Post Office and Telephones to foster annual 
theatrical performances by their employees. It was the popularity that these 
groups enjoyed and the need to have a form of theatre that could be staged 
with-no-cost was the birth moment of Sabha Drama, a genre that emerged out 
of this urban space and need. The earliest group very active in the mid 50s 
was Ramakrishna Kripa Amateurs run by Dr. V. Ramamurthy and his son-in-law 
V. C. Gopalrathnam, a famous lawyer. They performed mythologies. The other 
group equally famous for their socials and light-hearted anglophile farces 
was United Amateur Artists, run Y. G. Parthsarathy and Pattu. 1957 saw a 
group of students from Vivekanada College in Mylapore form a theatre group 
with their alumni called Viveka Fine Arts. That was the moment when Mylapore 
Fine Arts also decided to open its doors to this local amateur group for 
Sabha Drama performance for its member.

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