Ninasam (

Kannada Kannada () is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India, and spoken by a minority of the population in all neighbouring states. It has 44 million native speakers, and is additionally a ...

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

Heggodu Heggodu is a village located in the Sagar Taluk of Karnataka Karnataka ( ) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed as Mysore State on 1 November 1956, ...

in Sagar

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

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. As of 2011 Shimog ...

in the state of

Karnataka Karnataka ( ) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed as Mysore State on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, States Re ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. 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 idea ...

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 (; ; also known as Sanātanīs) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism, also known by its endonym Sanātana Dharma. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pp. 35–37 Historically, the term has also be ...

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 ''Ramayana'' (; ), also known as ''Valmiki Ramayana'', as traditionally attributed to Valmiki, is a smriti text (also described as a Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epic) from ancient India, one of the two important epics ...

and

Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; , , ) is one of the two major Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India revered as Smriti texts in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kuru ...

. After his graduation from Mysore University, Subbanna returned to

and started producing plays at Ninasam that included

translations of works by

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 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 great writers in the French language and world liter ...

and

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

, 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 ( ; , ISO 15919, ISO: ), previously spelled in English as Poona (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1978), is a city in the state of Maharashtra in the Deccan Plateau, Deccan plateau in Western ...

. 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 Satyajit Ray (; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian film director, screenwriter, author, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligraphy, calligrapher, and composer. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influ ...

Ingmar Bergman Ernst Ingmar Bergman (14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish film and theatre director and screenwriter. Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential film directors of all time, his films have been described as "profoun ...

and

Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker who List of works by Akira Kurosawa, directed 30 feature films in a career spanning six decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the History of film, history of cinema ...

.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 $25,000 (about $550,000 in 2023) gift from Edsel Ford. ...

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 author, who was a novelist in Kannada language, playwright and an ecological conservationist. Ramachandra Guha called him the ...

Chandrashekhara Kambara Chandrashekhara Basavanneppa Kambara (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 Hampi also president of the Sahitya Akade ...

, K. N. Panikkar and Fritz Bennewitz. Some of the alumni of this institute join Ninasam's rural theatre repertory troupe, Tirugata.

ತಿರುಗಾಟ

ತಿರುಗಾಟ (''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, alongside a few Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam films. He is known for his performances in the ''KGF'', '' Kantara'', '' Sidlingu'', and '' Lucia''. He is the recipient ...

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

* Darshan Thoogudeepa * Shabareesh das (serial drama director) *Jeevanram sulli

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