Exploring lives of Dalit youth in urban Bengaluru through music and comedy

As the title suggests, the production pays tribute to Jamaican Reggae musician and Rastafarian Bob Marley and a socio-spiritual movement unique to Jamaica. The play begins with empty stage and prologue of Marley’s number Get up stand up, stand up for your rights, and concludes with a Marley-style Kannada number Shresta Kanista Annodu Irovergoo.

Jangama Collective’s latest production, Bob Marley from Kodihalli, that premiered at Nirdigantha’s theatre festival Nehade Neyge a couple of months ago in Mangaluru, is set to open its first show in Bengaluru’s Ranga Shankara, J.P. Nagar, on July 20.

As the title suggests, the production pays tribute to Jamaican Reggae musician and Rastafarian Bob Marley and a socio-spiritual movement unique to Jamaica. The play begins with empty stage and prologue of Marley’s number Get up stand up, stand up for your rights, and concludes with a Marley-style Kannada number Shresta Kanista Annodu Irovergoo.

However, the play goes beyond Bob Marley, and talks about the existing state of Dalit youth in the 21st century. Centred in Kodihalli, a locality in the eastern part of Bengaluru, the play explores the lives of young Dalit men and women who have migrated to urban centres, hoping to break the shackles of visible and invisible violence experienced by them in feudal-rural social environs. Are there any possibilities for them to acquire liberal secular identities in urban cosmopolitan ecology? Do the identities believed to have liberal face value, have any real liberative value for the Dalit youth? Or are they a set of masks behind which hides entrenched hegemony of feudal caste exclusionism? These are questions the play talks about.

It is directed by K.P. Lakshman and produced by Nirdigantha. Asked how the play is different from Jangama Collective’s previous Dalit-centric productions like Dakla Katha Devi Kavya and Panchama Pada, Lakshman says the play is set in a modern context and is based on today’s world. “The plays are connected but are very different. Dakla Katha... or Panchama Pada are mostly set in a rural context, there are rituals and cultures of rural areas. Not just in Jangama plays, but anyone who has made theatre or any art form on the Dalit community have always placed them in a rural context. This play has a modern context and is based on what happens in today’s world,“ he said. 

Lakshman says this play talks about the lives of Dalit men and women or youth who have moved to cities like Bengaluru to make a living. “Cities are always considered to be more liberal, and a space where Dalit people can breathe better, as caste is not given much importance, unlike the rural areas. But is it so simple? Does casteism vanish once you move to a city? Or does your identity become easier? We explore these questions with this play,“ he adds.  

Performed by well-known actors, musicians and theatre makers Chandrashekara L., Shwetha Rani and Bharath Dingri, the three actors portray the roles of a singer, standup comedian and an English teacher who come from a rural background in search of a new life in Bengaluru. With witty dialogues and catchy music, while maintaining the tragi-comic flow, the play has textual voiceover of B.R. Ambedkar’s Waiting for Visa, Rohit Vemula’s last letter, a Kannada poem by N.K. Hanumanthaih, along with some experiential personal write-ups by one of the actors in the play. 

With shows at 3.30 p.m. and 7.30 p.m., tickets for the shows are available at the Ranga Shankara box-office and on BookMyShow.