Saturday, April 05, 2008

Andhra Natakam

A new site forAndhra Natakam.
It has audios and videos for sale and it seems that the money will go to the artists. From their aricle on Padyanatakams:
"As the titles suggests, Padya Natakams consists of many padyams (verses) along with dialogues. In the beginning years, these dramas were performed by organized troupes with more emphasis on acting and dramatisation than rendering padyams with elaborate ‘aalapan’ of ragas. Emphasis was given on rendering padyams in a lucid way to enable audiences to understand the words and meaning of the padyams. There was team effort and the main characters of Sri Krishna, Sri Rama, and Harishchandra used to be performed by a single actor, who had to read about 60 to 80 padyams by himself.
As time passed on the taste of audiences veered towards elaborate aalapana(singing) of ragas in the padyams and due to introduction of sales of tickets for seeing the natakams, the actors had to sing the padyams with elaborate ragas(dhirgaalapana) to stay in the race for audience appreciation. Contractors took over the running of the dramas and to make profits, started to the practice of casting 3 or 4 artists to do the main characters like Sri Krishna, Sri Rama, harishchandra etc who could sing for long period to cater to the taste of the audience. A sort of Hero worship gripped the audience and they used to buy tickets for the dramas if their favorite artists and singer of padyams is in the start cast. The contractors and some artists made lot of money due to commercial aspect. As a result, the dramatic element started to take back seat. The performance as a while became a sort of fight between popular actor singers to out sing one another with prolonged RagaAlapana in the highest pitch(Sruti) possible without any regard for sahithya(content of the verse) and action and Bhava.
One peculiar aspect of telugu audience is to shout “Once more” after one artists sings a verse to their liking and some of his favourites used to come to the stage and offer their monetary rewards. One funny and farcical thing is in this regard is when the artist sings a verse with full raga and falls down in the act of dying, the audience shout “Once More”. Then the artist who is on the stage gets up again and sings the same and again falls down. I have personally witnessed some instances when this happened, and I could not comprehend the logic behind the response of the audience. I will give u another funny anecdote. When one artist is singing a verse for about 3 minutes, the other artist on the stage goes behind and comes to the stage when he is due to singing his Padyam. The audience does not mind the absence of the second artist and the lapse in the continuity of the Drama. The artists repeat the same verse and the other artists on the stage stand as mute witnesses to this drama within the main drama (antharnatakam). Then the other favorite actor of the audience renders his verse in the same in his style trying to out sing the earlier actor. Then the audience repeat the same act thus the dramatic aspect(natakiyatha) retreats completely and the performance starting from about 10 PM in the night goes on till early in the morning."
The site has an accompanying blog.

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