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This essay uses Roman Ingarden's concept of Nebentext to study the semiotic function of the textual stage directions in Girish Karnad's play Hayavadana. Approaching the Nebentext as the signifier and the mind of the audience/reader as the space where the signified is formed, this essay will study the stage directions in Hayavadana to see as to how the play text can function as a medium to convey Karnad's theatrical perception and suggest the performance potential of the play. It tries to unravel the technique by which Karnad creates scope for reader's/audience's participation thereby widening the role of the Nebentext. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I here discuss the theatrical performance of Girish Karnad's Hayavadana (1971) with reference to the text. I have minutely observed the inclusions, extractions, replacements, erasure, and substitutions in the performance and find that this 44-minute 40-seconds theatrical performance does not include certain scenes and characters which are present in the text. For example Ganesha, Female Chorus, and the Dolls and their respective scenes are excluded for stage performance and hence make it difficult for the audience to understand the play completely. I have, therefore, focussed my discussion on the analysis of these absent characters and scenes. More specifically I have based my discussion on the use of masks in the theatrical performance as compared to their employment in Karnad's text. Themes emphasised through masks in the text as well as in the performance are suggested in terms of Yakshagana tradition, modernity, post coloniality, and the Indian nation. I have explored how Karnad makes the traditional folk forms of Indian drama modern in their exhibition so that the local and traditional themes become suitable and effective for his present audience. The study aspires to encourage researchers fascinated in similar domains and calls attention to contemporary Indian theatre and English literature, promising inter disciplinary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is an outcome of my reading of Karnad's Hayavadana for several times. Drawing on the ideas of the readerresponse critics, the paper attempts to re-read Girish Karnad's Hayavadana. After reviewing Hayavadana, it ventures to come with the different interpretations by the reader i.e. by the author of this paper. The paper claims that Karnad's Hayavadana ridicules the contemporary government policies and decisions related to women rights and education of socially deprived. It attempts to resemble the text with the contemporary political history of India. It focuses on the assumption that readings vary with the purpose, needs, experiences, and concerns of the reader and at the same time reasserts the reader's role in the recreation of the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Girish Karnad is a well known dramatist of contemporary Kannada stage. Karnad's Hayavadana is a memorable treatment of the theme of search for identity. The main plot of Hayavadana is based on the story of transposed heads in the Sanskrit Vetala-Panchavimsati. The modern source of the play is Thomas Mann's - 'The Transposed Heads' which the author called "Metaphysical Gust". The sub-plot of Hayavadana, the horse-headed man is Karnad's own invention. It serves both as prologue and epilogue to the play. The human body, Thomas Mann argues, is a device for the completion of human destiny. Even the transposition of heads did not liberate the protagonists from the psychological limits imposed by nature. Karnad's play poses a different problem that of human identity in a world of tangled relationships causing a confusion of identities which reveals the ambiguous nature of human personality. The sub-plot of Havayadana - the horse-man deepens the significance of the main theme of identity by looking at it from a different perspective. The horse-man's search for identity ends comically with his becoming a complete horse. The animal body triumphs over what is considered the best in man. The uttamaga - the human heads probably to make a point Karnad names the play - 'Hayavadana', human search for identity and completeness of his physical body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]