Bangalore Theatre Collective’s new play is a Kannada adaptation of AR Gurney’s Love Letters

The play, Love Letters, has inspired countless actors and directors to stage their variations of the script, each bringing a unique perspective to AR Gurney’s timeless work. Now, director RS Venkatesh Prasad has unveiled a Kannada adaptation that contemporises the story for today’s audience, firmly rooting it in the cultural and social landscape of modern Karnataka. Ninna Preetiya Naanu is the new version of the play, originally penned in 1986 and he first encountered the script while preparing for a festival last month.

“I wanted to direct something that talks about love, emotions, tenderness and caring,” he begins, emphasising the importance of vulnerability and expression in a world that often feels harsh and divided.

Love letters of a lifetime

Ninna Preetiya Naanu is about the correspondence between Rashmi and Siddharth, unfolding through love letters they exchange from childhood into adulthood.

“The female protagonist’s journey is shaped by childhood trauma that colours her personality and perspectives on the world as she grows. It’s not just a love story — it’s about emotional complexities and how the outside world seeps into our inner lives,” Venkatesh explains.

Rashmi’s journey is marked by unresolved grief, familial neglect and the quiet ache of being misunderstood. We witness how class, gender, privilege, family expectations and social conditioning shape and sometimes stifle love.

The Kannada connection

The adaptation retains the core of the original play but situates it firmly in the Kannada ethos, setting the story in presentday Karnataka. The characters hail from Mysuru but also travel the world as they grow up. This is a deliberate choice to make the story relevant and relatable to today’s audiences. While the original was set around the 1930s and 40s, the director’s version spotlights contemporary life and the art of writing letters that exists even today, spanning from the characters’ childhoods to 2025.

“I’ve made the characters from Karnataka, brought them into 2025, but retained the format of the letters. There’s something about a letter that creates a pause. It allows for silence. It’s different from the constant pinging of notifications,” he shares.

Though the play centres on the reading of letters, the format also acknowledges the evolution of communication. The director touches on the reality of social media posts and recognises how modern relationships navigate the complexities of digital intimacy.

Kantara actor Kishore Kumar G plays lead

Featuring two veteran actors, Kishore Kumar G and Siri Ravikumar, the production leans on their theatrical experience to carry the weight of a performance that demands emotional depth. With minimal stage movement — limited mostly to two chairs and a table — the actors convey decades of shared history through vocal expression, subtle gestures and nuanced shifts in costume that mark the passage of time.

“I told them: don’t act. Just be. Just read it as if you’re reading it for the first time and the memory is coming to you. That’s where the magic lies,” he reveals. Rooted in the classical Indian theatre principles of vacika-abhinaya (vocal expression), the production draws heavily on voice, tone and cadence to convey emotion. “Even in classical forms like yakshagana, there’s a power in just the way you deliver the line. I wanted that same impact here,” he adds.

Since its premiere, Venkatesh has taken the feedback, fine-tuning the production to strengthen the connection with the audience, reco gnising that the two characters, though never interacting directly on stage, communicate profoundly through their words and the spaces between them. “The audience becomes a vital part of the dialogue. So, based on the previous perfor mances, we have made some changes to make it more engaging for the audience. There’s one moment where both actors say, I’m sorry and you can feel a collective breath in the room. That’s when I know it’s working,” he concludes.

₹250. May 29 & 30, 7.30 pm. At Ranga Shankara, JP Nagar.