Tradition · night-long dance theatre
Yakṣagāna, coastal Karnataka
Also known as Yakshagana, Bayalata, Aata, Yakṣagāna — coastal Karnataka
The all-night theatre of the Tulu and Kannada coast: huge painted headgear, a singer-director who narrates and argues with the actors, and improvised spoken debate on the night's episode. Troupes are attached to temples, above all to Dharmasthala and Udupi, and tour the coast through the dry season.
- Function
- Arts & performance
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 13.340, 74.750
Worth knowing
The oral debate, the arthagarike, is unscripted and can last hours — two actors arguing the ethics of a Mahabharata episode in Kannada verse and prose before a village audience that will judge who had the better case. It is closer to a public disputation than to a play.
Connections (2)
- Patronage networkDharmasthala
The major Yakshagana troupes are temple troupes, endowed by and touring on behalf of shrines — Dharmasthala, Udupi, Mandarti, Perduru — with the season fixed by the agricultural calendar and the income going back to the temple. Dharmasthala, itself a Jain-administered Shaiva shrine, has run a mela for generations, which is why a religious institution rather than a court or a market is the unit that keeps this theatre alive.
- Patronage networkUdupi
Udupi's Krishna Matha, with its eight mathas rotating the temple's administration on a two-year paryaya cycle, is one of the principal patrons of Yakṣagāna and of the Dasa devotional repertoire the theatre draws on. Temple troupes tour on the shrine's behalf through the dry season and the income returns to it. A Madhva monastic institution funding an all-night theatre in Kannada and Tulu is the ordinary arrangement on this coast, not an unusual one.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Yakshagana”. Sangeet Natak Akademi documentation; UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage nomination files where the practice is listed.
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