In 2021, I set out on a search for the women performers of the Kannada theatre before me. Who were the women who built the stage? On whose shoulders does my work stand? It was more than a research question. It was a search for ancestry—not of blood but of professional lineage.
Supported by the India foundation for the Arts (IFA) Research Grant, Surabhi Vashist (my research partner) and I set off on a journey across Karnataka. We travelled from Hubli to Mysuru, Gadag to Gubbi meeting women performers—the villains, vamps, heroines, cross dressers, queens and comedians who ruled the Kannada stage. Our journey took us across Kannada’s theatre history; from professional Company theatre (1930–70) to the amateur theatre movement (1950–present). Although women and female bodies are central to its cultural imagination, Kannada theatre’s actual relationship with women as performers has been fraught with anxiety. The female performing body has been subject to several types of invisibilisation and marginalisation across the history of Kannada theatre, none of which are singular, and follow as chequered and contradictory a career as its tryst with modernity.
The company theatre tradition, which made its way into India through the British in the late 18th century, marked the beginning of modern Indian theatre. This new proscenium stage distinguished itself from traditional and folk theatre with its ‘modern’ storytelling and stagecraft. Despite its self-confessed modernity, the Kannada company theatre in its golden era (1905–1930) refused to hire women—all female roles were played by female impersonators. It was only when the company theatre’s hegemony began to fade with the advent of the talkies (1940–70) that women were hired—purely due to commercial compulsions. The women who were recruited into this enterprise (it can be theorized) would have been from Karnataka’s abundant Gramya Rangabhoomi (folk theatre). Several of these actresses were seasoned professional performers, albeit from a different performance culture, which did not suffer the moral anxieties of professional company theatre. To meet the demand for actresses, women from all kinds of ‘unrespectable’ offstage backgrounds were recruited to uphold onstage respectability. What did these ‘vulgar’ women do to this morality project? How did they thrive within the relentless patriarchy of Kannada theatre? What were their mutinies, subversions? These were the questions of my research. Over the period of 5 years that I have searched for them, I have found diverse and surprising answers.
Here I present to you the story of these encounters. The story, of course, is a fragmented one, since women’s lives, both on and off stage are largely unrecorded, deliberately silenced and historically overlooked. So, the story is narrated in part video, part essay, part photo archive. This fragmented style of sharing is my attempt to stay true to the way I encountered them. This issue carries 3 such encounters—one with my favourite ‘vulgar’ woman of my childhood; another with a pair of actor sisters Satya and Chandra, who chose a practical life over the natakada life; and lastly, the Stree Nataka Mandali—an all woman theatre troupe who played as onstage men. They ruled the Kannada company stage for 40 years with their swashbuckling drag till one day, they disappeared.
Umashree: from Kannada’s “Woman without Culture” to Minister for Kannada Culture
I first encountered the actress Umashree, as a 10-year-old girl, enraptured by the latest Kannada cinema that would play fresh off the talkies on Doordarshan every Sunday at 7pm. It was an event my grandfather frowned upon, since such ‘anti-intellectual’ activity would corrupt our moral fibre (which only greatly increased our fascination). Always cast as the ‘deviant’ woman and a comic relief, Umashree’s characters stood out in stark contrast to the leading ladies of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.
After an initial burst of promise, all of the leading ladies annihilated their personhood to become good wives, mothers or sisters. To my utter disappointment, they sacrificed regularly, were won over evil mothers-in-law through goodness, were stalked and conquered, and gave birth to baby boys post their ‘first nights’. It was at this time that Umashree burst into my life and I vividly recall the shock of first watching her on screen. In Ravichandran’s Swabhimaana (1985), Umashree plays the estate maid with an endearing husband (actor NS Rao), who is cursed with impotency, an affliction she is resolved to cure. In her comedy track, Umashree is firmly in charge of making her husband the stallion he is meant to be. She blows the pungi to ‘wake his snake’, cooks him meals of sorekai (snake gourd), and buys tonics guaranteed to ‘make him a man’. I vividly remember the scene where Umashree stands provocatively at the door of their bedroom, after one such attempt. NS Rao continues to sit coyly on the bed like a bride on her ‘first night’. Umashree, full of desire, wrestles him onto the bed which breaks and as the lights go out, we hear NS Rao giggling, saying ‘spare me, dear lord’.
Although never cast as the lead, Umashree had a monopoly in Kannada cinema from the early 1980s to the late 2000s, starring in over 400 films. There was no actress who was even a distant second to her popularity. In an interview with Suvarna Kannada, she says “I was never the heroine, but for several years, the films ran because the public didn’t ask who the hero or the heroine was. They asked, ‘Is Umashree in it?’”
I grew up to be a theatre maker, and one evening, 25 years after my Doordarshan days, when I was rummaging through Prakush Garud’s extensive documentation of North Karnataka’s company theatre history, I encountered Umashree again—entirely by chance. 1970–90 was a period of decline in Kannada’s illustrious Company Theatre culture, as it waged a losing battle with the talkies. At the same time, a new set of possibilities emerged. Enabled by its low maintenance nature, frontline comedy—which was until now, almost an addendum to the main performance—took on a new significance. In this format, female roles went through a radical change as the appearance of the ‘loose woman’ as a comic figure started to gain popularity. It was here that I found Umashree again.
In the late 1970s, with some experience in rural and amateur theatre, Umashree had turned to commercial theatre to support herself as a young single mother. Abandoned by her husband, commercial theatre became her profession. Umashree starred as an insignificant side character called Chenni in Huccheshwara Natya Sangha’s commercial hit Bus Conductor (1979–90). Chenni is the play’s comic relief. She is the daughter of a Khanavali (homestyle restaurant) owner and is known for her deft use of dialogue, laden with sexual innuendo.
With Umashree taking on this role, her popularity as Chenni rose to such an extent that the play Bus Conductor had to be renamed to Khanavali Chenni. All the leading characters of the original play were now relegated to side characters and Khanavali Chenni became the season’s biggest commercial success. With this success Prakash Garud recalls how Umashree would be called by panic-stricken managers when their shows started to lose audiences—a mere mention of Umashree on a company poster would ensure a full house. Around the time of her success as a commercial theatre actress, Umashree made another bold move by starring in Kashinath’s Anubhava (1984), Kannada cinema’s first adult film. She essayed a sexually complex character which no other actress was willing to portray at the time. The film went on to become a blockbuster, catapulting her into a talkies–theatre dual stardom.
Umashree, throughout her career, drew inspiration from her Gramya Rangabhoomi roots and her immersion in the professional theatre circuits of North Karnataka. It was from here that she crafted her roles, with an array of authentic accents, costumes and behaviours—from the flower-seller sporting a Chamrajnagar accent to the maid with a North Karnataka twang, to the suave college lecturer peppering her dialogues with English phrases of playful admonishment: “Oh you naughty naughty!” Through her professional theatre experience, she brought to life characters firmly rooted in the Kannada cultural imagination, a quality that aided her immense popularity as an actress.
The third time I encountered Umashree was in 2010, in a retrospective of auteur Girish Kasarvalli’s films. Surrounded by khadi sarees and polite conversation, I saw her again. In Kasarvalli’s Gulabi Talkies, Umashree in her 50s, played the role of a childless, irreverent midwife. She made a casting coup, bringing alive a woman whose sexuality was as central as her character. At a time when her contemporaries, made irrelevant by age and lack of roles, were absent from the silver screen, Umashree won her first National Award for Best Actress for Gulabi Talkies in 2008. A few years later, in 2013, Umashree became Karnataka’s Minister for Kannada and Culture.
By now, I had learnt not to be surprised.
Satya and Chandra: The Sisters who Chose Maryade
When Surabhi, my research partner called Satyavati to fix an appointment, she was told, “We hardly did any company theatre. We mostly only dabbled in amateur theatre, so we don’t have a lot of information.” Yet, here I was, at the end of a 4-hour interview, sitting between the two sisters, feeling like we had just started. There is often too much to say, so we leave much of it unsaid. Maybe it’s better that way.
Surabhi and I visited Satyavati’s house in Vyalikaval, near Malleshwaram in Bengaluru, and her sister, Chandra, had come to visit. We were lucky that we caught them together—it seemed to be how they were in the theatre too. Satyavati was the actress, but somehow, always, Chandra was there too.
The sisters had started off as child performers in several illustrious company theatres of the time (1940–65). Their mother enrolled Satyavati in Gubbi Veeranna Nataka Company when she was 5 years old, and she did roles there till she was 7. Then, she moved them to the illustrious theatre actor, Subbaiah Naidu’s company theatre, where she earned 10 rupees a month—it was a fortune at that time. Chandra had resolutely followed Satya into the theater, too. “Nanigu banna hach beku antha aase, Even I wanted to don the stage makeup.”
Fragments of their acting lives lay tucked away in the form of photographs in a steel almirah in Satyavati’s bedroom, and behind photos of her grandchildren in another wooden showcase. There are pictures of Satyavati alone in the frame, taken in a studio in Madras—young, ravishing, with the hopes of becoming a cinema actress. The fading blue print behind it reads ‘Circa 1966’. The talkies had arrived by then. “Yavagle, Chandra idu? When was this, Chandra?” she asks her sister. “Maduve munche. 21 vaysu irboudu, ninige. Before marriage, you must have been 21 years old.”
By the time Satya turned 21, the talkies was a buzzing industry and so was Nehru’s new Industrial India. Established in Bangalore in 1961, Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) was recruiting bright young women for its watch manufacturing unit. Satya recalls waiting for a bit before she got married, hoping for cinema offers to come her way. But they didn’t like the offers much—it wasn’t like the theatre. “You have to be willing to go the whole way, and lose yourself in that game. It was risky, also I didn’t enjoy it much.” By then, Satya had been offered a government job in HMT. She married an artist, who was okay with her continuing to act in amateur plays or in some small roles in cinema. But Chandra had to give up performing altogether in order to get married. Like her sister, she joined the factory, choosing a stable career over the charms of the stage.
But memories of the stage dominate our conversations. One of them is the memory of Hirannaiah Mitra Mandali Troupe’s performance of Miss Sadarame, a company theatre superhit. The show was such a hit that the troupe was invited to perform at the Mysore Palace—a private show for the King of Mysore, Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar. Satya was cast in the title role of Miss Sadarame. Chandra had no role, but of course, she went along with the troupe. “The King should not be seen by common people without royal permission. So, they bring him from his chambers surrounded by a parda. But I hid on the roof and saw him!” Chandra recalls. “He was wearing a grand turban, a close collar coat, a jeweled neckpiece and cooling glasses. How good-looking he was!” Trust Chandra to get a peek. She went everywhere, following her sister—from Gubbi company to Subbiah Naidu company to Stree Nataka Mandali and then to the palace for the Miss Sadarame performance. That was her jam!
Our conversation meanders. We talk about Subbaiah Naidu’s star-studded cast, Rajkumar’s forgotten sister, who was the troup’s nightingale, Leelavathi’s legendary stage fright, Gubbi Veeranna who ruled with an iron fist and always made sure his 3 wives were cast in central roles. Chandra was forthcoming about the flaws of Gubbi Veeranna, Kannada’s biggest company troupe’s owner. “What a guy—married Sundramma whose father was a company owner, and took over from the father. Sundramma was his wife who never acted. Then he married 2 more who were actresses—they would always be the lead everywhere. No one else got a chance while they were there.” Satyavati seemed to feel it was fair enough—they were ‘guaranteed’ actresses. “If other women were willing to do this, they would be given the chance. But no one agreed”.
I asked them about Stree Nataka Mandali and the women who had disappeared without a trace, after being in the company for some years—Anasuyamma, Dickie Radha and Manjulamma— “They did not use their brains. If you earn 10 rupees, at least save 5 rupees, right? But they did not do that”. They seemed to feel the bad fortune was due to the women’s own fault, and like everyone else who talks to me about the disappeared women—they didn’t seem to be bothered. I guess it was common to disappear. “She was like a doll,” Chandra said about Manjulamma, the leading lady of the famous Stree Nataka Mandali. “They (the company owners) didn’t get her married, they only thought about the company, about themselves.”
Satya and Chandra loved the company theatre. But in the same breath they talk of difficulties. “Sometimes people wouldn’t even serve us water,” since actresses had such a racy reputation. Sometimes the door would be shut on them in the middle of the night at the host’s house by a jealous wife. Chandra recounts a suitor who asked Chandra’s mother to allow her to be his ‘keep’ (mistress). He brought with him a 50 kg rice bag while he made the request, Chandra recounted, (I suspect a bit flattered by this part). “My mother kicked him out of the house, of course.”
Chandra’s husband, 27 years her senior, had asked her to make a choice: “Do you want this life or do you want natakada life?” One couldn’t have had both—a life in theatre, as well as a steady marriage and a safe future–for them, these choices were separate, and irreconcilable. Life in theatre was a risk. Only a few ‘made it’. But almost none had any maryade (respectability). She told me the bargain of giving up theatre was totally worth it. Her sister was not so sure. Neither was Chandra, but you have to tell yourself it was worth it. The sisters were very clear—they knew it was education, a job and ultimately, a steady marriage is an essential part of a secure life. Especially after the companies started sinking, despite a strong affinity towards stage, they knew it was unsustainable. As Satya put the photographs back into their covers, wiping her eyes, she told me and Surabhi “I hope you have a successful life. May all your plays be housefull, be sincere in your kalaseve (service to art)” but Chandra had some additional advice. “But whatever you do,” she added, “don’t trust art completely.”
Stree Nataka Mandali: A World of Women
The final story is that of the Stree Nataka Mandali (1940–1975), a company theatre run by women, played by women. Here, there were no men. In a complete reversal of convention, all the male roles were played by women. “The crowds would come to see us perform as men,” Manjulamma recalls. “My favourite role was the drunkard. My co-actor Dickie Radha was a chain smoker. I was the drunk, she was the smoker”.
They were full house in every show and they toured for decades across Karnataka—Chikmangaloor, Koppa, Tumkur, Gubbi, Hiriyur, Chitradurga. “I would write the date and location of every show we did in a diary,” Manjulamma said “and the diary would not have enough pages, even with my miserly handwriting. That’s how much we travelled”.
The company, run by Padmashree awardee Nagarathnamma, had her sister Manjulamma as a principal actor, Dickie Radha, Anasuyamma, and their brother, who was the music composer of the troupe—the legendary musician Paramasiviah. Several women actors joined and left the company in its 35-year reign in Karnataka.
I had met Deepak, Paramasiviah’s son, a few days before I met Manjulamma. “We were kids in the 80’s and we used to watch them with a mixture of awe and fear,” he said, of the women in the troupe. He made a rough imitation of Dickie Radha chain smoking on stage, the audience breaking into applause as she sent rings through another smoke ring. After the play he remembered the kids going up to her and asking—“Akka, do you really smoke?” “She stuck her tongue out at us,” he said “and told us to bugger off.”
The actresses would perform scripts that were popular in the professional circuit, but with a distinct Stree Nataka Mandali flourish. In Makmal Topi (a company theatre play), the otherwise entertaining script ends with a long boring scene where a court order is read out in detail. In Stree Nataka Mandali’s version, they decided to replace the ending with a club dance sequence, loosely based on the Bollywood hit “Mera Naam Chin Chin Chu”. Deepak tells me, “People would come from all over Karnataka, just to see the ending sequence”.
We met Manjulamma, 85, at her apartment in Bangalore to recall the heydays.
When I ask people how Dickie Radha joined this company, and who she was, they all say they don’t know. Deepak Paramasiviah remembers, “Radha Dickie, the smoker—what an actress she was. She literally had no one. She was an orphan when she entered the company play called Bhakta Prahalada. There was a role for a pedda student (a stupid student who studies with Prahalada) for comic relief. She entered as a kid with that role, and stayed on, rising to fame. For 40 years, she played all kinds of roles but she was best known for her portrayal of Dickie. Then suddenly, one day, she just disappeared.”
Dickie, the terrific lead of Stree Nataka Mandali was legendary for her off-stage smoking as well as her on-stage antics. I asked another actress, Indiramma (86 years old), who replaced Radha in Dickie’s role when she disappeared.
“I remember it was Stree Nataka Mandali’s Tumkur camp, with two days to the show, Dickie Radha disappeared. No one knows where or why she was gone. What do we do now? Who will play Dickie’s role?”
Indiramma got a call from Paramsiviah, who said, “Indu will you do the role of Dickie?” Indiramma agreed, but with one caveat.
“Dickie, ah? I will play Dickie,” she said. “I will play the role, but I won’t smoke cigarettes.”
Dickie; where did you go?
Till we meet again
Very often the gaps in women’s history—the abrupt disappearances, deliberate erasures and the silence surrounding their blazing lives, have to be filled by what we know in our own lives. We will never know the ‘truth’ of what happened behind Manjulamma’s “Narayana Narayana” and Dickie’s disappearence. The only way I can reclaim my history is by imagining my own version of the rest of their stories. I imagine it with the flourish of Stree Nataka Mandali’s own audacious endings—in a club dance sequence, in a happy ending in an alternate world. I imagine it, despite knowing that this might not be true, but this is my resistance. This is the real point of our encounter with our ancestry. Just like how Umashree’s Chenni reaches out to me across time, repeatedly reminding me to trust my audacity, to stay playful, we rescue each other from ignominy. Through the Stree Nataka Mandali’s larger than life adventures, through Umashree’s masterful stagecraft and Chandra’s caution, I discover a world in which women have repeatedly disrupted the patriarchy, both on and offstage. Despite the price they paid for it, the neglect and erasure they endure, despite my anger at this loss—their lives shine a light to me. As I exhume these stories, I try to hear, however faintly, however far away—the unapologetic, devil may care, laughing heart of the female performer who is at the center of my legacy.
Parts of the section titled “Umashree: from Kannada’s “Woman without Culture” to Minister for Kannada Culture,” have been excerpted from an essay previously published in Serendipity Arts Foundation’s Write | Art | Connect initiative.