6 troupes, 50 year-legacy: Honnaru Rangotsava kicks off tomorrow in Bengaluru to honour Kannada theatre legends

Bengaluru: A theatre spectacle will unfold at Ravindra Kalakshetra in the city from Feb 21 to 26, bringing together six iconic groups which have a legacy of five decades, as part of Honnaru Rangotsava theatre. The event is a celebration of modern Kannada theatre which has shaped the state's cultural scene.The six groups are Ranga Sampada, Samudaya, Nataranga, Kalagangothri, Spandana, and Benaka. Kannada theatre personalities Srinivas G Kappanna and VM Nagesh are coordinating the show, with big support from actor and former minister Umashree.
Honnaru means ‘The golden six' in Kannada, and the festival digs deep into a fertile stretch of Kannada theatre history. Srinivas G Kappanna, a veteran and one of the festival's conveners, said it all started ages ago, with roots in tribal and folk performance, before morphing into professional theatre that thrived on mythological and social themes. The real spark for these six groups came in Sept 1969. That's when 13 amateur groups from Bengaluru, led by R Nagesh and directed by Prof B Chandrashekhar, came together to stage Girish Karnad's Tughlaq.That production was a game-changer. Staging Tughlaq wasn't just another show—it was a phenomenon. Back then, the idea of so many amateur groups working together was unheard of. Tughlaq put Karnad on the map as a playwright and made stalwarts like CR Simha and Lokesh household names. For Kappanna, it was a personal turning point—he discovered lighting design, a field nobody in Kannada theatre had really explored. The show's success proved that people wanted serious, literary theatre. And that hunger just grew.The early 1970s transformed Kannada theatre as BV Karanth's bold productions and the 1972 National Theatre Festival spurred new groups and talents like Prasanna, CGK, B Jayashree, S Malathi and Shankar Nag. Writers like Chandrashekhar Kambar, P Lankesh, and HS Shivaprakash deepened discourse, while theatre evolved into a platform for debate and protest during the Emergency.But then came television. Things changed fast. The long lines for tickets at Ravindra Kalakshetra disappeared. Suddenly, theatre was competing with a glowing box in every household. For a while, the whole movement nearly collapsed. Still, the passion of artists kept it alive. And, oddly enough, as TV content got more bland and predictable, people found their way back to the raw, electric experience of live theatre. That's the legacy Honnaru Rangotsava aims to celebrate and keep alive. These six days are a tribute to the trailblazers—the playwrights who gave Kannada theatre its voice, the directors who gave it shape, and the actors who brought it all to life.