It would not be an exaggeration to say that good tales have at all times been language agnostic. Padma Shri awardee and theatre veteran Neelam Mansingh as an illustration directed a Punjabi adaption of South African author Can Themba’s ‘The Go well with’ which was a strong story about infidelity and marital conflicts. She additionally staged Girish Karnad’s Kannada play, ‘Nagamandala’ in Punjabi. Theatre lovers are properly 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 just lately Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Evening’ was tailored fantastically 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! Court docket 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 good sense as a result of as we speak greater than ever earlier than, content material is transcending linguistic boundaries to be embraced by a various viewership. The recognition of Kannada and Telugu content material reinforces this reality not simply inside the nation but additionally past. ‘Kantara, ‘ one among my favorite movies in current instances, 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 potential for movies like ‘Kantara’, the ‘Okay.G.F’ franchise,’ and ‘RRR’ to succeed in a world viewers. If ‘Kantara’ had been launched round 15 years in the past, it might have been very powerful for it to outlive in movie markets exterior Karnataka. However instances have modified, and so have the dynamics of story-telling and content material consumption. And the impression of this alteration can now be seen within the viewers. My mom, who has at all times been a die-hard fan of Shashi Kapoor and Dharmendra, out of the blue 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 numerous content material that’s now accessible to all of us.
As an actor and as a lifelong scholar of cinema, I’m acquainted with 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 likewise recent content material in regional or overseas languages. The world has, in a approach, come house to us, and tales from lots of of nations can be found on the click on of a button.
An individual sitting in Jharkhand can watch a Korean collection, or any individual in Visakhapatnam can watch a Mexican collection dubbed of their native language. It’s an unbelievable time, each for content material creators and shoppers. We now also have a devoted platform like Zee Theatre that’s mainstreaming theatre in an unprecedented approach 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 house.
And the standard of the dubbing is just not jarring. It’s seamless and makes folks 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 numerous viewing expertise for audiences not simply in India however worldwide.
This text is authored by actor Gajraj Rao