[Reader-list] Urban Sabha Drama - May 2007

[pritham k chakravarthy]

Urban Sabha Drama -III Posting May 2007
Pritham K. Chakravarthy

Pammal Samandha Mudaliyar [1873-1967] a lawyer by profession, was the person 
who designed the ethics of Amateur Theatre in Madras Presidency in the year 
1891, with his Suguna Vilas Sabha, now functioning from Mount Road [Anna 
Salai] in Chennai with its one performance stage. It is no more a theatrical 
space of performance. But in the early part of the century along with 
People's Park and Victoria Public Hall, this was quite an active space where 
both professional and amateur groups frequently performed their plays. 
Having witnessed performances by professional groups at People's Park and 
observed the 'obscene' behavior of the troop members, also having seen 
British groups perform at Loyola College, Samandha Mudaliyar initially did 
not have a very noble impression about Tamil theatre or its agents. As a 
teenager seeing Stree Saagasam, by Sarasa Vinodhini Sabha he drafts his own 
Tamil adaptation under the title Pushpavalli and forms his own sabha to 
perform it with. The esteemed members of the sabha then, beside himself were 
the seven members; U. Muthukumarasami Reddiyar, V. Venkatakrishna Naidu, T. 
Jayarama Nayakar, G. E. Sampat Reddiyar, and Subramanya Pillai. The 
enthusiastic youngsters approached the esteemed citizens of the city 
including Diwan Bahadur Paakam Rajarathna Mudaliyar who demanded 'what is 
the use of such groups? What does the nation have to gain from them?' to 
which Samandha Mudaliyar angrily retorts 'Why don't ask this to the great 
poet Shakespeare?' and walks out. He later not only convinces Mudaliyar to 
become his prime patron but also marries his daughter. The forerunner to 
Suguna Vilas Sabha was Oriental Dramatic Society which was run by Brahmins 
of the city but which soon its operations and existed only in name. When 
Samandha Mudaliyar recruited Rangasami Iyengar into his group there were 
frantic efforts to revive the former and woo Iyengar into their folds, an 
effort that did not succeed. He distinguishes those who have to resort to 
theatre as an income generating profession and therefore have to resort to 
all sorts of obscenity to satisfy the gallery as opposed those of his kind 
who are in theatre for the development of the art field and usage of theatre 
as a forum to educate the people. In this endeavor several political and 
cultural elite of Chennai supported him. Beginning his rendezvous with 
theatre at a very young age of 18 Samandha Mudaliyar went on script 94 
plays. He acted in most of them, not necessarily in the lead role. His huge 
report ire includes adaptations of Shakespeare, Kalidas and French classics. 
Many of his scripts were filmed often while being performed on stage at 
Victoria Public Hall like the second talkie of Tamil cinema, Galaba Rishi 
[1932]. A.V.M Chettiyar found his gold mine by filming Mudaliyar's 
Sabhapathi [1941]. Mudaliyar himself directed Sati Sulochana and Manohara, 
which was later, modified to suite the purposes of the Dravidian party.

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