On a breezy March evening, a crowd squeezes through a traffic jam to enter an open-air auditorium in a narrow street in Chennai, gradually occupying all the 500 seats.
“This episode of the Ramayana tells us how to deal with knots in our lives,” the artiste on stage, Vishakha Hari, says in a sing-song tone in Tamil, throwing a philosophical spin to ancient poet Valmiki’s second book of verses that starts with epic hero Ram’s planned coronation, but ends with his banishment to the forest.
“It talks about rules and regulations,” she says in English to the nodding crowd. Most people remain glued to their seats through the two-and-a-half-hour performance that ends close to dinner time.
Telling tales may be labelled as a dinosaur in today’s high-tech and sensationally visual world of movies, television shows and Internet videos. But a new crop of performers is flavouring this lost art form with relevance and stamping it with commercial viability through strong DVD sales and spiking demand from schools and corporates as a catalyst for creativity.
Full report here Mint
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