The troupe made a good impression on Andhra and influenced the Telugu stage, which began to emulate some of its traits. The theatre of Andhra, therefore owes a good measure of obligation to this troupe. The troupe returned to Dharwar by 1885, when the first railway lines were laid in North Karnataka. Many of the members of the troupe were tired of an itinerant life and sought employment. Quite a few of them joined the railways. This was a great loss to the North Karnataka Stage. In the last decade of the 19th century many an important professional troupe, including the one at Gadag led by Shantakavi, had become defunct, mostly due to internal feuds. By the year 1890, there was not a single professional company sufficiently strong to hold aloft the banner of the Kannada theatre stage. Quite a number of troupes sprang up here and there it is true, but they were too feeble to do anything substantial. These troupes were crowded with enthusiastic illiterates who learnt the lines by rote and reproduced them like parrots. Drama became a ludicrous affair in the eye of the educated, and soon, the acting profession became unpopular. The effort of educated enthusiasts like Shantakavi could not restore to the stage the respect it had earlier enjoyed. The last decade of the 19th century witnessed painful convulsions of many a dramatic troupe tossing between life and death. |