The Phallus and the Fire: Theatre Anthropology of Danda Nata

Ramesh Prasad Panigrahi (b. 1944) is a formerly faculty in the postgraduate department of English, Ravenshaw College, Cuttack. A specialist on Indian drama and postmodern American theatre, Mr. Panigrahi is better known in media circle as playwright, director, screenplay writer and theatre anthropologist. He has directed Sam Shepard’s Icarus’ Mother and Buried Child for the campus theatre and has acted in several plays – both in Oriya and English languages. Panigrahi has worked as writer-director for the Jatra folk plays, some of which John Russell Brown has witnessed and praised in an article “Jatra theatre and Elizabethan Dramaturgy” published in New theatre Quarterly (1993). Dr. Panigrahi is seen occasionally moving across the countryside with folk and tribal artists on truck boards beyond his teaching hours. He is an exact contemporary of Sam Shepard and both of the them have started their careers in 1963. During these four dacades of his show-biz career, he has written about more than fifty plays with Sahitya Akademi Award (1984) and a Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (2001) to his credit. He has co-edited books in English on painting and culture studies, and Sangeet Natak Akademi has published his book captioned Perspectives on Odissi theatre. Besides literature, he teaches screenplay writing, E-journalism, Event Management, Culture Studies and Creative Writing as a guest faculty in different institutions. Currently, he officiates as a delegated Board Member for the Central Board of film Certification, Mumbai.