Yakshagana

Yakshagana: gods, demons and drums till dawn

Yakshagana is coastal Karnataka's great theatre: towering gilded crowns, painted faces, a singer (bhagavata) narrating episodes from the Mahabharata and Ramayana and the chande drum driving dancers through the night.

Honavar taluk is one of its heartlands and the place to see it the traditional way is Gundabala, a village about 13 km east of Honavar, reached by a short road off the Honavar–Bengaluru highway. Here the Mukhyaprana (Hanuman) temple is believed to love Yakshagana and devotees thank the deity by sponsoring a performance as a vow, or harake.

The temple's own troupe, the Gundabala Mela, performs all night, every night through the season, from roughly December until the monsoon arrives in late May or June. Shows run from about 9 pm to 6 am on the permanent stage in front of the temple and the vows are booked years in advance.

Close by, in Gunavante, the Sri Idagunji Mahaganapati Yakshagana Mandali was founded in 1934 by Keremane Shivarama Hegde, a master of the northern badagutittu style and the first Yakshagana artist to receive the Rashtrapati award. His son Shambhu Hegde and grandson Shivananda Hegde took the troupe to stages in Asia and the USA. The Mandali is accredited by UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage committee and its gurukula, the Srimaya Yakshagana Kalakendra, trains new generations of artists.