Ninasam (

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

: ನೀನಾಸಂ) is a cultural organisation located in the village of

Heggodu Heggodu is a village located in the Sagar Taluk of Karnataka. It is a very important cultural and educational hub in South India, because of the organizations at this place. Institutes Apart from a pre-university and an undergraduate degree ...

in Sagar

Taluk A tehsil (, also known as tahsil, taluka, or taluk) is a local unit of administrative division in some countries of South Asia. It is a subdistrict of the area within a district including the designated populated place that serves as its administr ...

of the

Shivamogga district Shimoga district, officially known as Shivamogga district, is a district in the Karnataka state of India. A major part of Shimoga district lies in the Malnad region or the Sahyadri. Shimoga city is its administrative centre. Jog Falls view ...

in the state of

Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. Ninasam (also spelt as Neenasam) is the short form of Sri NIlakanteshwara NAtyaseva SANgha, an organisation dedicated to the growth of drama, films and publishing. Akshara, the current head of Ninasam, tells a story where Ni means you, Na means me, and Sam is a pun on the English word Sum, and in music is the moment where rhythm comes together. Ninasam was the brainchild of the renowned dramatist and

Magsaysay award The Ramon Magsaysay Award ( Filipino: ''Gawad Ramon Magsaysay'') is an annual award established to perpetuate former Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay's example of integrity in governance, courageous service to the people, and pragmatic ideali ...

winner, K V Subbanna. As he said, it is the communitarian activity. Ninasam works similarly to a co-operative society. Currently A R Shreedhara Bhatt, a retired revenue officer, is the president, and K V Akshara, the son of Subbanna, is the director.

History

The origin of Ninasam occurred in 1945 in

, when Subbanna and his friends started to get together in the evenings to exchange views and discuss about the politics and other current issues.History of Ninasam is explained by After Indian Independence in 1947, this group of boys started a library and also launched a newspaper called ''The Ashoka Weekly'' with a circulation of 500. It was printed on a cyclostyle machine and carried articles related to local and national events. This group also started producing small plays and in 1949, they formed the cultural group Ninasam, with the name dedicated to the native

Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

god of

, Nilakanteshwara.A description of Ninasam is presented by Subbanna's father was the first president and the initial plays staged were those related to the

epics,

Ramayana The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th ...

and

Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the s ...

. After his graduation from

Mysore University The University of Mysore is a public state university in Mysore, Karnataka, India. The university was founded during the reign of Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV, the Maharaja of Mysore. The university is recognised by the University Grants Commission ...

, Subbanna returned to

and started producing plays at Ninasam that included

translations of works by

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

Molière Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (, ; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, , ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and worl ...

and

Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...

, and also those of

writers. Since 1987, Ninasam has been coming out with a quarterly house journal.

Akshara Prakashana

Akshara Prakashana was started by K.V. Subbanna, in 1957, as a tiny private publishing outlet, to publish his own writings. Soon, it started publishing upcoming new writers of the time and identified itself with the ‘modernist’ Navya movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The journal ''Saakshi'' that Akshara Prakashana published from 1968 to 1978 provided a voice to that historic literary development. By 1975, Akshara Prakashana became a widely known organisation. It was reconstituted as a private trust and has since been running under Akshara Trust. K.V. Subbanna was its sole trustee until 2005, and Akshara K.V. has been its chief since then. Between 1957 and 2011, Akshara Prakashana published more than 50,000 pages of literature, and several prominent writers and thinkers have joined with it. The publication has been working as a non-profit-oriented concern and has so far published more than 800 books, the subjects of which include literature, theatre, cinema, culture studies, philosophy and humanities. Though a separate organisation, Akshara Prakashana has been working in coordination with Ninasam, supporting Ninasam’s activities with relevant publications. Some of the works published included those by T.P. Ashok and U.R. Anantha Murthy. In 2013, Akshara Prakashana has started a website where people can buy its books.

Ninasam Chitrasamaja

Having explored the areas of theatre and publishing, Subbanna wanted to explore the cinema world and attended a film appreciation course in 1967 at

Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, ( the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million As of 2021, Pune Metropolitan Region is the largest i ...

. On his return he decided to start screening films at Ninasam and started Ninasam Chitrasamaja, an organisation formed to encourage the film culture and also to hold film festivals. A film appreciation course was started with subjects including film history, film techniques, film theory, film criticism, art films and popular cinema. Films that were staged included those by masters like Satyajit Ray, Ingmar Bergman and

Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna ...

.A description of Ninasam film society is provided by The films and plays being staged by Ninasam started to attract audiences from all over

and its popularity grew considerably.

Janaspandana

The popularity of Ninasam prompted the

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

to sponsor a project called Janaspandana whereby similar film festivals, plays and appreciation courses were to be organised in other areas of

.A biography on K V Subbanna is presented by This project ended in 1985 but the activities have continued. It is estimated that about 200 thousand people were exposed to cinema and around 5000 people were exposed to the appreciation courses. As a result of Janaspandana, 37 workshops in a duration of 6 weeks were held in the field of theater and this yielded around 50 productions. Theater equipment banks were set up in different regions of

to serve the needs of the theater groups in that region.

Ninasam Theatre Institute

In 1980, Ninasam also started a theater institute to offer courses on theater to interested candidates. It offers a 10-month-long diploma course to about 20 students every year. As part of these courses, around 130 theatre productions have resulted. Visiting faculty to this institute include

Shivaram Karanth Kota Shivaram Karanth (10 October 1902 – 9 December 1997), also abbreviated as K. Shivaram Karanth, was an Indian polymath, who was a novelist in Kannada language, playwright and an ecological conservationist. Ramachandra Guha called him th ...

Chandrashekhara Kambara Chandrashekhara Kambara ( kn, ಚಂದ್ರಶೇಖರ ಕಂಬಾರ; born 2 January 1937) is a prominent Indian poet, playwright, folklorist, film director in Kannada language and the founder-vice-chancellor of Kannada University in Hamp ...

, K. N. Panikkar and

Fritz Bennewitz Fritz Bennewitz (20 January 1926 – 13 September 1995) was a German theatre director. Life Bennewitz was born in Chemnitz. His father was a train driver: his mother worked as a seamstress. Between 1950 and 1953 he was a student of German st ...

. Some of the alumni of this institute join Ninasam's rural theatre repertory troupe, Tirugata.

Tirugata

Tirugata (''travelling around'' in

) is a theatre troupe started by Ninasam, established in 1985. This troupe travels to different places and stages plays mainly to a rural audience. Apparently, in the first 11 years of its existence, Tirugata travelled 82,000 km to 172 places and staged 1546 plays for an audience of about 1.1 million. It is mostly a self-sustaining group, with only 20% of total revenue coming as a grant from the Government.

Notable alumni

Achyuth Kumar Achyuth Kumar is an Indian actor who predominantly works in Kannada cinema. Born in the town of Belur, in the district of Hassan and brought up in Tiptur. He graduated in bachelor of commerce from the Kalpatharu First Grade College, which was ...

Sathish Ninasam Shiva, known by his screen name Sathish Ninasam, is an Indian actor who appears in Kannada films. Having made his film debut with '' Madesha'' (2008), Sathish appeared in small but significant roles in films like ''Manasaare'' (2009), '' Panch ...

Darshan Thoogudeepa Darshan Thoogudeepa (born 16 February 1977) known mononymously as Darshan is an Indian actor, producer, and distributor who works predominantly in Kannada films. One of the leading contemporary actors of Kannada cinema, Darshan established the ...

* Shabareesh das (serial drama director)*Jeevanram sull

References

External links

Ninasam official website

Akshara Prakashana website

Ninasam Tirugata blog archive

{{authority control Organisations based in Karnataka Culture of Karnataka Organizations established in 1949 Theatres in India Theatrical organisations in India Drama schools in India