It would not be an exaggeration to say that good tales have all the time been language agnostic. Padma Shri awardee and theatre veteran Neelam Mansingh as an example directed a Punjabi adaption of South African author Can Themba’s ‘The Swimsuit’ which was a robust story about infidelity and marital conflicts. She additionally staged Girish Karnad’s Kannada play, ‘Nagamandala’ in Punjabi. Theatre lovers are nicely conscious of ‘Tumhari Amrita’, Javed Siddiqui’s transferring adaptation of AR Gurney’s American play ‘Love Letters’. Even way back to in 1880, Bhartendu Harishchandra tailored Shakepeare’s ‘Service provider of Venice’ in Hindi as ‘Durlabh Bandhu’. The custom continues and lately Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Evening’ was tailored superbly in Atul Kumar’s vibrant musical ‘Piya Behrupiya’.
So a lot of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s tales and performs have been translated into a number of languages. Vijay Tendulkar’s ‘Shantata! Courtroom Chalu Aahe’ (Khamosh! Adalat Jari Hai), ‘Sakharam Binder,’ ‘Ashi Pakhare Yeti’ (Panchi Aise Aate Hain), ‘Mitrachi Goshta’ (Kahani Mitra Ki), Ashok Patole’s ‘Aai Retire Hotey’ (‘Maa Retire Hoti Hai’) and numerous tales initially written in a single language have been staged in one other.
And now Akarsh Khurana’s teleplay, ‘Gunehgaar’ the place I’ve acted can be being translated for audiences in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, which I feel makes excellent sense as a result of at present greater than ever earlier than, content material is transcending linguistic limitations to be embraced by a various viewership. The recognition of Kannada and Telugu content material reinforces this truth not simply throughout the nation but additionally past. ‘Kantara, ‘ considered one of my favorite movies in current occasions, was loved by a worldwide viewers in Australia, the UK, Canada, the UAE, and the USA on greater than 1,000+ screens.
Dubbing and subtitling made it doable for movies like ‘Kantara’, the ‘Ok.G.F’ franchise,’ and ‘RRR’ to achieve a worldwide viewers. If ‘Kantara’ had been launched round 15 years in the past, it could have been very robust for it to outlive in movie markets exterior Karnataka. However occasions have modified, and so have the dynamics of story-telling and content material consumption. And the influence of this alteration can now be seen within the viewers. My mom, who has all the time been a die-hard fan of Shashi Kapoor and Dharmendra, abruptly is aware of the names of actors from Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu cinema. She acknowledges them and might relate to the tales they inform. It is an enormous vindication of the facility of various content material that’s now accessible to all of us.
As an actor and as a lifelong pupil of cinema, I’m conversant in the greats of regional movies like Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritiwik Ghatak (Bengali), G. Aravindan, and Adoor Gopalakrishnan (Malayalam) and Mani Ratnam (Tamil). I used to be additionally fortunate sufficient to work with Mani sir in ‘Dil Se’ however there was a time, you needed to make an effort to entry tales in different languages. However now, with the arrival of streaming platforms, you possibly can watch the basic works of the masters of cinema in any language and in addition recent content material in regional or international languages. The world has, in a manner, come residence to us, and tales from a whole lot of nations can be found on the click on of a button.
An individual sitting in Jharkhand can watch a Korean collection, or someone in Visakhapatnam can watch a Mexican collection dubbed of their native language. It’s an unimaginable time, each for content material creators and customers. We now actually have a devoted platform like Zee Theatre that’s mainstreaming theatre in an unprecedented manner with curated content material, unique productions, and dubbed tales. Be it tales by Manto, Ismat Chughtai or Gulzar, directorial masterpieces by Akarsh Khurana, Lillete Dubey, Makarand Deshpande, and Mahesh Dattani or Hindi performs like ‘Gunehgaar’ and ‘Sir Sir Sarla’, you possibly can savour them at residence.
And the standard of the dubbing just isn’t jarring. It’s seamless and makes individuals really feel that they’re watching a narrative unfold in their very own languages. This, I consider, is a real triumph of the amalgamation of artwork and know-how as a result of it’s breaking down partitions between cultures and creating an inclusive and various viewing expertise for audiences not simply in India however worldwide.
This text is authored by actor Gajraj Rao
