Dr. Prabha Atre || SwaraArpan – 75 || Natyageet – ‘prabhu aji gamalaa...’

Natyageet from Marathi drama ‘Sangeeta Ekach Pyaalaa’ – ‘prabhu aji gamalaa...’ Like music, around 1958, theatre too entered my life by accident. Zonal representations were going to be held in Delhi. The Pune Social Club had started preparations for staging musical play ‘Sharada’. Famous theatre personalities like Chintubua Divekar, Ganapatrao Bodas, Bhalchandra Pendharkar were taking part in this show. That was my first performance on the stage. After that I had offers for many other plays — ‘Vidyaharan’, ‘Samshay kallol’, ‘Mrichhakatika’, ‘Lilao of Rangnekar’ and ‘Mandarmala’. During these days I acted with all the front ranking actors — Bhalchandra Pendharkar, Chota Gandharva, Master Damle, Ram Marathe, Sambaprasad Savarkar, Prabhakar Panshikar, and others. During those three years, it was theatre and more theatre. Around the same time, I took part in several radio-plays with well-known personalities like P.L. Deshpande. ‘Tulsidas’ and ‘Chandanaachi Utee’ as special presentation, an opera presented on stage during Radio-week by the Pune Radio Station, the play ‘Biraaj Bahu’ in Hindi by the Nagpur AIR Station etc., are still recalled by people. excerpt from the article ‘The Song of My Life’ from the book ‘Along the Path of Music’ by Dr. Prabha Atre