Mr. girIsh karnAD, noted playwright from India, it is reported, has marked the 1913 Nobel Laureate of Literature from India, Rabindranath Tagore as a 'great poet, but second rate playwright'. Date: 9th Nov. 2012. Context: A conversation with reporters at Bengaluru, India. Said to be other quotes from him on the day:
Rabindranath Tagore wrote mediocre plays. He produced his plays, but his plays were never produced by his contemporaries. Contemporary Bengali theatre never accepted them.
Because he is second rate. What else should one call him?. The poor people in his plays are really cardboard characters. They have no passion and anguish at all.
ybrao-a-donkey's personal views not intended to be imposed on others:
The adjective 'second rate' is too abstract and subjective.
We should appreciate the forthrightness of Mr. karnAD, though we may not agree with his views.
It is very difficult, when a person criticises, to estimate whether he is making it out of genuine concern or for some publicity. This difficulty level will increase when the critic belongs to the same genre (in the same profession, requiring to share the pie of fame) as the target of the criticism. Critics of critics may say that the particular criticism was born out of 'envy'.
I am not a playwright, not at least now. I have no plans to write plays. I read some of the plays of Tagore. I, sometimes, felt that Tagore's writings received a degree/quantity of publicity than his writings deserved. Again, this word 'deserved' is an abstract and subjective word.
A rich playwright may be able to get his plays enacted on stage, somewhere or other. A poor writer cannot get as many opportunities.
It is worthwhile, to examine the 21st Century Indian Theatre Scenario. The karnATaka and mahArAshTra theatres may be somewhat alive. Andhra Pradesh State which has 80 million population, does not have much of a theatre today. Current dramas are enacted live on the streets, by the political players. We rarely see plays being enacted on theatre stages. I live in a city of a million population. We find that very rarely social dramas are staged even 'free of ticket' (not to speak of paid plays).
This atrophy of Telugu stage plays (probably stage plays of all languages all over India, with the exception of kannaDa and marAThi, may be owing to spiralling theatre rents, rents/prices of costumes and curtains, publicity etc.
We now do not have rich landlords, businessmen and industrialists, who will be prepared to write plays or arrange their enactments on stage. Those who have the moolah will now invest in gigantic budget films.
Not that the film industry is gloriously floushing. All over India, at least 90% of films produced every year end up as flops. The producers recover their investments by releasing films in hundreds/thousands of theatres and charge high prices on the first week tickets.
Let us see the friction going on between Shah Rukh Khan and Ajay Devgan fighting out for theatres during the festive season. It appears that Mr. Ajay Devgan could not hire as many theaters as the distributors of the SRK's film. Here, the maxim is very clear: Money-Might is the Right.
If some contemporary small budget producer / director make a low budget film and then end up as a damp squib, should we say that our contemporary society has not accepted the films owing to the fault of the low budget art film producers/directors?
Acceptance by society (in case of politics: voters) cannot be a parameter for measuring the quality/merit/success of art-works.
Hundreds of factors determine the fate of art-works, be they plays or films or something else.
