A tale of life, death, and rebirth comes alive on stage 

A scene from the play Ondu Vilaya Kathe.
| Photo Credit: SPECIAL AARANGEMENT

Yuvashree, a young amateur theatre troupe from Bengaluru that was started in 2007, is back with its recent popular play Ondu Vilaya Kathe, at Ranga Shankara.

Written and directed by popular Kannada and English writer, director and actor Sharath Parvathavani, the play opened to audience this year in April and this will be its eighth showcase. 

The synopsis of the play calls Ondu Vilaya Kathe “a story of liberation. A story of death. A story of rebirth. A tale of duality of mind. A tale of difficulty and a tale of repentance.”

Speaking to The Hindu, Sharath says the play was initially part of a small performance that was later turned into a play. “Back in 2021, I was asked to direct a small piece for one of the ancillary events at the Ranga Shankara Theatre Festival. I had just read a piece on death during that time and wanted to create something experimental using the Ranga Shankara staircase as levels in the play. I have always been fascinated with death. Coincidentally, when I was exploring such a topic, popular cinema actor Puneeth Rajkumar passed away a day before our show, and it just added more intensity to the play for us and the audience,” he explains 

Sharath says that converting a small piece into a full-fledged play was tougher than writing the original short play.
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL AARANGEMENT

“Early this year, Yuvashree asked me to direct a play for them. I was ready to direct an existing script, but the team urged me to take up something new and interesting. I told them I had this piece, which eventually became a full-fledged play. It was developed into two tracks, just like how we are all in between life and death,“ says Sharath. 

Sharath says that converting a small piece into a full-fledged play was tougher than writing the original short play. “To give it a context, have a separate track and not have audience learn how the two tracks connect until the very end, was challenging. It was difficult to talk about the same themes through different contexts,” he adds.

The play is open to children over the age of ten, and Sharath says it is fundamental for children over the age of ten to understand what death is as they are very curious, and it would help them comprehend deaths in their family or surroundings.  

Performed by Apeksha Ghalgi, Siddharth Bhat, Vijay Kulkarni, Sujay Channagiri, Akhila R. Rao, Charith Bharadwaj and Sumith Bekal, tickets for Ondu Vilaya Kathe are available at the Ranga Shankara box-office and on BookMyShow. The show is on Wednesday, at 7.30 p.m.