Page to stage an interplay between text and performance in selected plays of Girish Karnad

Abstract

The present study was designed and conducted with the purpose to understand the interplay between the page and the stage. In the move from a purely verbal medium to the embodied forms for performance, changes occur deliberately and inadvertently. To interrogate these areas of infringements as well as affiliations, stage adaptations of three plays from Girish Karnad s dramaturgy Nagamandala, Tughlaq and The Fire and The Rain, were chosen and studied at length by employing the theory of Comparative Adaptation and Theatre Semiotics. Adaptation in theatre is predominantly a comparative study because performance is always haunted by its dramatic text. Comparative studies involve a minute inspection of the method, ideology and techniques used by the adapter in the process of adaptation. The task of evaluating this transformation leads to valuable insights regarding the relationship between these two mediums. To comprehend these changes, a three-pronged approach of authorial, generic and medium specificity was employed. To achieve this objective, a thorough reading of the dramatic text was done to understand how Karnad generates meaning through the various elements involved in the scripting of the text. Next, performances of the concerned plays were examined. The role of the director is vital as every dramatic text is open to multiple adaptations, which can be worked and re-worked upon repeatedly, presenting new perspectives and possibilities of treatment. The analysis of the performance involved scrutinising the stage adaptation by the director to establish the points of linkages and departure from the source text. To facilitate this, interviews conducted with directors of the selected plays were used because the performance of a play is a process of adaption, controlled by the director. Finally, this research attempts to grasp the plurality and complexity of the theatrical process. newline