About
To make theatre, literature, film and the arts a communitarian activity rooted in rural life, run in the spirit of a co-operative.
Ninasam, short for Sri Nilakanteshwara Natyaseva Sangha, is a celebrated cultural organisation in the village of Heggodu in the Shivamogga district of Karnataka, dedicated to the growth of drama, film and publishing. The brainchild of the dramatist and Magsaysay Award winner K. V. Subbanna, it operates in the spirit of a co-operative and is famous for having made literature and theatre part of everyday rural life, so that farmers and shopkeepers in Heggodu speak easily of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Kalidasa and Girish Karnad. It comprises the Ninasam Theatre Institute, the travelling troupe Ninasam Tirugata, the Ninasam Foundation and the Akshara Prakashana publishing house.
Ninasam grew from a group of friends who gathered in Heggodu from 1945 to discuss ideas, started a library and a cyclostyled newspaper after independence, and formed a cultural group in 1949. Under K. V. Subbanna it built a full-fledged theatre and, in 1980, the Ninasam Theatre Institute offering a ten-month diploma, followed in 1985 by Tirugata, a travelling troupe of paid alumni who tour Karnataka every year with a repertoire of plays. The Jnanpith-winning polymath Shivarama Karanth conducted a Yakshagana workshop there and the seminal director B. V. Karanth directed landmark productions for its troupe. Its annual Culture Course brings together thinkers, artists and rural audiences, and Subbanna's son K. V. Akshara now directs the organisation.
Founding & Leadership
Funded through grants, fees and support; a not-for-profit cultural society.
Leadership & Trustees
Cultural Funding
Recognition
[{"name": "A nationally admired model of rural cultural life", "year": "", "note": ""}]
Ninasam is one of the most remarkable cultural institutions in India, a rural theatre and cultural movement that has demonstrated the power of the arts as a communitarian, democratic activity and profoundly shaped modern Kannada theatre and cultural life.
[Atlas Perspective] Profiled as an Institution (Operator) in the Theatre field. Ninasam connects to Kannada theatre, Yakshagana and the wider Indian theatre movement, and to figures such as K. V. Subbanna, Shivarama Karanth and B. V. Karanth. Founder K. V. Subbanna was a Ramon Magsaysay awardee.