SANGEET NATAK
Marathi musical theatre tradition believed to have been launched by Vishnudas Bhave's Seeta Swayamvar(1853). The play adapted the coastal folk form of Dashavtara to the proscenium, merging it with visual art and theatrical forms from Tanjore while retaining elements like the use of a mobile cu11ain to signify spaces and to frame actors. It emerged as a popular urban art form alongside the art schools (practicing the academic visual art on the elaborate stage backdrops) and the music schools of the late 19th/early 20th C. The best-known initial groups were Annasaheb Kirloskar's Kirloskar :Natak Mandali (Est: 1880), Keshavrao Bhosle's Lalitkaladarsh (1908), Bal Gandharva's Gandharva Natak Mandali 0913) and Govindrao Tembe's Shivrai Natak Mandali (1915). Their initial theatrical repertoire adapted Sanskrit classics and Shakespeare: e.g. the famous playright G.B. Deval wrote five major plays, three adapting Kalidasa and one Shakespeare (Othello, as Zunzbarrao, Hl90) with only one original (Sangeet Sharada, 1898). The music usually created popular vernacular versions of classical North Indian music, adapted by singers like Ramakrishnabua Vaze and Bhaskarbua Bakhle (who taught Master Krishnarao). The form increasingly came under the influence of the operatic Parsee theatre, creating an influential local version of classical art, contemporaneous with (and sometimes formally similar to) Ravi Varma's paintings. The first feature film in India, Pundalik 1912), is based on a Sangeet Natak play by the Shripad Sangeet Mandali, Nasik. Later, Baburao Painter- a noted painter of stage backdrops translated its conventions into cinematic mise en scene. The form greatly influenced the early Prabhat Studio via e.g. the noted composers Tembe and Krishnarao and the stage stars Bal Gandharva and Vishnu pant Pagnis, as well as many other theatre actors who turned to the cinema. Sangeet Natak troupes, travelling through Maharashtra, Gujarar, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, also set in place much of the distribution infrastructure of the early Kolhapur and Pune based Marathi cinema.