Yakshagana

Yakshagana is the all night open air theatre of coastal Karnataka: epic stories played in a field, with towering headdresses, painted faces, a singer who narrates and drives the action, and dialogue that is largely improvised on the night. It is loud, fast and popular in the plainest sense, drawing village audiences of thousands, and it has none of the temple exclusivity of the Kerala forms. The season runs from about November to May and closes at Pattanaje, after which nothing is performed until the rains have gone.

The Bhagavata, the singer, carries the story and the rhythm with the chande and maddale behind him, and the actors enter and act out what he has sung, then speak. The dialogue, the arthagarike, is not scripted: an actor argues his character’s case extempore, and two good actors in a debate scene will go for an hour. The costume is the headdress, the kirita, which can be three feet tall, with mirrors and gilt, a wide pleated skirt, and faces painted by colour convention as in Kathakali but with a different palette. Entrances are made through the audience with a curtain held up by two men.

Learnt by joining a mela, a troupe, usually in the teens, and learning on the road through a season. Formal training now exists at the Yakshagana Kendra at Udupi and at Dharmasthala, as one and two year courses, but most performers still come up through the melas. The Bhagavata trains as a singer first and the dance footwork is learnt separately. What cannot be taught in a course is the arthagarike: an actor has to know the epics well enough to argue inside them without preparation, which is why the best are often men who have performed for thirty years.

Two main styles: Badagutittu, northern, from Udupi upward, which Shivarama Karanth modernised in the twentieth century with shortened performances and changed music; and Tenkutittu, southern, from Mangaluru down to Kasaragod, closer to Kathakali in its drumming and its makeup. Karanth’s reforms are admired as having kept the form alive for new audiences and criticised within the tradition as having thinned it. The great melas, Dharmasthala, Saligrama, Perduru and others, each hold a style and a repertoire, and a performer is known by his mela.

Karnataka

Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and Uttara Kannada are the home, with the Badagutittu and Tenkutittu styles and the great melas of Dharmasthala and Saligrama.

Tulu Nadu

The Tulu speaking coast keeps it alongside the bhuta kola, and the two share a season and often the same performers’ families.

Kerala

Kasaragod keeps the southern style, and the drumming there shades towards Kathakali.

Deities

• Krishna
• Rama
• Vishnu
• The Bhutas and Daivas of Tulu Nadu

Festivals

• Pattanaje

Temples

• Sri Manjunatha Temple, Dharmasthala
• Sri Krishna Matha, Udupi
• Kateel Durgaparameshwari Temple

Related arts

• Kathakali