This Bay Area Artist Puts Women Center Stage

Devendra Sharma, right, is bringing the world a women-led Nautanki production. (Devendra Sharma)

The Indian food in the Bay Area has nothing on the spicy cuisine that Devendra Sharma ate as a kid in Mathura. He says it’s all watered down. “As an Indian, I would never go to an Indian restaurant in the Bay Area,” Sharma says. “It’s kind of lame.” Thankfully, he is a pioneer of bringing what he considers proper Indian culture to the Bay Area. In 2021, he won a $150,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to produce the grandest Indian stage production California has ever seen. In 2024, Sharma will debut his “Princess Nautanki,” partnering with longtime San Francisco arts organization CounterPulse. The nonprofit commissioned the seventh-generation performer, writer, director, and guru to create a modern retelling of Nautanki, an Indian folk opera often made by and for peasants. And he’s ready to modernize the show to represent the world of today, gender-inclusive and all.

Sharma lives in Fresno, California, now, but was a Diaspora Artist of CounterPulse in 2009 and again in 2010. He is often invited to UC Berkeley to lecture or present on Nautanki. He has a lot to say about the long, storied history of Nautanki. “Nautanki, the word itself, has entered the vocabulary of Indians and Indian Americans,” Sharma says. The tradition is tied to the 19th century’s first performances of a play which was originally called “Nautanki,” taking the world of “sangit” or musicals in India by storm. Nautanki was the name of the lead heroine in the play. “She was highly intelligent, and no man could match her intelligence,” Sharma says. “It was a revolutionary musical.”

Sharma said he was attracted to the story because he feels that Indian culture, at home and in the Bay Area, is changing. He wants to bring the 21st century into the piece; he points to Kamala Harris as an example of women taking leadership in major ways in the 2020s. “I’m trying to contemporize the piece because it’s so significant,” Sharma says. Many Nautanki performers in India live in extreme poverty, Sharma says, which means the stories reflect some of the Bay Area’s ongoing issues. His father was a Nautanki master, and he’s familiar with the difficulty of living as an artist. That’s all the more reason he thinks Baydestrians could benefit from seeing his shows. In 2024 “My audience is everyone who loves singing and dancing,” Sharma said. “But it’s also everyone who sees that culture is not static.”