With the demise of the silent era and the advent of the talkies, the main source for inspiration for films came from mythological texts. Films were produced in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali. Mythology flourished more in South India where its social conservative morals equated film acting to prostitution. But by the 1930’s, word had spread around the world about the vibrant film industry in India and foreigners with stars in their eyes landed upon Bombay
Women in Mahabharata and Today’s Society Literature reflects the norms, condition, and culture of a society, and when it comes to “The Mahabharata”, an epic which is said to be a collection of stories taken over a certain period, certainly reflects the then society to a great extent. Generally, the authorship of “The Mahabharata (The Stories of the Descendants of Bharata)” is attributed to sage Vyasa. However, it was composed over many years and today’s Mahabharata is an edition of many a men. According to Monier Williams, “it is not one poem, but a compilation of many poems, not a Kavya by one author, but an Itihasa by many authors (Draupadi of Mahabharat: History of Women Empowerment, 230).” Many attempts has been taken till date to reveal the composition period of this epic and history behind it as it is granted as one of the most important scriptures from the view of World History which can give us more clear ideas of ancient Indian society. Lately, it has been thought that Mahabharata was originated between 8th and 9th centuries BCE and came into its final form by the early Gupta period (4th century CE) (Basu, 2).
Until around 1680, the plays utilized genuine swords. The specialty of Kabuki was really made contrary to the Noh theater. The thought was to recount all the more auspicious and vivacious stories to stun the gatherings of people. The main Kabuki indicate was performed in 1603. In the end, it developed into an adapted work of art that still stays well known today.
“Bombay” directed by Mani Ratnam is a film about a family with religious confliction during the Bombay riots of the early nineties. In the film, religious conflicts are seen in two different settings, the city of Bombay and in the home village of Shekhar and Shaila. The setting greatly affects how religious conflicts are dealt with between Hindus and Muslims. This contrast can also be noted in “Voices from the Partition” by Urvashi Butalia and “Yesterday Man” by Omair Ahmad. The contrast of settings in “Bombay” is used to reveal the repetition of conflict and to demonstrate the affects on younger generations.
Even though it lacked in this field it still contributed more in the area of theatre. The middle classes and the higher classes always had the upper hand on the Marathi theatre. The people of these classes had limited experience because of which the plays written by them also had less range of extension which resulted in the limitation of the Marathi theatre. By the year 1870s, with the plays Swairasakesha which represented how the widows are expected to shave their hair, the status of women in the society also became a point of discourse. Later, by the year 1890s, things changed.
Kabuki : Crossdressing Throughout the Ages Burton Weaver When we as Western theatre scholars think of ancient forms of theatre, instantly thoughts of Greek tragedies and Shakespearean plays come to mind. However, the East also has a rich theatrical history, especially in Japan. The Noh theatre, a popular form in Japan, dates back as early as the 14th Century. Another most popular form in Japan came to fruition a bit later, the earliest records being found at the beginning of the 17th Century. Perhaps the most interesting and wildly fantastic theatrical experience in Japan is the Kabuki Theatre.
The first “play” put on was in 1735, it was technically a British opera called Flora. After this play the colonies started to form together as a nation and a new type of play was developed, the burlesque. The burlesque was all about tragedies and parodies of other plays with performers and dancers in song, dance, pantomime and dialogue. This quickly became popular within the nation, one of the earliest
One can find a realistic representation of India of the contemporary times. This fictitious region is woven in such a smooth thread that it creates a fine fabric. The characters of this town were people from his childhood, whom he met everyday, who were his acquaintances. He created it in such a manner that every Indian could eventually relate to. Those loved and shabby streets of the town, the theatre, the hair cutting shops, people he met everyday, people he knew, people he was friends with, people he had never met or who were strangers to him were all the characters in this place.
Girish Karnad, as Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker sets forth in her introduction to the first volume of his Collected Plays, belongs to the “formative generation” (vii) of Indian playwrights that collectively shaped the trajectory of modern Indian theatre, influenced heavily by the models of theatre available to them at the time, or lack thereof, alongside their experience of unprecedented political autonomy, idealism, and the decisive and vehement rejection of colonial theatrical practices. Following the independence of India in 1947, modern Indian theatre found itself struggling with the disjunction between the commercialism of the Parsi model of theatre, and the radical populism of the Indian People’s Theatre Association – both of which ultimately became unsatisfactory models for the development of urban drama. According to Dharwadker, this “sense of disconnection from the immediate past led…” playwrights to construct and sustain “radical connections with an older past as well as the postcolonial present in India.” (vii, “Introduction, Volume One”) The dominant presence of mythology, and the ancient and medieval past in Karnad’s drama is a result of both personal and cultural compulsions, and his ability to contend with “the timeless and the temporal together” is perhaps most evident in this juxtaposition of myth and history in his works, in the simultaneous embrace of the historical and the ahistorical, where the mythical-folklore plays evoke a “chronologically
Research at the Malaysian Production Policy Division (2009) reveals that the film industry in Malaysia began in Singapore. In 1933, the first commercial film produced in Singapore made use of Bangsawan (opera) personalities.Bangsawan was then the popular traditional form of entertainment. The Bangsawan players readily adapted themselves to film-making, and movies quickly became a new entertainment medium among the masses.The first Malay film to be produced was Laila Majnun (1938) a tragic love story in the vein of Romeo and Juliet. A number of business people associated with personalities of the aristocrats which in the Malay language known as the Bangsawan were responsible for the production of this movie. An Indian national, B.S.