Kuchipudi with sub-titles?
Ramakrishna S. Pillalamarri (pkrishna@ARL.MIL)
Thu, 24 Jul 97 12:18:11 EDT
When VCS&Co staged Hara Vilasam in Detroit, back in '94, I remember Ari
Sitaramayya talking to Vempati after the preformance, and suggesting that
some kind of sub-titling to be projected around some area of the stage.
This is old news, but I happened to notice it just now. Last year,
(Aug 96) they staged some Kuchipudi performances in Belgium. Issue 143 of
Sruti magazine says that "a novel feature was the projection of the text
of the songs on a small screen for the benefit of the Belgian audience'.
It seems excerpts from 'rukmiNee kaLyANam', and 'bhAmA kalApam' were
performed.
I don't know how much benefit the Belgian audience derived from presenting
the text of the songs. Perhaps a large majority of the audience was Indian.
But in any case, the fact that they did something like that is encouraging.
Doubtless the text was presented in Roman script. But I wonder if the
material presented was telugu text in Roman script, or translations
of the songs.
Somehow, "I am a dame, I am dame, I am Satyabhama" doesn't sound right.
Ramakrishna