How S. Satyamurti harnessed the power of the stage in politics

The Tamil Nadu Assembly predetermination results, wherein C. Joseph Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) has emerged the enactment with the maximum seats, marks the culmination of a period and much of performing arts person playing an immense relation successful the region’s politics. And it was successful Madras that this was tested for the archetypal time.

Theatre was the forerunner of cinema. Madurai whitethorn person been its headquarters, but from the aboriginal years of the 20^th century, it was indispensable for play troupes to marque a people successful Madras arsenic well. The measure of fare was fundamentally mythological oregon historical romance, with the occasional societal opening with Dambachari Natakam (1873). High Madras nine looked down connected theatre and its professionals but their clasp implicit the wide nationalist was unquestioned. It was this that S. Satyamurti sought to harness erstwhile it came to the state struggle. It is absorbing that he, a subordinate of the highbrow theatre nine Suguna Vilasa Sabha, saw the powerfulness of its much fashionable equivalents past successful cognition successful the city.