The southwestern state of Karnataka possesses a rich and ancient heritage of performatory forms in the Kannada language, a few dating perhaps to the twelfth century. For reasons of availability, Yakshagana is the folk tradition most commonly associated with Kamataka by outsiders. But it is not a homogeneous entity. Popular regional variants include the Bayalata and Sannata styles of the north, while Talamaddale is a generic variant. The range of theatrical diversity in rural parts of the state also encompasses puppetry. There are two branches, which fall under the term Gombeyata i.e. various forms of ritual possession incorporating worship, such as Bhutaradhane and Karaga. There are also some devotional narratives by and for specific religious sects, as in Kamsale and Viragase.

The history of modern Kannada theatre begins around the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The British administration had by then penetrated fairly deep into present-day Karnataka. The material infrastructure for Kannada printing and publishing had been established and modern educational institutions had begun functioning across the region. All these, in turn, influenced the development of Kannada literature. The period during 1880-1920 often being termed as the `Kannada Renaissance`. There were other factors, too. During these decades, and even until as late as 1956, Kannada-speaking areas lay scattered in the erstwhile provinces of Bombay, Hyderabad, Mysore, and Madras. Hence Kannada was open to influences from other Indian languages as well. At the same time, there was a strong popular desire for the unification of all Kannada-speaking regions under one Kannada identity.

These several factors often confronted one another, leading gradually to a process of assimilation and forming the basis for a fine balance between rooted ness and openness. The manner in which modernity made its entry into Kannada theatre in the nineteenth century constitutes a highly interesting story. Surveys so far have missed this vital aspect, believing that the 1880s mark the beginning since new theatre companies and a new dramaturgy were formed at that time. On the contrary, closer examination reveals that modernity had seeped into Kannada theatre even earlier, when Yakshagana troupes began to travel outside their traditional geographical domain in the first half of the nineteenth century. A little later, north Karnataka evolved new forms of Sannata depicting contemporary themes. In fact, recent research indicates that a Shakespearean plot had sneaked into a Yakshagana prasanga or script much before Shakespeare had been translated or adapted. Later, when the new groups emerged, these modernized folk-theatre forms came to have a mutually influential relationship with them. Hence one cannot be very certain whether modernism entered Kannada theatre from the bottom or from the top, with the threshold so indistinguishable.

The two main developments in the 1870s and 1880s can be mentioned as the establishment of new troupes and the formulation of a new kind of dramaturgy. Both of them need separate attention. The first was mainly due to influences from Maharashtra. Beginning in I860, Marathi and Parsi theatre companies from that state traveled across Karnataka several times, and the centres that they visited later became those where the first Kannada troupes were formed. The Kritapura Nataka Mandali was founded in Gadag i.e. Dharwad district in 1877, and the Halasagi Company near Belgaum around the same time. In the south, the Chamarajendra Karnataka Nataka Sabha commenced in Mysore in 1879 under the patronage of the royal court, and in 1881 another troupe, the Rajadhani Nataka Mandali, came up in the same place. These pioneers played a dual role culturally. They set up a new performance system based on the models of Parsi and Marathi theatre. Simultaneously, they competed against them in order to evolve a Kannada identity of their own. Therefore they chose a middle path between a commercially viable professionalism and an amateurish local support base, and artistically, between the spectacular musicals of the imported theatres and the earthy folk idioms of the native traditions. The clear distinction between the professional and the amateur, in fact, cropped up only after the turn of the century when Company Nataka became prominent in Karnataka.

Parallel to these searches there developed a search for a new kind of drama, carried out in several directions. This kind is found translating and or adapting Shakespeare and Western plays on the one hand, and classical Sanskrit drama on the other. This also helped in restructuring the folk and traditional narratives and writing contemporary social drama. Two path-breaking plays in the 1880s illustrate this variegated quest in an idiomatic way. Iggappa Hegade vivaha prahasana i.e. `Iggappa Hegade``s Farcical Nuptials`` in 1887 explored a social problem and employed the dialect of the Havyaka Brahman community of Uttar Kannad district. Sangya-Balya i.e. `Sangya and Balya`, orally composed and performed in north Karnataka around the same time, also narrated a contemporary story. In all probability this is a real-life incident but applied the song-dance-dialogue pattern of earlier Sannata forms.

These trends of reshaping traditional narratives and composing social drama continued in the works of Santakavi during 1856-1920 and Kerur Vasudevacharya during 1866-1921. The adaptations of Shakespearean and Sanskrit drama show a similar pattern. Some of the important ones such as Ramavarma Lilavati i.e. `Ramavarma and Lilavati` from Romeo and Juliet, Pramilarjuniya i.e. `Pramila and Arjuna` from A Midsummer Nights Dream, and Raghavendra Rao nataka i.e. `The Drama of Raghavendra Rao` from Othello are significant. This is not so much for their ability to faithfully capture Shakespeare as for the way the writers adapted his plots and structural elements to their own contexts. Likewise, two pioneering translations of Kalidasa`s Sakuntala by Churamuri Sheshagiri Rao in 1869 and Basavappa Shastri in 1880 represent contrasting possibilities. The former employed traditional metres and dialects of north Karnataka, and the latter the complex metres and diction of old Kannada. These diverse and amorphous explorations began to acquire a crystallized form by the turn of the century. On the one hand, strong professional theatre arose and on the other, a variety of amateur experiments started.

Company Nataka, which is a collective term encompassing a few hundred companies which sprouted all over Karnataka between 1900 and 1950. This was basically a Kannada version of the Parsi commercial theatre. The more prominent troupes traveled die length and breadth of the state. Their distinct theatrical idiom with painted curtains, appealing songs, melodramatic acting, and mesmerizing special effects reigned supreme over the popular imagination of Karnataka till the advent of films. The Kadasiddeshwara Sangita Nataka Mandali which is also known as Konnur Company, founded in 1901. The Mahalakshmi Prasadika Nataka Mandali which is also known as Shirahatti Company, founded 1903. These two mark the rise of Company Nataka in north Karnataka. Together, they introduced several innovations importing the technique of transferring scenery, using dynamos to generate electricity, and introducing women to enact female roles. In south Karnataka, A. V. Varadachar established the Ratnavali Theatrical Company in 1904. He refined the mode of singing and brought conflict into characterization, replacing the prevalent stereotyped renderings. Eventually these innovations were picked up by other companies, and through them evolved the magic formula of Company Theatre. One troupe which exploited this formula to its fullest was the legendary Gubbi Channabasaveswara Nataka Sangha. It began in 1884 as a rural amateur group, but a glorious chapter opened in its history when the actor-director Gubbi Veeranna took over its reins in 1917.

The achievements of the Gubbi Company were two fold. It toured extensively, becoming famous even in parts of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Also, it utilized the entire repertoire available in the genre. They used spectacle, special effects, folk interludes, and modes of characterization. Its stars, like M. V. Subbaiya Naidu, B. Jayamma, and R. Nagarathnamma, drew huge audiences. This remarkable range as well as its great outreach turned it into a household name by the 1940s. Other companies, after 1915, could never hope to surpass or even match the Gubbi troupe. Instead they tried to focus on, and specialize in, specific aspects of performance. For instance, the Dattatreya Sangita Nataka Mandali preferred to concentrate on prose plays and acting, under the strong influence of its head, Garuda Sadasivarao during 1879-1956 and leading female impersonator, Balappa Yenagi. The Halageri Company devoted itself to comedy, and Vamanrao Master in 1883-1935 made stage music his specialty. Down south, the Amba Prasadita Nataka Mandali and Mohammed Peer`s troupes stressed acting, while the Hirannaiah Mitra Mandali relied on farce and witty speech.

The combined impact of all these companies, though, sustained the momentum of the movement at least up to Independence. It also gave birth to a large number of playwrights. The names can be mentioned as Bellave Narahari Sastri, Kandagal Hanumantha Rao, and B. Puttaswamaiah the more important among them. As elsewhere in India, the decline began with the arrival of cinema. The companies started closing down during the 1930s and 1940s, and the slide accelerated in the post-Independence years. Only a few managed to survive the crisis, but could never regain the popular appeal of previous decades. At the turn of the century, as Company Nataka had continued to gather strength, non-commercial theatre activity, too, had begun to carve a niche for itself. However, amateur theatre in Karnataka never became an organized and unified movement because it was divided into the rural groups that imitated the Company Nataka within their limited capacities, and the urban amateurs who opposed that idiom and attempted an alternative theatre of their own. The Bharata Kalottejaka Sangita Samsthe founded in 1904 of Dharwad and the Amateur Dramatic Association founded in 1909, of Bangalore were two prominent amateur troupes of the period. They presented `literary plays` to their limited memberships, and conducted theatre festivals and competitions as well. Their performances were not free from Company influences; for example, the well-known ADA actor Bellary Raghava, as available documents suggest, could not do much beyond improving upon and refining the Company acting style.

After 1915, however, the amateur theatre underwent a transformation. New playwrights emerged, and so did many new troupes, notable among them the Literary Dramatic Association of Mysore and Vasudeva Vinodini Natya Sabha of Bagalkot in Bijapur district. Concurrently, new theatre practitioners began to appear, too. T. P. Kailasam contributed much to Amateur theatre in Bangalore. Likewise K. Shivarama Karanth made several experiments in Dakshin Kannad and, later, Sriranga or Adya Rangacharya involved himself deeply in the amateur movement in north Karnataka while Parwathavani wrote entertaining comedies. Though they differed widely in concepts, they launched a common attack on the Company Nataka genre, specially its artificiality and anachronism. These factors effected a transition from epic to social plays, from painted curtains to suggested scenery, from rhetoric to everyday speech, and from melodrama to broad realism.

It was no fortuitous coincidence that the first major harvest of modern Kannada drama should appear at this precise juncture. If recent theatrical developments were one cause, the other significant impetus came from literature. By 1920 the Navodaya or renaissance movement in Kannada had produced major authors, mainly novelists and poets like D. R. Bendre. Many of them also wrote plays, more as closet drama than as theatre pieces. The most important were B. M. Sri i.e. Srikantiah in 1884-1946, who tried to bring the tragic mode of the West into Kannada drama. Kuvempu i.e. K. V. Puttappa, chiefly reworked epic plots and Srinivasa or Masti Venkatesa Iyengar, who composed epic, historical, and social plays but with a unique touch of realism in characterization. Another trend of the period was operatic theatre, whose pioneers included Pu. Ti. Na. or P. T. Narasimhachar and Shivarama Karanth.

Apart from these `literary` authors who wrote mostly between 1920 and 1930, four major writers concentrated exclusively on drama and went on to make substantial contributions. They were Samsa i.e. Sami Venkatadri Iyer and T. P. Kailasam from the south, and Sriranga and G. B. Joshi from the north. Samsa`s plays are mostly about the kings of medieval Mysore and, like other historical dramatists of the time in India. He used history to counter colonial rule. But the great artist that he was, he never upheld a simplistic, nationalistic approach. Kailasam followed a different path, emphasizing the actual present and depicting the rising middle class of the old Mysore region and also interrogating their `progressiveness` with an extraordinary strength for wit and farce. Sriranga, too, was a bitter critic of the hypocrisies of his society, but the style he employed could broadly and more appropriately be termed social realism. Joshi, though he wrote many of his plays after 1950, began in the 1930s and essentially belongs to the same period. He captured with a rare poetic realism the shock that feudal families in north Karnataka encountered on entering the modern age.

Kannada theatre reached a turning point by the 1950s. On the one hand, Company Nataka had exhausted itself but the amateur movement had not yet achieved the professionalism that could enable it to make an impact outside its limited circles. Moreover, while opposing the Company mode for its excesses of theatricality, the amateur experiment itself remained an impoverished theatre of speech. Therefore, a process of assimilation was urgently needed for the art to survive. Sriranga, the first to sense this problem, not only wrote about it but also tried to find ways out of the situation. In the late 1950s, under the banner of Natya Sangha, he organized a series of theatre workshops, the first of their kind in Karnataka. Through these, an informal training for amateurs was begun and a new interest kindled in theatre as a medium.

At this moment, the arrival of B. V. Karanth worked as a catalyst for the spread of amateur theatre. From 1967, he began directing plays in Bangalore and also traveled to several parts of Karnataka, working with children and many groups. The festival of plays he directed in Bangalore in 1972 served as a milestone. Through them, he evolved a new idiom that assimilated the best of Company Nataka, folk performance, and the National School of Drama model of modern theatre. This early 1970s euphoria generated a large number of actors like G. V. Shivananda and C. R. Simha, technicians like V. Ramamurthy, as well as active groups such as Benaka and Rangasampada in Bangalore, Samatento in Mysore, Ninasam in Heggodu. They eventually intensified the momentum of the amateur movement.

While the Karanth brand of theatre became increasingly popular, a reaction against it appeared as well. It came from the new political awareness of the decade and was directed against indiscriminate use of folk elements, against stressing theatricality at the expense of content, and against theatre eventually turning into purposeless entertainment. Samudaya, a leftist group formed in the mid-1970s, became the advocate of this reaction and organized alternative work. Founder-member Prasanna in 1951 directed several plays over the next few years marking a departure from the Karanth mode towards a committed as well as medium-conscious theatre. Samudaya also conducted state-wide jathas performing street theatre and progressive cultural activities.

Although this did not lead to the development of an explicit political theatre in Karnataka, it did affect a definite shift discernible by the 1980s. Theatre became much more aware of content, new activists from lower castes and classes participated, and the amateur movement gained both an idea of theatricality as well as a sense of purpose. Post-Independence Kannada drama shares many of these concerns. During the 1950s the Navya i.e. new or modernist movement developed in Kannada literature and its impact was also felt in drama. Older playwrights like Sriranga and Joshi changed their course from realism to a variety of post-realistic approaches, leading to a series of new works and trends in the 1960s. One such vogue was that of absurdist drama, practiced by writers like Chandrashekhar Patil, N. Rama, and Chandrakantha Kusnoor. Although short-lived, it certainly anticipated a turning point, which came quickly; three important playwrights appeared in that same decade. The names can be noted as P. Lankesh, Girish Karnad, and Chandrasekhar Kambar. Together, they consolidated and crystallized all the modernist issues in well-structured plays that were not only picked up by Kannada theatre but also became renowned outside Karnataka.

Lankesh wrote short plays evolving a new dramaturgy comparable to that of the absurdist and angry theatres of contemporary Europe. Karnad began with Yayati in 1961, where he fused existential concerns into a mythological episode. The crest of the wave is represented by Karnad s Tughlaq in 1964 and Lankesh`s Sankranti i.e. `Transformation` in 1972, both based on history but reflecting contemporary society, both essentially modernist in their themes but using the prevalent modes of Kannada theatre for their expression. During the 1970s another shift took place towards incorporating folk and traditional elements. Karnad`s Hayavadana in 1971 began this trend and Kambar, who had written modernist short plays previously, joined in with Rishyashringa in 1970 and Jokumaraswami in 1972. Later, this fad became immensely popular with many dramatists who tried out various blends of the folk formula, which soon led to mechanical and merely ornamental dramaturgy and, in turn, an inevitable reaction against it quickly followed.

It is still too early to demarcate and define the general course of Kannada theatre since the 1980s, but two tendencies are clear. The first can be termed as a drive towards decentralization. Amateur groups in rural Kamataka began to assert their identities in the 1960s and 1970s. This was a process further consolidated since 1980. A large number of these troupes, in towns like Mangalore, Udupi, Dharwad, Davangere, and smaller places like Sullia, Ilkal, Manchikeri, and Heggodu, do active and significant theatre work. Second, Kannada theatre moved toward a new professionalism. In 1980, the Ninasam Theatre Institute under K. V. Subbanna initiated a one-year theatre course and, later in the decade, two professional companies Ninasam Tirugata and Rangayana, in Mysore started operations. Directors involved in these activities include B. Jayashree, C. G. Krishnaswamy, C. R. Jambe, Jayatirtha Joshi, S. Raghunandan, C. Basavalingaiah, Iqbal Ahmed, and B. Suresh. There were shifts in Kannada drama as well. The established generation of Karnad, Kambar, and Lankesh wrote new plays, often departing from earlier methods. Talented younger playwrights like H. S. Shiva Prakash also appeared in the limelight.